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Verizon To Use New Tech With Old Cables 188

Posted by Zonk from the not-just-for-making-lassos-anymore dept.
Ant wrote to mention a ZDNet article about a new initive to get modern high-speed net access into homes utilizing old coaxial cable lines. Right now Verizon digs up streets and lays out expensive fiber to get homes online, but new tech may let them accomplish that task for much less hassle and expense. From the article: "Later this year, it plans to use new technology from the Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA) , an industry group that promotes using coaxial cable installed for cable TV to transmit broadband around the home. The organization says that its technology supports speeds up to 270 megabits per second. Because most homes already have coaxial cable installed in several rooms, Verizon can significantly reduce its Fios installation costs by using existing cabling to connect home computers to its broadband service."
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Verizon To Use New Tech With Old Cables More

Verizon To Use New Tech With Old Cables

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  • Verizon? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Morky ( 577776 ) on Sunday March 12, 2006 @05:37PM (#14903721)
    I'll start holding my breath now.
  • Uh, isn't this.. cable?
    • This is also... competition! Verizon's responding to the fact that for the same price* as its home DSL service, cable companies offer significantly faster service.

      * Assuming that you subscribe to cable TV as well

  • Misleading summary (surprise) (Score:5, Informative)

    by Tx ( 96709 ) on Sunday March 12, 2006 @05:41PM (#14903737) Journal
    The summary says Right now Verizon digs up streets and lays out expensive fiber to get homes online, but new tech may let them accomplish that task for much less hassle and expense, but the article is talking about using pre-installed coax to connect computers within the home to broadband, it has nothing about getting the broadband to the home.
    • Here's the Wikipedia entry for MoCA [wikipedia.org], for more info.

    • Re:Misleading summary (surprise) (Score:4, Interesting)

      by general_re ( 8883 ) on Sunday March 12, 2006 @05:49PM (#14903787) Homepage
      Which is not a bad idea, except that I suspect that most houses are wired with cheap-ass RG-59, which is extremely susceptible to interference. I have no idea about this MoCA scheme or the modulation of it, but my guess is that 270 megabits is going to be absolutely unattainable for most people.
      • except that I suspect that most houses are wired with cheap-ass RG-59, which is extremely susceptible to interference.

        Well, it should work. 270Mbps is not that much on coax. Television production studios have been runing smpte 259M (component 4:2:2 standard def. video @270Mbps), over '59 coax for years. Granted, it is much better stuff than in your average house, but it is often over much longer distances.

        I would guess that the 270Mbps is the raw wire speed and will have a lot of error correction. That and

        • Re:Misleading summary (surprise) (Score:5, Interesting)

          by general_re ( 8883 ) on Sunday March 12, 2006 @07:51PM (#14904274) Homepage
          The few installations I've seen have used RG-6. Anyway, my guess is even with RG-59 they're using double- or quad-shielded cable in the studio. Cablecos and installers in general, on the other hand, can and do cut corners wherever possible, including using unshielded cable. Some years ago, I used to live about a block from a firehouse, and every time those guys hopped on the radio - which was quite regularly, obviously - channels 19-21 on the cable TV turned to complete shit. Guess what frequencies the fire department was using. ;)
          • -1 nitpick, but:

            "cut corners wherever possible, including using unshielded cable. "

            really? so they use a single wire then?
            I know you were implicating the lack of a foil wrap around the braid, but technically the braid is still a shield.
            Compare that to the solid silver stranded core and silver clad copper braid, with 3 foil wraps that I use in some of my instrumentation and it might as well be unsheilded.
            -nB
          • The few installations I've seen have used RG-6. Anyway, my guess is even with RG-59 they're using double- or quad-shielded cable in the studio. Cablecos and installers in general, on the other hand, can and do cut corners wherever possible, including using unshielded cable. Some years ago, I used to live about a block from a firehouse, and every time those guys hopped on the radio - which was quite regularly, obviously - channels 19-21 on the cable TV turned to complete shit. Guess what frequencies the fire
            • Comcast has been putting in RG-6 quad-shield with compression fittings exclusively in my area for some time now.

              Sure, but what about the twenty year old cable that's already in the house? That's what VZ is looking to leverage, and I think there'll be a lot of neighborhoods where they end up pulling CAT5 anyway, just because the quality of cable in the walls is for shit.

      • Also most houses don't have the coax hardware to do this either. The distribution systems, if they are recent, have bi-directional splitters so that you can do things like buy pay-per-view movies, etc. But as far as I know they don't let the signal go down one cable and back up the other, which is what you need for this. At the least they'd have to install some new hardware where the splitters are currently- and sometimes the splitters aren't in easy-to-reach locations.

  • Good (Score:3, Funny)

    by GAATTC ( 870216 ) on Sunday March 12, 2006 @05:42PM (#14903738)
    Verizon came and fixed my voice line last week - we had a lot of noise and other people's phone calls on our line. Unfortunately this also 'fixed' my DSL connection, which hasn't worked since then. Perhaps by using a separate set of wires for voice and data this kind of problem will go away. Of course once everyone starts using VoIP for thier phone calls....
    • A friend in Ottawa told me how his Bell phone service went out one day and they didn't send someone for at least two days to fix it. He finally went out to the demarc to take a look, and a service guy from Rogers new phone service had CUT HIS PHONE LINE. How's that for a little unwarranted competition between the cable and phone providers?
      • a service guy from Rogers new phone service had CUT HIS PHONE LINE. How's that for a little unwarranted competition between the cable and phone providers?

        Heh. Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity. Ask any telecom tech what he thinks about letting a cable guy do phone wiring, you'll get an earfull. Cable guys are the basest of all wire technicians. From what I've seen, they're the least trained, the poorest equipped, and do the shoddiest work.

  • In related news (Score:5, Funny)

    by nnnneedles ( 216864 ) on Sunday March 12, 2006 @05:42PM (#14903743)
    ..several Telecom firms are planning to introduce amazing new technology that allows the Internet to go through telephone lines. Also, in the distant horizon, talks are beginning to emerge about telephony itself going over telephone lines, and even an exciting new breakthrough called the telegraph has been mentioned.

  • New Bits in Old Wires (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    And men do not put new bits in old wires, else the wires rot and the bits leak out; but they put new bits in new wires so that reliability is preserved.
  • Here in Montreal, Canada, this has been available for at least 10 years (since 1996 or even earlier).
    • WHAT?

      270mbit cable connection in Montreal? I'm still here strugging with Sympatico to provide me 1.5mbit. Videotron offers cable Internet but they do so for $90 a month for 8mbit.

      So where do you see 270mbit? Tell me.

  • Aargh - I was just getting used to twisted pair! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I used to run my school computer lab on co-ax. What a pain. The connectors were always breaking. They didn't have to completely break either, they just had to go slightly bad and they'd take down the whole network. Anyway I suppose they will come up with a solution that has 'more conventional' connectors because most NICs don't have co-ax connectors.
    • You're thinking of the older 10-base2 Ethernet with BNC connectors, and earlier 1 Mb/s nets like Arcnet or Corvus. Three things:

      1. You most likeley used 50 Ohm BNC's but the Cable systems use 75 Ohm F-connectors. Those are somewhat more reliable than BNC's, and are much easier to replace.

      2. Those early nets were daisy-chained from connector to connector, and any break would take down part of or the whole network. With the co-ax system the Cable system uses, they are usually radiating in a "star" configur
    • "I used to run my school computer lab on co-ax. What a pain. The connectors were always breaking. They didn't have to completely break either, they just had to go slightly bad and they'd take down the whole network. Anyway I suppose they will come up with a solution that has 'more conventional' connectors because most NICs don't have co-ax connectors."

      Hmmm... sounds like the token fell out. Why don't check to see if it rolled under your desk?
  • The question on my mind is, what makes this so "new" and different from existing cable internet? The only thing he mentions is that download speed is 270Mbps.

    I suppose they're probably using a higher frequency to transmit the data as opposed to existing cable internet.

    The other concern is, won't the cable companies charge Verizon an arm and a leg to use *their* cable networks? I would imagine this would drive the price of this new solution up through the roof, to the point where its cost makes it prohibitiv
    • The idea is that you have subscribed to Verizon's FiOS TV, so you won't have a cable company hooked up to the coax. It's basically reusing your existing house wiring for data. It's what will allow one DVR to stream video to other DVRs, signal for PPV/VOD, etc.

      ZDNet just sensationalized it some.

  • "old" cables? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by keilinw ( 663210 ) * on Sunday March 12, 2006 @05:47PM (#14903774) Homepage Journal
    I think its a great idea to use "existing" infrastructure to reduce costs and speed up implementation. IMHO a "new" technology using copper is suitable as long as it meets certain criteria (which I'm sure it does). My only beef with the article is in the title -- existing copper cables are not "OLD" technology -- copper has many advantages over fiber in terms of practicality, cost, etc. I'm going to consider that they were referring to "copper" as old... but I don't foresee and sudden disappearance of wires in the near future.

    Matt Wong
    http://www.themindofmatthew.com [themindofmatthew.com]
    • The standard is ancient. I don't know where it came form orignlly, but some time back in the eairly days of video, someone worked out that coax cable made a good waveguild for RF signals and they decided on 75 ohm coax to do it with.

      It works great for many things, no question. Provided the tolerances are tight, you can use it for uncompressed HD video (and the broadcast industry does) at distances around a kilometre. However that doesn't change the fact that it's a very old standard. Still extrememly useful
    • I think by "old" they simply meant "existing" - they're planning to use cables that are already installed, instead of running new ones (regardless of whether the cables are fiber or copper).

  • Is this really a good idea? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Saeed al-Sahaf ( 665390 ) on Sunday March 12, 2006 @05:48PM (#14903777) Homepage
    ...Verizon digs up streets and lays out expensive fiber to get homes online, but new tech may let them accomplish that task for much less hassle and expense...

    What are the chances they will actually pass the savings on to the consumer? Exactly nill. Anyway, since everything and the kitchen sink will soon be relient on an IP address and broadband connection, is this really a good idea? Just lay the fiber and get it over with.

  • I thought they had learned.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by saleenS281 ( 859657 ) on Sunday March 12, 2006 @05:48PM (#14903780) Homepage
    I thought they learned the last time not to band-aid these issues. We have fiber that would be upgradeable to ??????? speeds, or we can bottleneck ourselves yet again at 270mbit (and that's probably theoretical only) so in reality maybe 200mbit? So that in another 5-10 years they'll have to do the fiber thing anyways. Why not just do it right the first time so there's a nice long-term upgrade path?
    • thought they learned the last time not to band-aid these issues.

      Well, a band-aid costs about $0.10, whereas surgery could easily run more than $10,000. Both have their place, and I'm sure Verizon has done the math to see which will be most profitable in the long run.
      • Yeah. They use the cable company's investment right now to save themselves some money, and by the time that capacity has been saturated, they'll be able to finish the upgrade correctly for a fraction of what it would cost right now, and will have already have gotten the money from gouging the customers.
    • http://www.fiber-optics.info/articles/dtv-hdtv.ht m [fiber-optics.info]

      This shows what is possible today with coax. Production studios are shipping uncompressed digital HD over coax all the time (smpte 292m runs at 1.4Gbps), although they are often having to replace connectors and take more care in bending radius. 270Mbps shouldn't be a big deal if the cable is properly terminated and not kinked.

  • Verizon FiOS Fiber to the home (I have it) (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 12, 2006 @05:56PM (#14903811)
    I had Cat6 run from the Fiber terminal up to the computer room when I got FiOS installed. The Fiber will still go to the home but the connection will not be Cat6 according to this article. All it states is that instead of running Ethernet they will use the pre-existing Coax lines to make the connection. I plan on getting the Verizon Television (FiOS TV) and have already read that they will use my pre-existing Coax for that connection.

    So this article summary is misleading. The fiber is *still* going to the home, it's just that they will not run Ethernet into the home if they don't need to. Instead using the pre-existing Coaxial runs which are already in place.
  • Eventually we're going to bump into limits yet again with the coax cabling, so why not still go forth with the fiberoptic plans? -- Jim http://www.runfatboy.net/ [runfatboy.net]
    • Eventually we're going to bump into limits yet again with the coax cabling, so why not still go forth with the fiberoptic plans?

      Because by then the current board members will have retired and the current CEO/CFO will not have to find a way to keep the stockholders happy while all the company's revenues go into network upgrades. The next boss can deal with that.
    • Eventually it will be Christmas again, so why not put up a Christmas tree?

      Eventually the sun will burn out, so why not buy these flashlights from me?

      Eventually we're all going to die, so why not have your funeral today?

    • Not a huge difference (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Nazmun ( 590998 )
      This new tech is just so they can be lazy/cheap once already inside your home. They'll still build the fiber network to get broadband into your house. This is a local area technology that's more so replacing ethernet then anything. The only company that will give you net access through your coax cable (from outside the house) is your cable company.

  • Huh? (Score:2)

    by Have Blue ( 616 )
    So, what's the difference between this and the cable modem I'm using right now, other than the fact that it has a higher bandwidth cap?

  • This may be new to verizon... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by OffbeatAdam ( 960706 ) on Sunday March 12, 2006 @06:06PM (#14903856)
    However, in cities like Montreal where houses are very old and almost impossible to run any new cabling, this has been an alternative for years. Without this technology, there would have been almost no broadband outside of cable modem in Montreal, much less the majority of the rest of Canada's old cities. However, as its said in the article, this is not primarily for an internet based usage. This is more related to the features of the new IP-based television services. Even in new houses today to find networking cable near a TV is a shot in the dark, and this technology, even though by no means new, will allow Verizon (and the other Telcos that are providing the same service) to install the services without having to ask the customer to change their entire room configurations around. Since the tech provides enough throughput to stream video, its a perfect solution for something that would otherwise cost a lot of money. The post is misleading though as this really has nothing to do with the wiring outside of the home. MoCA is not made for outside use, its an internal usage, with a host adapter acting as the router for the coaxial lines. Coaxial to ethernet bridge, thats all they are.

  • Yawn! Nothing to see here. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SeaFox ( 739806 ) on Sunday March 12, 2006 @06:13PM (#14903886)
    It's just another ISP corporate "make money without spending it" hoax. You see these once every few years. A major telco/cable conglomerate/backbone operator/ect talks about using some old'n'busted tech to deliver a faster than pie in the sky internet connection. Almost all the initial information is from the marketting dept of the company that is selling the idea (not from engineers or anyone who could really explain how these fabulous data speeds will be accomplished).

    Stock Market laps it up like candy. Thinks Company X is going to become the new King of Content Delivery (because, you KNOW all the company's competitors and going to sit on their hands and have their kiesters handed to them by Company X).

    Then there will be delays of getting the project actually going. Maybe even some slight downplaying of actual speeds of conetnt delivery.

    At some point someone with a PhD in physics or a heavy EE background gets ahold of the actual method of content delivery and point out it simply isn't possible in the real world because of interfereance, older lines than they used in the lab, ect.

    Marketting dept for technology company downplays statement made by PhD/EE. Slashdot crowd made up of people who know WAY too much about the national power grid and enough about radio spectrum to work at the FCC pop up to defend the scientist's statements.

    More backpedaling of speeds for new service. Marketting direction of new tech starts to veer slightly into the "will allow service in areas not currently reachable by standard broadband providers" direction.

    Companies who have not yet publically committed to using tech start to back out. In the others unfortunately, corporate inertia takes over. Whoever greenlighted the project doesn't want to try and back out and look stupid for having wasted plenty of company money at this point.

    New tech has limited rollout, shows to be the flop we knew it was the whole time. You never hear about the new tech in the media again and it becomes one of those fringe technologes only seen in rural regions. Perhaps eventually phased out as traditional broadband service (Cable/DSL) are pushed into the region.

    A few years pass and major Telcos/Cablecos grouse about the cost of last mile hookups and getting ot that last few % of homes in the middle of nowhere. Stock is tanking on high network infastructure costs gobbling revenue.

    But then a company no one's ever heard of pops up with the idea of...
  • I always thought the cable company owned those lines, and also one of the many reasons why one location is usually never serviced by 2 cable companies. If the cable companies do own those lines, why would they ever let a phone company borrow their lines to give highspeed to consumers when they can do it themselves. If they don't own the lines, is it the city that does? If that's the case, why are we so often locked down to only 1 cable provider.
    • I always thought the cable company owned those lines, and also one of the many reasons why one location is usually never serviced by 2 cable companies.
      The cable company owns the cable 1 foot away from the house entrance point. After that, it belongs to the homeowner/landlord. This was decided when the DBS guys started business and some cable companies wanted to block them from using the inside wiring.
  • This way, they can pocket more of the billions that Congress gave them in the 90's for that fiber project that was to go live in '06.

  • Good business sense (Score:2, Interesting)

    by SeeMyNuts! ( 955740 )

    Phone companies managed to get usable broadband over ancient phone lines, and all I have to do is plug in a little adapter to my telephone. This is a good re-use of existing infrastructure, and stock holders should look favorably on this. Of course, a smart company would take some of the resulting savings and keep a fund ready for eventual replacement of their lines.

  • How are they making money? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Jamori ( 725303 ) on Sunday March 12, 2006 @06:31PM (#14903956)
    Verizon hopes to reduce these costs significantly in 2006. Specifically, it plans to cut the cost of laying new fiber in neighborhoods to $890 per home and reduce the cost of home installation to $715 per home

    TFA cites those costs for 2005 as $1,200 and $1,400 respectively.
    How exactly is this a profitable business venture when their optimisitc goal is to spend over $1,600 per household for installation of a service that they sell for $40/month, with relatively little commitment to stay with the service?

    • How exactly is this a profitable business venture when their optimisitc goal is to spend over $1,600 per household for installation of a service that they sell for $40/month, with relatively little commitment to stay with the service?

      Because it's a long term investment. I had the 30/5 FIOS package installed at our place just before Christmas last year. I'm not a CFOI, but I could hold my own in conversation with the installers, being especially interested to learn the cost of the ONT and other equipment the

  • Old Coax Cable? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TBone ( 5692 ) on Sunday March 12, 2006 @06:31PM (#14903958) Homepage
    a new initive to get modern high-speed net access into homes utilizing old coaxial cable lines.
    Isn't this really just a rebirth of 10-Base-5 [wikipedia.org] Ethernet? What's old is new again....
    • Actually, this is real "broadband", rather than "baseband"; it's just another signal on the coax in some unused frequency band.

      Baseband signals, like classic coax Ethernet, are a pain, because they go all the way down to DC, which means you can't filter out hum from power lines. Ethernet only worked because it used strong signals on really good coax. It's not going to work over the crap cable TV uses.

    • Isn't this really just a rebirth of 10-Base-5 Ethernet? What's old is new again...

      Not quite. 10-Base-5, like 10-base-2 is ethernet on coax at BASEBAND. What Verizon is proposing is Ethernet on an RF carrier over coax. I.e, "broadband". But that's been done too. It was 10-Broad-36.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10broad36 [wikipedia.org]

  • Using UWB, Firewire over Coax is doing 400Mbps (Score:3, Informative)

    by pH7.0 ( 3799 ) on Sunday March 12, 2006 @06:54PM (#14904050)
    "1394 Trade Association and Pulse~LINK To Demonstrate Bi-Directional HDTV Streaming of IEEE 1394 S400 over Coax at the 2006 International CES, Jan. 5-8"

    "The HANA exhibit will showcase how Pulse~LINK's CWave -On-Coax and the 1394TA's S400 interface provide a powerful, whole-home distribution capability that can run over pre-existing in-home coax cable AND co-exist with legacy cable and satellite programming. The demonstration will consist of two 1394-enabled CWave(TM) UWB transceivers, one in the Trade Association's booth and another in the Pulse~LINK booth, with splitters and several hundred feet of coax cable between them. 1394 HDTV audio and video will be streamed bi-directionally between the two booths in the HANA suite, showing how coax cable in the home works as a broadband backbone with 400Mbps application layer throughput for seamlessly transporting multiple simultaneous streams of digital content to 1394-equipped devices throughout the home."

    http://www.pulselink.net/pr-jan02-2006.html [pulselink.net]

  • Just when you thought Verizon was an innovator... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by djblair ( 464047 ) * on Sunday March 12, 2006 @07:26PM (#14904174)
    Smooth. Getting the damn fiber in the ground once and for all sounded like too good of a plan did it? Verizon needed a way to move back in time instead of forward? I wonder how many more years carriers will spend trying to squeeze whatever they can out of old, decaying infrastructure. We all know how great cable modems and DSL work compared to 'true' digital circuits (T1, Frame, etc) and fiber-based infrastructure. There are so many fundamental flaws with reusing old wiring for new services that I don't even know where to begin (Cable Modems = shared medium & collision city, DSL = distance limitations and interference, etc.). Because most homes already have coaxial cable installed in several rooms... GIVE ME A BREAK! I'm sure that was a real deal-breaker.

    • I wonder how many more years carriers will spend trying to squeeze whatever they can out of old, decaying infrastructure.

      I'd say as long as possible... "infrastructure" == "assets", aka, "sunk costs".

      Do you replace your car before you need to?

      Do you replace your carpet if it can just be steam-cleaned back to "presentable"?

      Sheesh - no grand conspiracy here... if they can make a buck on what they have, they will.

      • Do you replace your car before you need to?

        Do you replace your carpet if it can just be steam-cleaned back to "presentable"?

        You really probably don't want to know the answers to those questions.

        Most people have been well trained by marketeers to do both of those things you describe.

        Regardless, they're not doing what the parent suggests. They're switching to the fiber because the aging copper lines are getting more expensive to maintain than the new fiber is to install. They only want to use legacy wires on

  • They're already using this.. (Score:4, Informative)

    by dennism ( 13667 ) on Sunday March 12, 2006 @08:52PM (#14904456) Homepage
    I have FiOS service currently -- phone, internet, and TV -- and they are already putting IP over coax. They use it for the video on demand. They have a simple ethernet to coax bridge (made by Motorola) and the cable box then is able to get it's guide data and VOD streams over the internet connection. What I haven't been able to figure out is if the bandwidth used for VOD is taken out of my 15mbit internet bandwidth allocation or if they have some traffic shaping going on for the VOD separately.

    I'm not really sure how it's going to be cheaper -- coax isn't that expensive, and they were more than happy to replace the sub-par cabling that MediaOne/AT&T/Comcast had left behind. They even ran more wire inside the house to accommodate the way I wanted to setup things.
    • Nope, the phone and vid DOES NOT come out of your 15/2, it's separate. There's a good discussion on it here [dslreports.com]. Cheers, Ed T.
      • I wasn't stating that the phone comes out of the 15/2 -- but, it does come over the same fiber optic connection. Also, the regular channels for video also do not come out of the 15/2 -- but, the VOD streams do. I can confirm this because I have a 10/100 switch hooked in between my router and the box bridging the ethernet and coax. When I play VOD streams, the activity lights are blinking like crazy. Pause the stream, and there is no activity.

  • Better idea for Verizon - STOP SPAMMING! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mabu ( 178417 ) on Sunday March 12, 2006 @08:54PM (#14904459)
    I have idea for Verizon. Why don't they use some new tech, old tech, or any goddam tech, to stop the overwhelming array of spam originating from zombie PCs in their netblocks? How much shit do we have to put up with before Verizon gets off their lazy asses and stops polluting the net!

    AOL and other ISPs have taken aggressive and extremely effective approaches by filtering port 25 traffic on their networks. As a result, the spam and zombie activity from their customers has dropped off dramatically. ISPs like Comcast and Verizon still have yet to do this and they're a major source of internet pollution.

    Until Verizon controls the illegal activity of their users, I urge all system administrators to block all port 25 traffic from Verizon IP blocks such as:

    68.160.* * - 68.170+
    70.16.*.* - 70.23.*.*
    70.104.*.* - 70.124.*.*
    71.100.*.* - 71.251.*.*
    141.150.*.* - 141.158.*.*
    151.199.*.* - 151.200.*.*
      etc.

    Screw you Verizon. Control your idiot users!
    • Speaking as a Verizon customer (Computer Engineering graduate) I can say we're not all idiots. However I was amazed that to find that I could set up an SMTP server (on port 25) for my own use (I use it to send myself emails from my motion activated security camera). If its that incredibly easy to do, I'm not surpised anymore that there's so many zombies out there. And I'd gladly go through a few extra steps if they'd kill such abuses.

  • Not so bad, actually (Score:2, Interesting)

    by daeg ( 828071 )
    By eliminating the need to rewire every house for Cat5 (or higher), Verizon can cut down on time to wire large areas for FIOS itself. They don't just reduce their cost. Home owners can then later upgrade their home wiring to use the full capacity of FIOS, with or without the support of Verizon.

    Verizon (and investors, including in a small part myself) doesn't know if FIOS will be profitable yet. There are a lot of competing techs that are a threat. They can't compete in speed, but they make up for it in thei

  • Ennh... (Score:3, Funny)

    by bongobongo ( 608275 ) on Monday March 13, 2006 @12:14AM (#14905114)
    You can't teach an old cable new techs.

  • Ever heard of CCIR 601? (Score:3, Informative)

    by tzf ( 255204 ) on Monday March 13, 2006 @04:25AM (#14905802)
    Here's the funny thing: 270 Mbits over coax has been around since the early 1990's. It was called CCIR601, but then the ITU dissolved the CCIR so the standard is now known as ITU-R BT Rec.601 or some such alphabet soup. It was also called (inaccurately) "D1 video" (D1 is/was a digital video tape format). Since then, the 270 Mbit transport layer has been used for moving MPEG around, which is called DVB-ASI (that's right, as in the European "Digital Video Broadcasting"). ASI stands for Asychronous Serial Interface, and is the common transport for data between MPEG-2 encoders, IPE's, and MUX's at DTV head ends throughout the world. So, the idea that you could move lotsa stuff around at 270 MBits, even on crappy home-installed RG-6, is not rocket science. Making products that can do that CHEAPLY in the HOME is NEWS! (A DTV head end is a $million or 2.)

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