Craig wrote:
“What if Comcast decides to do what Bert wants and moves all of their services
to IP, recovering the spectrum using other technologies? Can they still reserve
a portion of the system for the delivery of a TV bundle with a guaranteed QOS
that is different than the broadband network?”
I’d say sure, as long as the “best effort” neutral Internet broadband service
remains useful. It’s when they play games that make access to competing sites
very poor that they will run into problems.
I’d suggest that retaining MPEG-2 broadcast, using up a whole lot more cable
capacity than what is allocated to broadband service, pretty much does the same
thing. And that’s what is beginning to irk their customers, even if these
customers don’t articulate their displeasure in such terms.
In my searching around the web, I found just such a customer. He used cable
only for broadband, and wanted more speed. The cable guy told him, if you buy a
TV package, you can watch TV without having to use broadband. Clearly, missing
the point.
My bet is that in cable nets, Internet usage is highest before prime time, when
use of the broadcast TV spectrum is lowest. And vice versa, during the prime
time hours, broadcast spectrum use is highest, and broadband lower. An all IP
net would make much more effective use of overall net capacity, where the full
net capacity can be applied at all times, to whatever service people want to
use then.
Bert
