Article: Is cable(and satellite) doomed?

[Nate Wesley]

From Bengalsfan ... "You guys are really short sighted. Do you honestly think that the wireless companies are not working to increase their speeds?"

There is no way in h*** that a wireless phone carrier is going to be able to come up with enough bandwidth to stram an HD picture to a big screen TV with anythng close to reasonable quality.

If you look at the frequency allocation tables and divide it up in to 6 MHz chunks, there is not a lot of channel space to go around.

That's right. What was I thinking. Nobody will ever develop a way to get around those obstacles...If we all had that attitude, we'd still be watching black and white TV on a 6" round screen. Keep the pessimistic attitude up, technology just stops right here, right?

The elimination of 'unlimited' data plans from Verizon and AT&T has to be a significant setback for what you were talking about, though. Especially with users of the remaining such plans (Sprint, T-Mobile, or grandfathered VZW/ATT customers) now having to put up with throttled speeds.

 

[Casey]

Many of our networks are capable of streaming HD video. All of our 4G networks can, and so can anyone with ftth, cable internet, next-gen satellite, or reasonable DSL. The infrastructure is in place, it is just a matter of if the companies will let us use it.

Cord cutting itself is not going to happen in scale until a big player comes along. Netflix is not that player. They are already getting more and more restricted by their content providers. They do not charge near enough money to make up for lost advertising and cable fees. The service is going to have to cost some money. $30-40 per month at least. People seem to forget that good content costs money. Often times needing more than just advertising or more than a small slice of Netflix's revenue. Look at some of HBO's content for example. Game of Thrones. Watch that show and you will know why HBO isn't on Netflix and isn't free. It takes money to make content like that. Netflix and offering free apps on Roku don't make that kind of money.

Hulu is already rumored to be heading toward the direction the Olympics were this year. If you want to use it online, you will have to have a qualifying cable package. That shouldn't be a surprise though, Comcast took over NBC, who controls Hulu.

 

[PTBoardOp94]

Many of our networks are capable of streaming HD video. All of our 4G networks can, and so can anyone with ftth, cable internet, next-gen satellite, or reasonable DSL. The infrastructure is in place, it is just a matter of if the companies will let us use it.

The infrastructure is not in place.

A 4G enabled cell site can service maybe 20 simultaneous HD video streams. Cable has the same problem, although with a higher number of streams per branch depending on the cable company's technology. Next-gen satellite services like those offered by ViaSat have rather onerous bandwidth limits - 10 to 15 hours of HD video per month - because their technology can support 10,000 people across the whole country streaming video at a time.

 

[Casey]

Many of our networks are capable of streaming HD video. All of our 4G networks can, and so can anyone with ftth, cable internet, next-gen satellite, or reasonable DSL. The infrastructure is in place, it is just a matter of if the companies will let us use it.

The infrastructure is not in place.

A 4G enabled cell site can service maybe 20 simultaneous HD video streams. Cable has the same problem, although with a higher number of streams per branch depending on the cable company's technology. Next-gen satellite services like those offered by ViaSat have rather onerous bandwidth limits - 10 to 15 hours of HD video per month - because their technology can support 10,000 people across the whole country streaming video at a time.

20 HD streams per cell site is actually quite a few. You are going to have a hard time getting that many people streaming HD content. However seeing how Verizon's LTE network has preformed so far, I would say it can handle more than 20 HD streams. Sprint's LTE network probably won't as they don't have much spectrum to play with for the time being. Most cable companies have plenty of capacity available. You may not get the exact speeds you pay for during peak usage, but so far companies have kept up. Comcast still delivers more than 100% of the purchased speed most of the time. Viasat's new service has 140gbps of capacity to play with on their new satellite covering 2/3's of the US and 2 other satellites to cover the other 1/3. They are more than capable of delivering HD content and to more than 10,000 subscribers, their caps just don't make it ideal.

Currently mostly all the infrastructure is capable of exceeding modern demands. It doesn't really take that much to stream HD and you are only going to have a handful of people streaming it at any given time, even if a company had 100% of their subscribers subscribing to HD content. A lot of people didn't think DSL could deliver HD IPTV to a large amount of subscribers, but so far they have done so very successfully.

 

[PTBoardOp94]

Currently mostly all the infrastructure is capable of exceeding modern demands. It doesn't really take that much to stream HD and you are only going to have a handful of people streaming it at any given time, even if a company had 100% of their subscribers subscribing to HD content.

If we're talking about people replacing cable with streaming video en masse, there will be more than a "handful" of customers expecting HD video at any given time - at least hundreds.

I don't doubt that such a thing is possible, but I am pretty certain it isn't possible today.

 

[Casey]

Currently mostly all the infrastructure is capable of exceeding modern demands. It doesn't really take that much to stream HD and you are only going to have a handful of people streaming it at any given time, even if a company had 100% of their subscribers subscribing to HD content.

If we're talking about people replacing cable with streaming video en masse, there will be more than a "handful" of customers expecting HD video at any given time - at least hundreds.

I don't doubt that such a thing is possible, but I am pretty certain it isn't possible today.

Our DSL networks can handle it, there is no reason to believe the cable networks cannot. DSL is very similar to cable in that it is also shared. It may be known to consumers as being a "dedicated line" but it is only dedicated until you get to the DSLAM. The DSL networks have had no problem delivering HD IPTV, why are we to assume cable won't be so lucky? There won't be hundreds of customers expecting HD at each branch. Most branches don't have more than a few hundred subscribers on them and you are never going to have 100% or anywhere near that many of your subscribers watching HD simultaneously. With channel bonding, we can and are significantly increasing capacity of DOCSIS 3 networks. To the point that Comcast claims they will soon provide tiers upto 305mbps.

 

[arnoldevns]

Didn't read the article yet...but I will say that there is a significant drop in the number of TV households around the country. A TV household is defined as a household with a tv that is hooked up to an antenna or cable/satellite service and can get at least one channel of programming. What's happening now is that a growing number of people are just hooking their tv's up to the internet only. Broadcasters and cable/satellite companies need to find a way to win those people back. That will be easier for broadcasters than cable/satellite.

 

[Tom Wells]

Cable never stood a chance with me. I wouldn't ever permit such a noisemaking device in the house.

I did consider putting in a cable modem way out back of the property at the garage and take cat 5 out there,
but I was unable to get any kind of data package only; a subscription to cable TV was required and killed
the deal fo rme. I looked at getting a microwave linked service but don't have a clear shot at the antenna
on the Sears tower. So we went with AT&T DSL because the phone line's already there.

None of the AT&T data services I subscribe to ( DSL and 3G wireless card ) ever come close to providing
the bandwidth/throughput to stream video except the lowest quality.

It really doesn't much matter if the network can handle the data if there's not enough speed in the distribution.
Or if there's not enough signal coverage to support a continuous connection.

The wireless system is next to worthless in the only places I need it to work because of the "nimby" problem.
Can't say I ever expect them to ever add more cell sites, so this is probably how poorly it will always work for me.

On DSL we get a blazing .6 mb/sec down, so Netflix watching is a bit of a chore....
It sometimes takes twice the running time of anything to actually watch, with many "intermissions".

We get 47 channels of TV on a wire carelessly draped over a floor lamp, so cable is probably never going to
be in our plans.

Still waiting on someone to bring a real fiber-optic to the neighborhood before I am interested in subscribing.
And then I'm still only interested in internet service, not TV.

 

[Casey]

Cable never stood a chance with me. I wouldn't ever permit such a noisemaking device in the house.

I did consider putting in a cable modem way out back of the property at the garage and take cat 5 out there,
but I was unable to get any kind of data package only; a subscription to cable TV was required and killed
the deal fo rme. I looked at getting a microwave linked service but don't have a clear shot at the antenna
on the Sears tower. So we went with AT&T DSL because the phone line's already there.

None of the AT&T data services I subscribe to ( DSL and 3G wireless card ) ever come close to providing
the bandwidth/throughput to stream video except the lowest quality.

It really doesn't much matter if the network can handle the data if there's not enough speed in the distribution.
Or if there's not enough signal coverage to support a continuous connection.

The wireless system is next to worthless in the only places I need it to work because of the "nimby" problem.
Can't say I ever expect them to ever add more cell sites, so this is probably how poorly it will always work for me.

On DSL we get a blazing .6 mb/sec down, so Netflix watching is a bit of a chore....
It sometimes takes twice the running time of anything to actually watch, with many "intermissions".

We get 47 channels of TV on a wire carelessly draped over a floor lamp, so cable is probably never going to
be in our plans.

Still waiting on someone to bring a real fiber-optic to the neighborhood before I am interested in subscribing.
And then I'm still only interested in internet service, not TV.

You get .6mbps? If so that's bad, even for At&t. I am surprised they wouldn't do something about that. You probably won't see fiber anytime soon, but you could see U-Verse. That can deliver good speeds.