Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Bandwidth Crunch for MSO's?

An interesting article about the bandwidth crunch coming to MSO's. Apparently, cable doesn't have the necessary bandwidth for all of the apps, like HD TV channels, gaming, VOD, internet access, and online apps.

Currently, cable providers need close to 750MHz of spectrum to deliver the goods: about 676MHz for downstream applications like analog cable, digital cable, HD programming, video on demand, Internet data, and VoIP service. Upstream spectrum needs are comparatively paltry, totaling about 54MHz. [source]

Cable will need 3GHz of bandwidth to compete with TelcoTV. And DOCSIS 3.0 doesn't change the physics. So look for cableco's to spend another $100B on network upgrades.

DSLReports has more. The race is on for broadband market share. The next auction for 700 MHz spectrum looks to be the last viable waves for a while. Hughes just launched another satellite to provide broadband [dslr]. And DirecTV is working on BPL [dslr].

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