AT&T is finally ready to add HD to its much-delayed Project Lightspeed (
U-verse) but the project is still dogged by questions and controversy. Unlike Verizon's
FiOS service which runs fiber directly to the house, AT&T is using old-school VDSL for the last mile to most of its customers' homes, and claim it will have the bandwidth to deliver high speed internet and up to two streams of HDTV. Unfortunately, some analysts disagree, seeing either a change in plans switching to Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH), or following DirecTV's lead and offering some sort of HDLite
reduced-quality high definition. So far, AT&T is writing this off as just speculation, saying its current plan makes sense, and it is already testing HD to some customers in Houston. There's already some benefit over cable co's, with features like quad-tuner SD PVRs, but we're hoping that if things get tight they don't choose the cheap route and squeeze the HD
figuring no one will notice.
Read - AT&T and the Infamous Second HD Stream
Read - AT&T: We're Sticking With FTTN
posted Oct 17th 2006 11:31AM
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They can defend it all they want, but there is no looking beyond the real world facts. The Incumbant Local Exchange Carriers have had a difficult time getting the ADSL2+ and VDSL to ramp up in the real world even with short loop lengths. Bonding a copper pair together for a four-wire solution is a far stretch in trying to bring to reality the last stance of copper. And for what? Its cheaper to deploy than FTTH?
Let's see, if SBC and BellSouth want to rewire their DSL customer base to their new Ethernet-based DSLAMs to use on their new Gigabit Ethernet core then they will have to physically rewire millions of already provisioned DSL lines. This is aside from the cost of the new DSLAMs, Ethernet egde routers and ethernet core routers.
In the end, they have a short-term solution that is still tremendously short on bandwidth and they think they can successfull mass-market IPTV without adulterating the bitrate and resolution? Yeah, and I believe in my lucky charms, too.
Deploying this as a "new" solution today does seem to be a little backwards. However, our local telephone company has been using VDSL to deliver 3 streams of SD using MPEG2 for over 6 years now. They have just started delivering HD as a single stream since it is still MPEG2 but the picture is pristine compared to what our local Adelphia/Time Warner system provides. I expect them to deliver more streams using MPEG4 sometime in the future and the numbers add up for what AT&T wants to do.
However, if the system were being built today, FTTH seems like a much wiser investment. The GPON solutions availble today would be more expensive but not prohibitively so compared to a "new" VDSL solution. It wouldn''t surprise me if AT&T deploys some this way but quickly moves to a FTTH solution fairly quickly.