US cable giant Cox to deploy 1Gbps

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blog The list of US telcos and cities which are expressing a strong desire to deploy gigabit broadband speeds just keeps on growing. First it was Google, which is currently looking to take its Fiber offering to a further 34 US cities. Only a few weeks ago it was AT&T, which is also looking to deploy gigabit fibre, in its case to some 100 cities. And of course, the City of Los Angeles also has a gigabit project it is seeking partners for. The latest news comes from the Tech Times, which reports (we recommend you click here for the full article) that US cable giant Cox Communications is now getting on the gigabit bus:

“Speaking to Betty Liu at Bloomberg’s Cable Show in Los Angeles, Cox chief executive Pat Esser said that customers can expect the company to roll out a 1 Gigabit-per-second broadband service before the year closes.”

It’s getting harder and harder to reconcile the ongoing statements made by NBN Co executives such as Ziggy Switkowski and Coalition politicians such as Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull that there is no need for gigabit broadband speeds in Australia, when the clear trend in the US is towards these speeds. One wonders at what point the dam will burst and the global trend towards universal gigabit speeds will become unstoppable. Things are certainly going that way in the US right now. It will be fascinating to see how far things will have progressed by 2020 or so, when the Coalition’s Multi-Technology mix is slated to have delivered minimum 25Mbps speeds to all Australians, with many more to receive 50Mbps or more. One suspects those speeds will look a little … underwhelming, globally speaking.

15 COMMENTS

  1. Why is it whenever I see stories like this I get the image of Malcolm in an Jedi robe waving his hands and saying “These are not the gigabits your looking for”…

    • Your lack of faith is disturbing…

      I’m more worried about The Turnbull pointing to this and saying “See! The industry is willing to fill the void where necessary!” and ignore that they are cherry picking.

      Gigabit services are coming, its only a matter of time. So what happens when rural areas are stuck on 24 Mbps connections (or less) while 1 Gbps or more is being rolled out in the urban areas? Theres no profit in rural areas because the population density isnt there, so they continue to be left behind.

      Ah well, thats competition at work for you.

  2. Even CEO calls it “overkill”.

    Interestingly 1gbps will be delivered to most customers via HFC, presently freeing up spectrum with their digital conversion (hundreds of millions upgrade, not billions). And they said it wasn’t possible.

    • Overkill, for now yes.
      Actually if the feed into the header is at 10Gb, technically 10Gb could be available. Then we have the number of subscribers off that header sharing that 10Gb, so depends on number of splits off the node and becomes an up to service unless QOS is applied to guarantee the 1Gb.

      Looks Good though and does show there is a demand, especially as minimally compressed 4K Video product becomes more available.

      a clue

      “Yes, Netflix And Hulu Are Starting To Kill Cable”
      http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/17/netflix-cable_n_5168725.html

      “Fetto said that cable companies, which of course are often also the gatekeepers to the Internet, will have to get more creative with their billing to make up for the revenue lost by people who are cutting the cord.”

      Or up their premium services

    • “hundreds of millions upgrade, not billions”

      remember these networks have been regularly upgraded over the years, our HFC only connects to approx 30% of the 30% footprint. Plus we have far more subscribers per node, so number of nodes will have to be substantially multiplied (node splitting) which will mean plenty more fibre to connect to those extra nodes.
      Just for starters

      Not apples with apples

      • The Cox upgrade to digital is only now underway, foxtel completed some years ago.

        Evidence for the subscriber numbers? Given analogue distribution with limited Internet capacity Im unsure why you’d claim fewer nodes here.

  3. We’ve got bigger Cox’s here in Australia running the rollout of our next gen communications, why aren’t we getting the fibre treatment?

    :-)

  4. Unfortunately, we should not be fawning over what the US does in this regard. Sure, the need for speed is clear and should be supported, but the delivery method is a hodge-podge of companies delivering their own infrastructure in cherry-picked regions, which locks people in to specific providers. The same can be seen happening here with the TPG cherry-picking. This model is not something to crow about, IMO.

    • The issue is that there is a growing desire for 1 Gbps services, nothing more. The Turnbull has repeatedly stated in the past that there is no desire for that level of service, which is going against whats happening through these rollouts.

      The cherry picking thats happening here is a separate (and significant) issue. Separate the issues, and worry about the actual point of the article, not the other elephant in the room. :)

  5. “worry about the actual point of the article, not the other elephant in the room. :)”

    There are too many elephants in the room!

  6. I’ll believe it when I see it. The major cable companies in the US repeatedly talk big about how they’re planning a wide-scale fibre roll-out, and nothing ever really comes out of their talk. So far, Google has been the only one who has really backed their words with action, and this has got them scared. How do I know this? Because they’ve all started talking about fibre rollouts again. But as usual, the talk is exactly that – talk. The death of net neutrality in the US may spur things along a bit, but I would not want to use an internet where ISPs are able to set up the online equivalent of toll booths wherever they please.

    • In this case, I believe it will happen. Its a classic case of cherry picking, where pretty much all of these rollouts are focussing on high population density areas, with the fringes being a little more suburban. It will happen, because its a cheap rollout for the benefit – if you can cover several million people for $1b, why wouldnt you?

      There are two issues – that cherry picking, and how it leaves areas behind (again), and the fact that these companies are even talking about 1 Gbps services. That says straight away there is a desire for them, which goes against everything the Liberals have been claiming for the past few years.

      Lately I’ve been noticing a lot of comments from US players in games that use Verizon FiOS services, and wanting faster speeds. The desire is there, and slowly those companies like Cox are listening.

  7. Isn’t there a simple issue here?

    You would not want to surf the net now with dial up internet; web pages assume that someone has broadband or better and the pages are designed accordingly.

    So if these massive speeds like a gigabit become the norm, surely we will be like a dial up user trying to surf the web now?

    I don’t know about you. But I have better things to do with my time than wait 5 minutes for a page to load.

  8. The LNP vision is clearly on the nodes — Malcolm is on the wrong bandwagon with this MTM hodge-podge.

    We moved to Optus when they started their broadband service, because OzEmail was wedded to the old, obsolete dial-up technology and wouldn’t listen to our needs.

    Hmm… lessee, who was running OzEmail back then…

    Give us all a GB and we’ll be happy. If they don’t, we won’t.

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