Now that the incumbent has been dumped from the National Broadband Network process, it’s forced the Telco to rethink their strategy and it’s through this that another Telstra Broadband revelation has emerged. Sol Trujillo, Telstra’s CEO, told a Citigroup EMT conference recently that Telstra is now capable of rolling out DOCSIS 3.0 technology that could deliver their Cable Broadband customers a staggering 100 Mbps broadband speed. WoW! Not only could they deliver 100Mbps high speed broadband connectivity, but using this technology Telstra could match the Broadband speed of the upcoming NBN. On top of this they could also roll out this 100Mbps network upgrade faster than any competitor could instill their own.
When it was revealed that Telstra held back the activation of hundreds of ADSL2 DSLAM Exchanges across Australia in 2008, many people where left bewildered. One one hand it was very disappointing to learn that Telstra was basically holding back the access of High Speed Broadband to thousands of Australians and therefore holding back potential economic growth. Then again, Telstra, as per usual, makes business decisions based on the best intentions of their shareholders. Sour grapes or smart business?
This technology basically means that Telstra could compete with, if not exceed, the speeds in which the new NBN technology is likely to bring. Of course Telstra’s DOCSIS 3.0 technology integration would be limited to major metropolitan areas where Telstra’s existing HFC network already exists, however this is still a very large chunk of Australia’s population. So when can we expect this to happen? Once again, it sounds like Telstra are going to hold back until they are forced to do so by competitive pressure.
source: techhub.com.au
Telstra has been quick to respond to criticism of the capabilities of DOCSIS 3.0, and HFC networks in general, with a blog post on Nowwearetalking from its CTO, Hugh Bradlow.
Bradlow was particularly upset about accusations from Optus’ government relations chief, Maha Krishnapillai, who was reported to have described Telstra’s upgrade was a poor second choice because it was a ’shared network’, and therefore slowed down as the number of users increased.
Well if this is so, given all that Telstra has said about the need for and benefits of widespread high speed broadband one has to ask why it is dipping its toe into the water with DOCSIS 3.0 announcing only a Melbourne rollout when, on a simple extrapolation of the $300m cost, it could have 2.5m households in major cities able to access the network for about $700 and probably finish the job my mid 2010.
You can read Bradlow’s full rap on the wonders of DOCSIS 3.0 on Nowwearetalking. According to Bradlow, it stacks up very favourably against FTTN. “When we say that Telstra’s upgraded cable network will deliver up to 100Mbps downstream speeds, we mean it. Even in peak periods, the cable network will deliver 70 – 100Mbps burst downstream speeds, – a higher peak speed, in fact, than FTTN would offer.”
Dermot Cox of C-COR Broadband – the main supplier of HFC gear to Telstra – made a submission to the Senate enquiry into the NBN. He had the hubris to claim that “The next wave of technology development will be driven by the world’s leading cable operators to meet customers’ increasing demand for more bandwidth and video-centric applications like IPTV, interactive video, distance education and video telephony. Not once did he mention that the capacity of DOCSIS 3.0 is shared between all users on a co-ax cable.
True, but it’s a fact that cable people seem particularly reluctant to discuss. I’d asked Telstra’s GMD Networks and Services, Michael Rocca the day of Telstra’s announcement how many users in Telstra’s Melbourne HFC network typically shared a single run of coax and if Telstra intended to reduce this number as part of the upgrade. I had great difficulty in getting him to answer the question, and he never did give me a number but did say that about 100 addition nodes would be rolled out as part of the DOCSIS 3.0 upgrade. According to Bradlow, the number of users per node in HFC networks is “typically 150″ (but he did not suggest that this applied to Telstra’s network).
source: itwire.com