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 talking about this for many years – the original network was built in 1990s – but hasn’t moved on it until now, just when the government is more or less ready to announce its national plan for high-speed broadband. We all know that Telstra is not happy with the government’s plans and that it is not going to cooperate with them, so it may not be a coincidence that the announcement has been made at this particular point in time. It certainly will help to spoil that national plan.
Long-term, DOCSIS 3.0 is a dead-end street technology. The whole world is moving towards far greater user participation on the Internet, and two-way video communication. DOCSIS cannot manage services like this adequately. It would in some instances even be inferior to the new copper-based DSL services, let alone to FttH. And while speed is an issue, affordability is a far bigger issue.
Unfortunately, Telstra has a history of spoiling the party – it successfully used this same HFC network to undermine the Optus rollout of similar services. So the odds are in favour of this being a defensive strategy rather than a genuine attempt to improve broadband services.
Short term, however, the biggest question is what price will customers be charged to access this network? Based on Telstra’s mantra of premium networks and premium prices, the end-user price will most likely be out of the reach of most users. BuddeComm thinks it will be aimed at the top 10%, or at the most 15%, of users.
And, finally, in the end also cable networks will need to be upgraded to fibre (FttH). Sol Trujillo himself said that eventually Telstra needs to move to FttH. However, as an interim step towards that goal we accept that there is room for DOCSIS 3.0 – as long as it’s a genuine investment and not one made simply to undermine the NBN.
From an investment point of view it would make sense to first wait what the national decision is and than make your own plans, this begs another question will Telstra really make this investment whatever that national decision is?
As some users in desperate need of better broadband services might choose to jump on the DOCSIS bandwagon this could stop those people from using a truly future-proof high-speed network.
Unless the government comes up with strong regulations to stop Telstra from misusing their networks to undermine the long-term national economic and social interests we could see a serious attempt to derail the government’s a $5 billion broadband investment, and we don’t think this would sell at all well.
source: budde.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