Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 11:33:44 -0700 From: Sean Eric Fagan <sef@Kithrup.COM> To: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Cable modems Message-ID: <199706111833.LAA25774@kithrup.com> In-Reply-To: <199706111715.KAA06214.kithrup.freebsd.chat@phaeton.artisoft.com> References: <Pine.SUN.3.95.970611140503.18033A-100000@sun1> from "Julian Jenkins" at Jun 11, 97 02:18:44 pm
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In article <199706111715.KAA06214.kithrup.freebsd.chat@phaeton.artisoft.com> you write: >Yep. No back channel. You must have had an existing cable infrastructure >which was not heavily upgraded. This is what TCI was promising in >Phoenix (I'd have to move 65 miles away to even have a chance of >getting it), but then backed off from. The problem is that they would >have to replace all their repeaters. No capability to run a server on >your end of the cable: only good for pushing commercial content in >your face. TCI's problems are several. First, they spent millions of dollars acquiring other cable companies, instead of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars improving their infrastructure. (The result? In San Jose, their cable is split onto two seperate wires, an A cable and a B cable. With no real plans to fix that.) Then, they rolled out @Home, which is only adequate at best, and is seriously lacking in some public design decisions. (Namely, they say they will keep only a single "neighborhood" on a single line... but they don't say how large a "neighborhood" is. Right now, I think that's the entire city of Fremont.) Meanwhile, @Home is charging $40/month for their service. Which is, people who use it tell me, entirely reasonable. But many people look at that $40/month, and then look at the $19.95 everyone else charges... and they go with the cheaper (and slower) service. Incidently, people do run servers on it. However, @Home/TCI has stated that anyone who uses it "too much" will be charged more. But htey haven't stated what "too much" is. Also, of course, it's a single IP address, and the address is not necessarily fixed (somepeople have managed to get the same IP address multiple times, most people don't). And @Home doesn't support anything other than Win95, although it turns out you can, of course, hook it up to anyting -- one person had his linux box up using it. Said it made downloading software packages *much* nicer. Because of the test markets not doing too well, and because TCI has spent so much money acquiring other companies instead of providing service to their existing customer base... TCI has had to scale back the services. Meanwhile, PacBell is doing the same thing with their cable television offering -- which people who have it think is much better than TCI's. (Me, all I want is a nice ISDN-like connection, that's plenty for now, at a reasonable price. For cable tv, I will gladly sign up with the first company that can offer me a programmable tap, instead of the idiotic cable boxes -- which, of course, rules out DSS immediately.) Sean.
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