DSL Prime, DOCSIS Report, Fiber News, A Wireless Cloud

Comcast added 399K new cable modem customers in Q1 to 16.329M. That's more adds than the total of AT&T (255K to 16,044K) combined with Verizon (90K to 9.3M). Time Warner was also far ahead of Verizon with 212K to 9,206K.  John Hodulik of UBS estimates 67% of the Q! net adds will go to cable, a remarkable change from less than 50% a year ago. This is not because of DOCSIS 3.0, which at $99+ is not selling well,

   Overall, cable added about 1M to over 40M. Telcos added about half a million to 33M. Add between 5% and 10% for the companies too small to appear in the chart below. While this could be the start of a precipitous decline, for now we might just be seeing the effect of price increases (Verizon, +12% in one key measure according to Bank of America) and the dramatic cut in U-Verse and now FiOS deployment. 

       My take is that the telcos would be damned fools not to hold more of the market so that femtocells/WiFi will provide them more robust and profitable wireless networks. Blair Levin came to a similar conclusion, that it's too early to claim cable is the inevitable winner. But Verizon cutting FiOS by 2-4M homes is exactly the kind of damned fool move that will hurt them in the long run.  U.S. broadband is a two player game with many different possible strategies I can't predict.  

16% of the Hollywood district are Armenian-Americans and they are mounting a campaign for Time Warner Cable to carry Horizon Armenian TV. Armenian newspaper Albarez, publishing since 1908, has launched a petiton campaign. Vicken Sosikian, General Manager of the Armenian Media Network, Horizon’s parent company, has enlisted community organizations, churches, schools and centers to urge their members and affiliates to sign a petition beginning "I support Horizon and consider it a reflection of my community and an important source of Armenian news, reporting, and information. I look forward to watching it through Time Warner.”

     TWC pioneered switched digital video in Los Angles and across their network. SDV allows virtually unlimited channel choices, so the technology is ready. 26% of Glendale is also Armenian-American and a third of the half million A-A's in the U.S. are in the Los Angeles area. Verizon FiOS in California has been reaching out for community programming, and Time Warner should do the same. 

I'm guessing the KPN shortfall is because of long loop lengths, not congestion, but don't have the data. Ziggo cable delivered around 80% of promised speeds, and I bet some of the 20% shortfall was unavoidable system overhead, not congestion or similar problems. Most developed countries are dominated by large carriers with plenty of fiber backhaul, hence few congestion problems. Britain is going that way, with the big four taking over. Carphone, Sky, and Virgin are getting rid of their congestion problems, but smaller carriers who have to pay BT for backhaul often don't buy enough and bring down the average.

The U.S. is wildly confused about speeds ever since an FCC presentation said they typically were less than 50% of advertised. It turned out to be based on a mistake by Comscore, but has been often copied.

Kyle McSlarrow may not yet be up to admission to the 2+2=5 club, but he's adapting remarkably well to the Democratic takeover. NCTA just awarded Jim Clyburn a "Leaders in Learning Policymaker Award." Clyburn is the House whip, a key Obama supporter,  and a master politician. His daughter Mignon is expected to take his seat when he retires, and meanwhile will acquire credentials as an FCC commissioner.

Cable needs to counter Clyburn's strong support from AT&T. That's the usually reclusive AT&T CEO Randall Stevenson, Hollis of ADE, Clyburn and Cohen of the CWA in the picture.  I call it the $10M picture, for the amount of money from AT&T others likely to result from friends like this.

Minimum EuroDOCSIS 3.0 downstream is 200 meg - shared - compared to 160 meg in the U.S. version. EuroDOCSIS uses 8 MHz channels, compared to 6 MHz channels in the U.S. Of course, those speeds aren't reached if more than one home is drawing bandwidth, but it's amazing how often people will come close. 100 homes in Kent are in a trial with bursts "up to 200 meg," which they will likely come close to the majority of the time. Jeff Baumgartner calls them "lucky duckies."

Virgin reminds us that "there are no wireless routers able to deliver throughput of speeds as high as 200Mb, and computers require very high specification in order to be able handle data at such a high rate." In fact, there have been frequent problems with speed tests and computer capabilities that have led to misleading low speed measures.

Virgin is far away from this as a regular offering, while the technology for even higher speeds is advanceing rapidly. Both Broadcom and TI have announced chips that bond 8 downstream channels, for 400 megabits (shared) in the EuroDOCSIS version. Henry Samueli of Broadcom invested some of his earlier chip profits in a hockey team, the Anaheim Mighty Ducks. (logo above)

Walt at USTA

They are only about 85% right, incidentally. Somewhere between 5% and 15% of U.S. homes will not be offered DOCSIS 3.0 by 2013 unless they change the rules of the stimulus and cable franchising. 8% of homes can't even get a cable modem today, according to Kyle at NCTA, and many of those will not be reached by 2013. Some of the rest will not be upgraded to DOCSIS 3.0. I suspected they took their claim from a Pike and Fischer press release that says "We conclude that the top cable operators will have DOCSIS 3.0 covering 100% of homes passed by the end of 2013." They forgot that millions of homes are not passed by cable and millions more that can get cable TV are not offered cable modems in any form. The cable operators below the "top" have far more unserved homes, and P & F does not claim they all will upgrade.

Sloppy, guys.

Denmark: 5/30 Stofa Telia in Denmark is buying Motorola EuroDOCSIS 3.0 cable modems, designed for "up to 200 megabit" downstream and upstream almost as fast. They have 600K TV customers and 350K data customers, and are under strong attack from electric utility fiber. No details yet on deployment.

USA: 5/30 Comcast has turned on downstream 3.0 in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Delaware, and California.  They are going to raise "peak" speeds to 100 megabits shortly. The telcos will respond with fear, uncertainty, and doubt which will be highly believable because Comcast is unlikely to give solid data about actual speeds. The performance of DOCSIS 3.0 is outstanding so far, and there's no good reason Brian should just say "The peak speed is 100 megabits, and customers receive 50 megabits over 90% of the time." I bet the real number is in the high 90's, but nearly no one believes that because cablecos are holding back the data.

USA: 5/30 Cox made the politically foolish move of launching first in Lafayette, Louisiana, where they are being criticized for unfair delaying tactics against the local independent. The second market is the D.C. suburbs in Virginia, and they intend to move very quickly, with a goal of 2/3rds of their territory in 18 months. Charter has launched in St. Louis.

Portugal: 5/30 TV CABO is using the open set top software from Jungo for their DOCSIS gateway. Smart operators watch Jungo closely because owner Rupert Murdoch could make open gateways a factor in many markets.

The best way to resolve this is with facts. Verizon has hundreds of employees living in Cablevision territory. For less than the cost of an attack ad, a statistically relevant sample can sign up and test the service in the next few weeks. If Cablevision's service doesn't deliver 50 megabits 95% of the time, I'll report the test results with a big headline twice. (50 meg is Verizon's current top speed.)

In theory, Verizon certainly could be right. 160 meg shared would be blown out by even six to ten users all wanting peak speeds. In practice that's surprisingly rare.