Telephony University

Telephony University

Join us for an in-depth day on Deep Packet Inspection. Telephony University presents three Webcasts and an interactive panel of experts to explore all things DPI. You’ll hear from the industry professionals leading the way and participate in Q+A with our experts.

Learn more
         Subscribe in NewsGator Online   Subscribe in Bloglines   

HDTV MAKES ITS PREMIERE ON DSL DEVELOPER AGENDAS

more on the topic

More Related Articles

Cable operators' biggest advantage over telcos in the residential market — the massive amount of bandwidth they can deliver — will quickly shrink over the next 18 months if DSL developments at Supercomm were any indication.

Earlier this month in Atlanta, while numerous vendors were showing video implementations of DSL, most also said they have high-definition television service on their radar screens. Specifically, new compression techniques and the development of ADSL2+, which can send data downstream at 20 Mb/s up to 5000 feet, will eventually give telcos enough bandwidth to provide HDTV over copper wires.

AFC, which decided to pass on developing products with the ADSL2 standard and go straight to ADSL2+, wants to provide enough capacity for carriers to have multiple choices in video, said Corey Geiger, vice president of product management, marketing and customer service. “I see the offering being one, HDTV, and two, other standard video streams,” he said.

Net to Net's DSL access multiplexer, which bonds two pairs of copper, demonstrated video services running at 18 to 20 Mb/s using ADSL over short runs. The demo included two lifeline POTS lines and four Ethernet ports that could be used in homes for any combination of data and video.

“Over the next six to nine months, you'll see everything re-spun to include ADSL2+,” said Matt Byrd, vice president of marketing for Net to Net. “We're getting 9 Mb/s to 10 Mb/s at 10,000 feet.”

Driving some of the interest is the emerging MPEG 4 encoding standard, which can squeeze an HDTV signal that normally needs 12 to 15 megabytes of capacity into a 6- to 7-megabyte space. The technical part of the standard has been completed, but it won't find its way into digital TV products until the end of this year, said Chuck Van Dusen, chief technology officer of Tut Systems subsidiary VideoTele.com, which has developed a digital headend specifically for DSL providers. Products using MPEG 4 to compress HDTV will hit the market a little later, but will have a big impact on DSL providers.

Currently, however, there isn't enough customer premises equipment on the market that can handle HDTV over copper pairs, Van Dusen said. Sales of HDTV sets have been slow to date, though they are expected to pick up in the next five years. In addition, set-top boxes aren't fully developed.

However, that actually may help telcos stepping into the video market, giving them a first-mover advantage in HDTV, which few cable operators currently support. “They want to have some value to the service that makes people stick around,” said Jay Fausch, senior director of marketing for Alcatel's Broadband Networking Division.

At Supercomm, NTT rolled out a prototype HDTV set-top tuner that accepts signals over a DSL link. Though not officially priced — Van Dusen is guessing it would cost well north of $1000 per unit — it's an important step forward in the development of HDTV over copper.

“It wasn't yet invoking any of the better compression techniques,” said Van Dusen. “But there's no doubt we will be seeing set-tops soon that can handle MPEG 4 over copper.”

Get Updates Via Email

related resources

popular articles

Want to use this article? Click here for options!
© 2008 Penton Media Inc.

White Papers

WHITE PAPER

Are You Letting Hot Prospects Go to the Competition?

You spend millions of dollars on marketing campaigns to trigger consumer interest in your services. Find out how some communications carriers are increasing conversion rates. DOWNLOAD NOW

Podcasts

PODCAST

A Telephony Podcast: Qwest Communications launched its qHome Portal

Qwest Communications launched its qHome Portal this week, uniting its Qwest Choice Home voice service and its DSL-based high-speed Internet service through Microsoft’s Windows Live LISTEN

Blogs

BLOG

Infinera: What spending slowdown?

Optical equipment vendor Infinera is apparently not seeing the same broad carrier spending slowdown related to economic uncertainty that other vendors are reporting.READ

E-Books

E-BOOK

Broadband for the Masses from Motorola

This e-book provides insights on how fixed broadband wireless services can provide affordable solutions in an unlicensed spectrum. READ NOW!

TV

TV

Interview with Jim Hansen of Embarq at NXTcomm08

Tune in to Telephony TV to watch an interview with Embarq's Jim Hansen at NXTcomm08. WATCH IT NOW.

  • Telephony Content
  • Telephony Content

current issue

Current Issue

December 1, 2008

The next network frontier offers new opportunities for service providers. Read Now

more news

Global >>

MORE

Ethernet >>

MORE

Independent >>

MORE

IPTV >>

MORE

IMS >>

MORE

WiMax >>

MORE

VOIP >>

MORE

FTTX >>

MORE

Access >>

MORE

Broadband >>

MORE

Wireless >>

MORE

Software >>

MORE

Podcasts >>

MORE

Get Updates Via Email

Browse Issues

  • December 1, 2008
  • November 1, 2008
  • October 1, 2008
  • September 1, 2008
  • July 14, 2008
  • June 30, 2008
  • Jun 16, 2008