Last week I wrote that the end of DSL is nigh. In reaction a compadre of mine told me, that he had followed UPC (Liberty Global) for a while and he got the feeling that they were moving out of countries where there was a strong threat of FTTH (Slovenia and France). In his opinion they were moving into countries with a slow moving incumbent that had bet the house on VDSL2 (ie Germany hat tip to Dirk for the link). Very interesting idea, might be something to it.
A bit of technical explanation, for more see this report. Docsis 3 wins on headline speeds for download and upload being able to deliver 200 down and 120 up, but it has a contention issue. The upload is the big problem as it cannot be expanded (unlike download) and has to be shared by all users on the same segment. Contention is a statistical issue, so contention on 200Mbit link may be disproportionally less than on a 20mbit link. VDSL2 doesn't have the contention issues and when built out to the curb it can deliver 50mbit up and down. VDSL2 to the curb has however seen limited adoption until now (Deutsche Telekom and AT&T). What I understood of KPN's fiber strategy is that it won't even offer VDSL2 to the curb anymore as it's not cost effective. Instead it will offer VDSL2 from the central office with up to 40mbit download speeds.
And I always thought that a low fiber diet gave you indigestion!
Yes, you can certainly see this clearly here in Ireland, where UPC has been moving in with it's cable broadband products, demolishing the ex-state owned incumbent Eircom, who are only now rolling out ADSL2+, never mind VDSL2 or FTTH!
ReplyDelete