DSL Prime: Cable and DSL Can Be Friends

Cable companies seek to standardize the set top box. Also, the DSL Forum is now the Broadband Forum.

by Dave Burstein of DSL Prime and Future of TV [June 23, 2008]

Dick Green: Cable and DSL Can Be Friends
Suggests working together for interoperable standards
Green came to Las Vegas, looked an audience of telco guys in the eyes, and said, "No longer are we telephone people and cable people.... It looks to me as if we are all, basically, in the same kind of business, competing fiercely with each other to provide the best possible telecom services to our customers." A broadband standard that only works for telcos is proprietary. It cuts the market in half and drives up costs. Our televisions and stereos come from from Asia. After years of work, TVs are becoming interoperable with the cable system without a set top box. There's more like that coming.

Everyone in cable has been working to eliminate unnecessary equipment and cost. Green explained, "Tru2way [once called OCAP] solves this problem via a software or middleware abstraction solution. On the network side, the middleware interfaces with any number of existing cable video networks. On the other side there is a, single, open, standardized middleware interface that permits developers a common framework for their applications. Write once/run anywhere has now been achieved. This interface will provide the platform for all two-way interactive video services and applications. It supports the retail sale of television sets and set-top boxes that now can be transported from one cable provider to another."

He added, "Let me emphasize that this platform is based on an international ITU-T standard. The write once/run anywhere capability actually applies worldwide. This makes tru2way compatible with the European MHP standard as well as interactive TV standards used in Asia. It is compatible with the ATSC, ACAP broadcast interactive standard in the U.S. ... The bottom line here is that tru2way is open; it is not exclusive to cable."

"There are natural intersections between your industries and ours," Green concluded. "I truly think we could benefit from a cooperative approach."

Carol Wilson of Telephony reported Green's suggestion that the ITU be used as neutral ground. The meetings need to be open, involve civil society deeply, and welcome leadership from the people whose lives are being changed. It's long past the time that companies and mercantile/corporate governments set the rules. While a Dick Green or a Tom Starr bring a great deal to the process, without Asia and Latin America we can't set a world standard.

Cut HD Spectrum in Half: A Modest Proposal
You can make more spectrum by using it more efficiently. HD Video can be encoded to less than 9 megabits with essentially no loss of quality. That's 2008 quality MPEG4 h.264, proven in production. You can fit that in half the usual 6 MHz of spectrum allocated, allowing cutting the broadcast bandwidth in half. Ken Ducatel of the EU says broadcasters "regard it as their birthright," (TT), but that's politics, not technical limits. Auctioning the returned bandwidth is probably worth over $30 billion in the U.S. and proportional amounts in other countries. (P.S. One reason I know that 9 megabits is about right is that AT&T is trying 6 1/2 megabits and getting complaints from angry customers. It's close, but not quite there.)

Farewell, DSL Forum
It's now the Broadband Forum
The early history of DSL was made at Bellcore, The DSL Forum, and Tom Starr's T1E1.4 standards committee. The Forum was founded in 1994 with Kim Maxwell in the lead and quiet support from the copper companies. Many of the early members are still active, including Starr and Gavin Young. Hans-Erhard Reiter and Bill Rodey also were among the early members, and went on to become Presidents of the Forum. There was enormous enthusiasm in the early years, enormous disappointment after that as deployment started slowly, and then exhilaration as 200 million people connected DSL. The heart of the Forum has always been a handful of telcos and their suppliers, and many of these companies now are looking to fiber and wireless for growth. DSL will continue as a major business, running over $30 billion per year, and will remain part of the work of the Forum.

In 1994, the World Wide Web was little more than a glimmer in Tim B L's eye. The U.S. And a few European giants dominated out industry, and everyone came to SUPERCOMM to learn from the leaders. The web has changed everything, and China is now by far the DSL leader.

I've circulated an article on meeting the new challenges for the Forum to some of the leaders; I hope they have some innovative ideas I'll share with you in future issues.

Copyright 2008 Dave Burstein.
The DSL Prime Newsletter is reprinted with permission.

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