[ image courtesy of Joe M500 / Flickr ]The Internets are bound for the sewer. Literally.
The BBC has a story today about an Ofcom pronouncement that indicates the new home of the mega-fast internets could be in the sewer.
Basically, this is not that big of a deal. France is doing it already. It is more sophisticated than running a fatty LAN cable through the storm drains; it is an extension of ‘conduit sharing’ that is already taking place. Providers are also looking at literally sharing conduits with other utilities as well.
As the next generation of broadband leaves the once-fast cable modems in the dust, we move closer to instant access. The article states:
Connections of up to 100Mbp will allow for a host of new services including on-demand high definition (HD) TV, DVD quality film downloads in minutes, online video messaging, CCTV home surveillance and HD gaming services.
I have high-speed internet, and video-on-demand in my home, and it is abundantly clear that it operates at the fringe of effectiveness much of the time. Compression artifacts in video distract from viewing, audio on some on-demand material is less-than-mp3 quality, and overall navigation time of the system is snail-paced.
Frankly, I am still sometimes amazed that Comcast is able to shove as much stuff through that standard 75-Ohm coaxial as they do. Imagine if it were fiber optic, at 8-10x the capacity. Now we are talking.