Thread: Where Now For UK Cable?
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Old 30-04-2006, 15:16   #23
James Henry
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Re: Where Now For UK Cable?
Quote:
Originally Posted by jfman
However the technical superiority of the cable line over copper wire is that "up to" applies to most ADSL customers.

With lower contention ratios it is more likely cable customers have closer to the advertised rate.

And it still only applies to ADSL customers if you have a capable exchange.
Contention is nothing until it becomes visible.

DSL has a fundamental advantage in that the last mile is dedicated bandwidth between customer and DSLAM, and backhauls tend to be larger than the current 38 Mbps max cable offers each segment.

For example my own ISP has 1Gbps shared between its' customers on my exchange. Most of a

Not really appropriate to say that cable has a lower or higher contention ratio, the contention bottleneck on DSL is further away from the customer and easier to upgrade usually. The flipside obviously is that cable brings a higher max bandwidth to the consumer.

You've actually completely contradicted the 'commonly held wisdom' around cable and DSL. The usual argument is that while DSL offers a more stable speed cable offers a higher but less stable maximum.

The availability argument isn't really much of one. Because so little of the country is covered and enabled for broadband internet these unbundled services are as available as cable modem service, if not more so, and will certainly be more available within 6 months.

EDIT: I also think you've misunderstood what the 'up to' part means. It's actually more of a reference to the distance limits that ADSL has, IE unlike cable there is no active network so the speed achievable degrades the further one is from the operator's equipment. In cable's case if you are on 10Mbit then so long as all is working ok and the bandwidth is available you'll get 10Mbit, on DSL if you are within x KM of the exchange you'll get 10Mbit, a little further away 9, etc.

That's a cable advantage, but it's been undone somewhat by the ADSL2+ rollout and 'relatively' short lines in the UK meaning that most of the people in cable areas are usually able to get more than 10Mbit/s over ADSL2+ services.
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