Earlier in the year, I heard a lot of belly-aching about the "last mile" and how we need fiber optic cable in Seattle as though not having fiber was some huge injustice. Personally, I have been plenty happy with DSL service. At least until now.
These two articles on WiMax have me thinking about network speed in my home. And I have noticed that things are starting to change in a way that leaves me less satisfied than I was.
First it was a change in game demos. I download a lot of game demo's in order to try them out. Demo's are typically 400 to 500 MB in size and they take a while to download. I ended up paying for a download service so that I could download without waiting in line but it still took 30+ minutes to download a file and I pretty much did one at a time.
This summer I noticed that demo's have grown enormously. (Bear in mind, a demo only provides the first level or so of a game so there is no need for gigantic installs.) 1.5GB, 1.7GB. Demos are now 3 to 4 times as large as they were a year ago, which means the download times are massive too. (Too bad the games themselves aren't 3 to 4 times better :)
The second change this summer is iTunes and others offering movies for download. We have an HTPC at home and good video is between 1 and 2GB per hour of content. Like the game demo's, these are large files that take a long time to download.
Suddenly all that complaining about fiber pipes into my home seem more relevant. To double my DSL speed, I have to double my prices ($56 versus $96) which makes the total price rather high.
Download speeds and efficiency is coming up as one of the main complaints about Amazon's Unbox and other internet video services. As millions of people start trying to download video (something that will increase with Apple's iTV next year), this issue is going to be discussed a lot more. Hopefully that will put some pressure on providers to add more services and bring the costs down. Hopefully.
Personal broadband" on its way
Thursday, October 12, 2006
The next stage of the Internet is on the verge of arriving.
Starting as early as next year, WiMax broadband networks will start to be pieced together in a more visible way — service providers such as Sprint Nextel and Clearwire are building towers, Intel is manufacturing chips, and Samsung and Motorola are supplying devices.
Consumers soon will be able to get what some are calling "personal broadband," or high-speed Internet access everywhere they go.
For now, the vision, being laid out this week at the WiMax World industry conference in Boston, is far-reaching and broad. With WiMax, the Internet is expected to be integrated into all types of devices, including music players, cameras, copy machines and much more. Teenagers will never be far from MySpace.com, and cameras will upload video straight to YouTube.
Although it sounds futuristic, it has never been as close to reality as it is now.
In the past couple of months, Clearwire and Sprint Nextel said they were both committed to rolling out competing nationwide WiMax networks.
Industry spellbound by future of WiMax
Monday, September 25, 2006
Today, the Internet reaches our homes mostly through "pipes" assembled by telephone and cable companies.
But that's changing. More and more, the Internet is in the air, transferring data to us wirelessly. Phone calls, e-mail and video hover around us in a cloud.
Put another way, Motorola Chief Executive Ed Zander said: "The Internet is going airborne."
The idea of wireless broadband is expanding every day. The required networks for the next great leap are under construction and are expected to be switched on next year.
That promise has drawn serious interest from companies across the board in what could turn into an all-out battle among communications providers. The campaign is fueled by billions of dollars from investors, service providers and industry giants.
Showing interest are cable companies, wireless carriers, satellite-TV companies and even emerging startups.
The frenzy has escalated in the past couple of months after major players made deep commitments to a particular flavor of wireless broadband: WiMax. Clearwire and Sprint Nextel have declared they will build competing nationwide WiMax networks.
A Two-Hour Movie (Just to Download)
Long Waits and Glitches Mar Amazon, Apple Film Services; The Screen Came Up Blank
October 11, 2006
Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Computer Inc. recently launched highly anticipated movie downloading services, heralded as the juice that would make downloading and watching movies on a computer screen a new consumer habit. A month later, however, the services are off to a rocky start. Amazon.com, of Seattle, has had to placate consumers with refunds after some couldn't get the service to work. Customers of both services are reporting problems downloading the software on their machines and complaining of seemingly interminable download times, sometimes in excess of several hours. Picture quality and equipment requirements also are stumbling blocks.
The glitches aren't universal, and some customers say they are fully satisfied with the downloading services. Scott McNulty, a 29-year-old systems administrator at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, says he had been downloading TV shows from Apple's iTunes Store and didn't mind waiting about two hours for a movie to download because he could do other things in the meantime. "The biggest thing is the convenience," he says.
...
For years, the only legal way to get movies online on an a la carte basis was through CinemaNow Inc. and Movielink LLC, two little-known vendors. Another entrant, Vongo, offers an all-you-can-watch subscription plan for $9.99 a month. More recently, new entrants have cropped up, such as Guba.com, a site that offers movie sales and rentals along with video sharing. These other services in some cases have run into similar download-speed and software glitches but mostly suffered from a lack of visibility. Now the studios have expanded their deal making, hoping that by cutting deals with high-profile online retailers like iTunes and Amazon, they could turn more online pirates into customers.
The movie-download business is still an untapped niche. While consumers will buy 780 million music downloads this year for a total of more than $650 million in revenue, according to researcher Parks Associates, the market for movie downloads is far less, near $50 million.
Viewing quality is also a concern. Even avid music and video downloaders have high expectations for watching movies, wanting a sharper and larger experience than current services provide. While there are a variety of ways techies can connect their computers to their TVs, the process is still cumbersome.
