|
Carrier Services
Shaw Communications unleashes 100 Mbps broadband
Or should that be “wideband?” DOCSIS 3.0 channel bonding technology sets new download speed record
by Doug Allen
Well, that didn’t last long. It was just last week Charter Communications announced its new Ultra60 Mbps broadband service (see Charter sets new broadband speed record ), making it the fastest such Internet access offering in north America, at least for download rates (upstream is 5 Mbps). A week later, Canadian MSO Shaw Communications has burst Charter’s bubble with the latest addition to its high-speed broadband family: High-Speed Nitro boasts a burstable download speed of up to 100 Mbps and 5 Mbps up, stealing Charter’s thunder, not to mention industry bragging rights as telecom’s top speed merchant (or perhaps, the fastest page-load in the west?).
100 Mbps is a big step up not just from Charter’s previous high watermark of 60 Mbps, but also from the fastest Tier 1 telcos and cable operators. True, Verizon has announced plans for a FiOS business service running at 100 Mbps, but for now, its top general-availability service tops out at 50 Mbps. Likewise, 50 Mbps is a common tapping-out point for a number of MSOs, particularly Canadian operators such as Videotron Telecom, which offers a 50 Mbps in Montreal, and Rogers Communications which has eyes on similar bandwidth goals during its DOCSIS 3.0 trials, already under way.
Not surprisingly, it’s a telco from Japan that has the biggest lead in the Great Bandwidth Race: Jupiter Telecommunications is offering a 160 Mbps service, a dramatic step up from its nearest rival.
It should be noted, however, that most of these high-speed deployments cover a relatively small footprint. Verizon's FiOS aside, Charter’s 60 Mbps service is up in just one market so far, St. Louis, Mo.; Videotron is in Montreal only; and Shaw’s Nitro is only available in Saskatoon, Canada.
These high-speed breakthroughs are the result not of Fiber-to-the-X technology, as with Verizon FiOS, and to a lesser extent, AT&T’s U-verse, but via the latest HFC-based DOCSIS 3.0 standard, which allows multiple downstream channels to be bonded together to aggregate bandwidth. Though the same can be done in the upstream direction, most non-business applications do not require such high-speed uploads, where a single channel can carry the load (typically between 1 to 5 Mbps).
Even though far less than a T1 (and without the usual QoS and security of such a line), Shaw’s Nitro still costs a pretty penny in terms of the relative price point for such offerings. The sticker price is US$219.20 per month a la carte, or $208.95 when bundled with another Shaw service. The next fastest broadband tier, High-Speed Warp, runs at 25 Mbps/1 Mbps for $88 per month.
Residential customers, who are better suited to the service because of its asymmetrical down/up rates, may find the 25 Mbps Warp enough for their needs (typically P2P, VoD, perhaps gaming and some business applications) given the cost differential between the two plans. Smaller business users will certainly give the service a look, but may be tempted to go elsewhere for business-class QoS, security, and reliability.
Customers will also be limited by a bandwidth cap of 200 gigabytes per month on Nitro (by way of comparison, Warp also carries a cap, in this case 150 gigabytes/month). That could significantly tip customer opinion when evaluating services, as a number of power users on the broadband service chat rooms are already commenting.
At least two residential users opined that Nitro was priced too high for a service that would “tap out” at 200 gigabytes (presumably Shaw would impose metered bandwidth charges after crossing that limit), given the number of networked home PCs (per each household) in play and the amount of aggregate downloaded data requested each month.
For these high-end users, the market segment that would most likely pay higher rates for greater capacity, their monthly download quota is likely significantly higher than Nitro’s cap, thus making the overall terms of the service much less attractive. Even at 100 Mbps, it appears broadband access may well still be fairly price-sensitive for key customer segments.
|
|
|
