voip vs. your isp

[ethanms-3eIyBh1IPLBBDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org (Ethan Schwartz)]

VoIP bandwidth requirements are minimal, about 64kbps max, even as far back
10 years ago cable modems were providing ~384kbps upload speeds, which is
enough to handle VoIP.  The question comes in regarding ping times and
response.  At the risk of starting a "me too" fest I do have to say that in
the past 5 years I've lived in 4 different apartments within the same area,
I had Comcast at all but one--for the first two years I had Vonage and had
spotty VoIP (dropping one of the side the conversation, random static
bursts)--second place I got Comcast's VoIP service and it was perfect, never
an issue... third place I had RCN and swapped over to another VoIP provider,
was flawless... now I'm back with Comcast in the 4th apartment but even w/
the same VoIP provider the service is again spotty.

The next hurdle after VoIP competition allegations will be VoD, services
like Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, etc who are competing directly with Comcast's
OnDemand services.

They've already started to restrict those services w/ their 250GB/mo cap on
downloads citing that average users don't need that much bandwidth...

Finally, in terms of FttH (fiber to the home), Comcast has no real reason to
push that yet... they are currentl focused on fiber to the neighborhood,
then they use coax to make up the short link to the home, coax is still
quite capable of handling the demands of a small neighborhood of users which
allows Comcast to minimize their fiber install and equipment costs and also
make use of their existing coax and device infrastructure.

On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 12:45 PM, Jerry Feldman <gaf-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org> wrote:

> On 01/26/2009 11:15 AM, Matthew Gillen wrote:
>
>> I don't know if many of you saw this:
>>
>> http://arstechnica.com/telecom/news/2009/01/fcc-wants-to-know-if-comcast-is-interfering-with-voip.ars
>>
>> Personally, I'm pleasantly surprised at the cluefullness of the FCC in
>> figuring some of this stuff out.
>>
>> For what it's worth, when I switched from Comshaft to (Vz) FIOS earlier
>> this
>> month, my parents immediately noticed a marked improvement in the quality
>> of
>> my audio and video feeds when I skype them.  I'm guessing it's not a
>> coincidence...
>>
>>
>>
> That is probably due to the higher upstream bandwidth. In Comcast, you
> generally get a very good downstream (6Mbps) vs. under 1Mbps). It also
> depends on your community. On some of the communities that have had cable
> internet for a long time, the upstream bandwitdth might be better, but some
> communities still have older equipment that Comcast may have acquired that
> limits the upstream. The bottom line is that fibre to your home (FIOS)
> should give you a more symmetric bandwidth than cable since Cable TV
> historically had been a one-way system. Much depends on how close to your
> home they install the fibre before it hits the copper.
>
> One thing that surprises me is that Comcast has not to my knowledge started
> to bring fibre directly to homes. Possibly the problem could be that they
> are required to provide analog TV to basic subscribers until 2012.
> (Actually, either analog or provide a free converter box). IMHO, Comcast is
> focusing more in bringing high downstream bandwidth to compete with FIOS.
>
> --
> Jerry Feldman <gaf-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org>
> Boston Linux and Unix
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>
>
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