Introduction
On July 11, 1997, a startup company with the catchy name of @Home went public on Wall Street. @Home was a system integrator providing data services over cable networks. Stock was offered at $10.50 per share and rose to $25 during its first day of trading. By the end of the first few weeks, its market capitalization was established at more than $2 billion. That's not bad for a two-year-old company that at the time had cumulative losses of $50 million and fewer than 10,000 customers.
Soon after, in January 1999, @Home merged with Excite, an Internet portal service, to form Excite@Home. In turn, Excite@Home is now substantially owned by AT&T, through AT&T's acquisition of TCI. Such is the current interest—perhaps frenzy—of product development, investments, and merger activity surrounding a new product area called residential broadband.
What's going on here? Who, besides the backers of @Home and Excite, are cashing in—and who is missing out? What are the issues? Residential broadband is a tremendously diverse subject, embracing high technology, government regulation in the public interest, and entertainment production values.
Residential broadband is the meeting ground for consumer electronics, the Internet, telecommunications, cable TV, satellites, politics, and Hollywood. How could there not be huge public and professional interest?
Purpose of This Book
A basic definition is needed before this book proceeds. Residential broadband (RBB) networks are fast networks to the home; in particular, they are fast enough to provide some video service. This generally requires speeds of at least 2 Mbps.
Networks capable of such speeds are familiar to businesses, and a lot is known about business networking. All large businesses seem to be wired today, and many smaller ones are as well. Many texts have been published on local-area networks, metropolitan-area networks, telecommunications (for example, telephony), and the like. But as a much newer phenomenon, RBB networks have not yet received equal press. This book aims to provide a comprehensive, accessible introduction to residential broadband. More specifically, this book has several goals:
To describe new and existing entertainment and data services, and to evaluate how demand for them will drive the development of RBB
To define basic technology requirements for implementing RBB, and to assess their state of readiness
To overview business conditions and regulatory practices that affect rollout and viability of RBB networks
Although this book contains some technical discussions, it is not a comprehensive engineering reference. The concern here is broader and includes business and regulatory issues as well as technical ones. This also is not a business networking book. RBB networking differs from business networking in several respects:
RBB emphasizes entertainment— Unlike business users, residential users require the delivery of entertainment.
RBB demands ease of use— Residential users will have less access to professional support than business users.
RBB's scale is potentially huge in comparison to business networking— There are many more homes than businesses (100 million households in the United States, compared to about 10 million businesses and offices). Systems catering to residences must have superior scaling properties compared to business-oriented systems.
These characteristics of RBB are actually design goals and will come up repeatedly in this book. They are the ends that must be satisfied by technological, business, and regulatory means if RBB is to thrive.
This book is a survey of the most current thinking about RBB. It is not a crystal ball. My goal is to provide a broad-based synthesis of available information—technical documents, journals, popular press, direct involvement with product development, and standards work—so that readers can make their own informed predictions about the future of RBB services. The scope of coverage here places some limits on depth, especially depth of technical detail, so another goal is to provide readers with sufficient direction and resources for further exploration of the subject.
In stating both positive and negative issues affecting RBB, it is not my intention to promote or criticize any industry. In preparing this book, I have come to know and admire representatives of many companies and organizations involved in aspects of RBB. Throughout, I have been very impressed with the effort, brainpower, and public spiritedness of these professionals in business and government, who will no doubt change the way we all receive and respond to information in our homes.
Audience
This book is aimed at anyone seeking a broad-based familiarity with the issues of residential broadband, including product developers, engineers, network designers, business people, persons in legal and regulatory positions, and industry analysts. Courses on residential broadband are beginning to be offered, and this book may also be appropriate for students in an issues-based class. Finally, I hope that consumers—the people who will be buying and using RBB services—will find the book to be an interesting peek into what the future holds for them.
Because of its breadth, some information in this book may be familiar to some readers already. But few readers are likely to be familiar with all the technical, business, and regulatory issues brought together here. The complexity and relative youth of RBB are such that anyone wishing to understand or guide its evolution should have some understanding of the full mix of influences on it.
In terms of background that readers should have in order to get the most out of the book, I've chosen to err on the side of giving plentiful background information instead of too little. Many engineering professionals in particular may find Chapter 2, "Technical Foundations of Residential Broadband," to give very familiar information that they prefer to skip or only skim. This is included for the benefit of nontechnical readers who need basic vocabulary as a foundation for the rest of the book. Throughout, chapter topics are clearly identified by section and subsection titles so that readers can opt out of reading any material with which they are already well acquainted.
Organization and Topical Coverage
Chapter 1, "Market Drivers," overviews services that are driving the market for RBB, emphasizing digital broadcast television, Internet access, and the convergence of these two.
Chapter 2, "Technical Foundations of Residential Broadband," surveys technical issues—both challenges and solutions—that are shaping the evolution of RBB. It's especially intended to help nontechnical readers get an overview of the technical issues without overwhelming them with details. This chapter presents a reference model on which specific network architectures in later chapters are based. The purpose of this is to help readers recognize both the consistent and the distinct components and challenges from network to network.
Chapters 3, "Cable TV Networks"; 4, "xDSL Access Networks"; 5, "FTTx Access Networks"; and 6,"Wireless Access Networks." present overviews of different types of access networks, those services provided by telephone companies, cable network operators, satellite operators, and newcomers.
Chapter 7, "Home Networks," focuses on the residential portion of residential broadband—the technologies and challenges associated with the home network. Topics include inside wiring and new consumer electronics devices needed to deliver services provided by Access Networks to the den, the kitchen, the entertainment center, or wherever in the home.
Chapter 8, "Evolving to RBB: Systems Issues, Approaches, and Prognoses," covers the crossroads where Access Networks meet Home Networks. Software and systems issues to be resolved in bringing these networks together are formidable.
The appendixes provide a list of equipment vendors, service providers, and industry groups, such as standards organizations, including their Web universal resource locators (URLs) and stock ticker symbols, where applicable. The URLs point to what these organizations say about themselves. The stock tickers point to what Wall Street says about them.
Timelines
During the course of preparing this book, numerous changes were required to reflect the most recent product rollouts, Supreme Court decisions, standards decisions, and technical innovations. In this rapidly evolving field, more changes will no doubt have occurred by the time this book reaches readers. Throughout, I've tried to use appropriate language to indicate topics that were subject to change by the time of publication.
Since the publication of the first edition of Residential Broadband in late 1997, we have witnessed:
The biggest phone company in the United States (AT&T) become the biggest cable operator.
Sprint and MCI Worldcom, competitors of AT&T who needed to obtain their own broadband story, acquire wireless local loop operators.
Broadcasters launch free, over-the-air digital TV service.
Cable agree to data and digital video specifications called DOCSIS and OpenCable. This enabled rapid introduction of high-speed data services and established cable as the leader in broadband.
Competitive and incumbent local exchange carriers launch their own high-speed data services over copper loops, after being given a wake-up call by cable services.
Wireless technologies, taking note of issues of cable and copper loop technologies, prepare for launch of high-speed wireless services.
Home networking equipment vendors specify standards and architectures to carry high-speed signals within the home over wireless and wired infrastructures.
Media companies such as Disney investigate content development using the combination of digital TV and the Internet.
Initial public offerings (IPOs) in the cable, xDSL, wireless services, and content development create billions of dollars of new market capital.
Regulation rule on unforeseen matters of equal access and privacy.
Above all, residential broadband networking become real.
But the more important solution to addressing the volatility of residential broadband has been to focus this book on important concepts that are not subject to rapid change. The interelatedness of technological, regulatory, and business issues and the potential evolution of existing networks into residential broadband networks are at the core of this book.
Finally, this edition also corrects some technical and format errors of the first edition. Perhaps we've introduced some new errors, but at least we tried to fix old ones. In that vein, I include my email address and ask that readers send comments and corrections to [email protected].