CES 2019: Cable Declares It Won’t Be ‘Second To The Door’ To 5G With ‘10G’ Branding Launch

[EarDemon]

It is certainly a big deal to me. I didn't intend my post to come out quite so cynical.

In legacy terms, Full Duplex means you can send and receive at the same time. DOCSIS could do that from the start, if not at the same bandwidth. Symmetrical means the speeds/bandwidth are the same up and down. Clearly the cable industry is changing the use of those words, for whatever reason. IMHO it is because one sounds better (to them) than the other.

I agree that 10G (gigabit) is a more accurate term than 5G (generation). I actually wish they would use terms like GSM/GPRS/EDGE/UMTS/HSPA/LTE, but I agree that IMT-2020 is not customer-friendly in the same way. Although eMBB isn't terrible.

FWIW: DOCSIS 3.1 is a huge step forward for cable, and I think it is really cool. If I didn't have fiber, I would want DOCSIS 3.x. If they can deliver on their promises, I might prefer DOCSIS again one day. I am really curious to see what the real-world latency looks like compared to fiber. Either way, I don't foresee my need of wired Internet going away any time soon.

Yes, I am aware what full duplex means. And yes, all modern methods of connecting to the information superhighway can transmit and receive at the same time. I'm not aware of anything that can't. I think you are missing a key component of what this means. It's goes deeper then the end user being able to download a song while uploading a video at the sametime. As stated in the article I linked to, "In Full Duplex communication, the upstream and downstream traffic use the same spectrum at the same time, doubling the efficiency of spectrum use."

Currently, in my area Charter uses 24 channels in-between 531 MHz to 663 MHz QAM on Rx and 4 channels in-between 19.4 to 37.0 on the Tx side. Full Duplex DOCSIS means that all 32 of those frequencies will be used for both Tx and Rx simultaneously, resulting in speeds up to a symmetrical 10 Gbps. There is no changing of words. Full Duplex is the technology, Symmetrical Speeds are a result of the technology. Currently downstream frequencies only are used for downstream, upstream frequencies are only used for upstream. With 3.1FD, the separation is irrelevant. The article and video make it clear that its full duplex on a frequency by frequency basis, not the service as a whole, which as always been FD.

I 100% agree, in mobile it should be refereed to by technology, not some fake generation. One of the first widgets I ever downloaded on Android back in 2010 and still continue to use to this day is Network Signal Pro. The widget gives the type of network it's connected to and real signal strength in dBm. When I had Sprint, and they were first prepping to launch LTE, I could gauge which areas were upgraded and were going to go live with LTE shortly as the network identifier changed from EVDO-A to eHRPD when connected to towers that were upgraded but not live. To me, that was 1000x times more useful then a 3G icon in the status bar.

Now wifi is going down the idiot road. A retroactively named Wi-FI 4 means nothing to me. It will always be IEEE 802.11n in my book.

Due to physics, I don't think you'll ever see latency as low on DOCSIS as on fiber. I get inbetween 12-24 ms latency on my favorite Ookla speedtest server at home, I get a solid 5 ms going to the same server 99% of the time on DIA enterprise grade fiber at work. Fiber is the superior technology, and while DOCSIS does come and will get even closer, fiber will always be a tick or two better.

 

[EarDemon]

It means nothing to me, because I live in a rural area where cable will NEVER be installed. 100mbps or 1gbps it matters not. They only make these investments in cities, where many people already have access to gigabit fiber.

I know, I know, the cities are where the $$ is. But its still frustrating.

Like I said many times. I live in a rural town of 4,000 and I get gigabit from Charter. There are towns near by smaller then mine with less population and less places of business. They can get gigabit too if they choose to pay for it. To say investments are only made in cities is simply not true.

When Verizon was actively deploying Fios, they focused more on the suburbs, or at least here in the WNY market they did. However for as much crap as I give Verizon, I have to give them credit for this. The test bed for Fios in WNY was a small and more rural town of 8,000. They were wired up with Fios before Buffalo's largest, more ritzy suburb with 120,000 people.

Yes, there are many under served areas of the country, there's no denying that. But not all of us who have super fast data connections live in cities or suburbs. I guess the trade off is that I have no cell phone service.

Like you with D3.1FD, '5G' mobile data means nothing to me either. I live in a rural town, I work in a rural village. I can't get reliable 3G at home let alone 4G from any provider. At work, AT&T has no coverage period, Verizon has been flakey over the past year and Sprint does not work well in our manufacturing plant. I don't see the cell phone providers putting macro towers on any utility poles in places I frequent. Just because performance is poor is my immediate area, I don't believe for a single second the cell providers are only making investments in cities.

When Sprint started deploying LTE in my market, the tower that covers were I work was the fourth tower in the market to get upgraded. And the very first tower was even in a more rural area. Towers two and three were by the airport. As some one who's had the two small cell phone providers for the better part of 10 years, Sprint from 2009 - 2012 and then again from 2013 to 2017 and T-Mobile from 2017 to present I've noticed a huge increase in rural service. While my area hasn't been impacted so much, Sprint has dramatically increased coverage in rural areas, most notable to me is along the state line, and T-Mobile has been really ramping up the speeds, I can get 120 x 20 near work.

 

[EarDemon]

OK, much better explanation and I can see where businesses would be all tingly over it but the average homeowner? The only thing I "upload" is email, the rest is simple network requests and server response time (lag) is a much more noticeable participant in perceived "slowness" than actual upload line speed. If cable really wants to start making headway what they need to do is bring the costs down and also to stop being so pigheaded about trying to coerce you into buying over-priced TV service in order to get a fair price for Internet. For instance the local cable company charges 30% more for Internet if you don't also subscribe to their TV package. If I switched from Dish Flex to the cable companies TV package my costs would jump from $51 per month to $114 per month. That's not going to happen. So, they can yell and stomp all they want to about full duplex but I'm not seeing a plus side cost benefit for the average consumer.

I think you fail to realize what the ‘average’ person does online. People upload videos to YouTube and share with family and friends. As resolutions get higher, quality gets better, file sizes increase. Many people utilize ‘cloud’ storage services like Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive and DropBox. Many people use online backup solutions like Carbonite. Increased upload helps achieve this faster and more smoothly. I’m not ‘average’, I don’t use ‘cloud’ services or upload content to servers I don’t have control of.

Here are a few examples of when having a slower upload was a hindrance

- This past Spring I went to NYC. Took some photos, when back at the hotel I wanted to do some comparisons with photos I took when I was there two years prior. I was able to hit 70-80 Mb down on T-Mobile at the hotel in Jersey City. Good speeds, right. Connected my laptop to the mobile hotspot, connected to home with Cisco AnyConnect, tried exploring my NAS, and boom, I hit a brick wall. Yes, the higher latency of a cellular connection factored in, but when grabbing photos off the NAS and coping them to my laptop for viewing, it was frustratingly slow. I don’t shoot in RAW, but I take pictures in the next highest quality setting on my camera, and I had nearly a gig worth of photos to copy over. Here I am, with the fastest cellular connection I ever experienced at the time, limited by a slow upload on the other end.

- My NAS at home serves as my central repository for all things old and ancient. As far back as the installer for WINNT4 SP6a. For a specific emergency resurrection at work I needed Windows XP SP 2 last year. All I had was XP SP3 ISOs at work, SP3 could not be used as it caused issues with the main application the PC was needed for. On my NAS at home I have an XP SP2 ISO. Total file size is only 650 MB, I have a VPN tunnel set up between my router at home and my security appliance at work, took almost an hour to download using the most direct method possible. This situation was not quite mission critical, but I had people breathing down my neck.

- I frequently use TeamViewer at home to provide remote technical support to friends, family, and yes even co-workers off hours. If needing to transfer large files to the other party, it can take an hour or more, because of my limited upload speed. When I had a problem at work with Bitdefender Endpoint uninstalling itself from all of my users PCs who haven’t been in the office for the past 6 months, I needed to get with them ASAP. Our Bitdefender installation package is almost 800 MB in size.

- I frequently work on things from home, or continue working from home on things I started at work. I am transferring files between remote PCs, my own PC, PCs on my network, VMs at home and at work for both testing and production purposes. At any point I can have up to a dozen RDP sessions going on simultaneously, I am transferring files between them and modifying them. Yes, low latency is extremely important in these instances, but so is decent download and upload.

I can only speak for Charter, but they actually reduced the bundling discount. It used to be if you bundled TV and Internet you got a $10 discount, now it's only $6. If you add in phone, there is no discount on TV at all as the discount is applied to the internet/phone bundle.

Charters non bundled, non discounted rates are $66 for 100 x 10 or 200 x 10, $91 for 400 x 20 and $126 for 940 x 35. Looking at the price per megabit, I think those are incredibly fair, considering Verizon charges $30 for 3 Mb DSL.

No one is yelling and stomping about full duplex DOCSIS. It's an emerging technology that will bring a a big improvement to many peoples online experience and is being promoted as such. Many, many people will be benefited. If you are not one of them, oh well. But I am looking forward to faster upload.

 

[Radioguy41]

I think you fail to realize what the ‘average’ person does online.

I think perhaps you over estimate what the "average" person does on-line because you are biased towards your own usage. But that aside, how fast is fast enough? Do you really need 10G up? Does anyone? No, 10G isn't the answer for the end user, it's the hype. The theoretical saving of bandwidth by using the same frequency up and down means nothing to the end user. I can't envision any end user sitting at his computer saying "Wow, look at how efficient that spectrum use is!". It may provide some benefit for the provider but that's something for the stock holders, not something to be touted at the CES. And now I will gracefully bow out of this conversation.

 

[EarDemon]

I think perhaps you over estimate what the "average" person does on-line because you are biased towards your own usage.

Ever hear of YouTube, ever hear of Chromebooks where everything is synced with Google Drive, ever hear of Apple iCloud? These are services many 'average' people upload data to. I'm not over estimating anything. While a very small size sample, I deal with 140 computer users who use these and similar services for work and play. My own usage involves things the average user doesn't necessarily do on a regular basis, if at all, so I provided examples common every day service where faster upload is beneficial.

But that aside, how fast is fast enough? Do you really need 10G up? Does anyone? No, 10G isn't the answer for the end user, it's the hype.

"640K ought to be enough for anybody"

No one needs any of this stuff. Food, clothing and shelter is really all anyone needs. But why put artificial limits on this stuff? Why not push the envelope? If you build it they will come. Why did we need 3 Mb DSL or cable in 2002, when 56k dial up worked fine? At the moment, the point of ultra fast internet connections is not to do one thing super fast, it's to do multiple things super fast. It's to not have your own internet connection be the weakest link in the chain. If Person A wants to upload a 30 minute 4K video to YouTube, Person B wants to back up the contents of a 750 GB drive to Carbonite and person C wants to live stream, there will be no slowdowns in sight. Why is having that ability a bad thing?

And none of this is going to happen over night. It will be the natural progressions of technology. Ten years ago I had a 50 x 5 internet connection which was around $110 MSRP. Today 400 x 20 is $20 less, 940 x 35 is $15 more. 50 x 5 is considered slow by today's standards. In 10 years from now, my 940 x 35 will be looked at in the same way.

The theoretical saving of bandwidth by using the same frequency up and down means nothing to the end user. I can't envision any end user sitting at his computer saying "Wow, look at how efficient that spectrum use is!".

You have it backwards, it's not saving bandwidth, it's doubling the available bandwidth. Of course, no one is going to comment on the use of spectrum. Outside of network engineers, headend engineers and geeks like me no one will care about the behind the scenes. We're talking about people who think cell phones work on magical rainbows and unicorn farts who are too ignorant to know that there is a good chance their much hated cableco is the company providing the fiber backhaul and powering those magical cell phone towers. But what people are going to notice is how fast a 4K video uploaded, or how fast a cloud back up finished, which is a direct result of full duplex.

It may provide some benefit for the provider but that's something for the stock holders, not something to be touted at the CES. And now I will gracefully bow out of this conversation.

Why so negative? Significantly faster upload will benefit content creators, IT guys like myself and non technical people who just want to share home made high quality media with their family and friends. And who knows what the future holds. 15 years ago who would have thought a DVD rental by mail service would be forcing multiple industries to change, 22 years ago who would have thought an online book retailer would be the powerhouse that they are with all of the services they offer. No one is forcing you to use this technology, but there is no reason to be so against it.

 

[Jhon69]

I agree. The average household will never need this sort of speed. Not to mention what they'll pay with overage costs, because they aren't going to keep the "no data limits" for long, even if some companies do now.

I have 100down/11up, and it costs me $65.99 with Charter/Spectrum. I'd prefer something around $35 a month, and would happy as a clam with 25/3 for that price of $35 a month, if I could get it.

have you tried calling to see what you can get,in our area we can get Spectrum internet assist 30MB/4MB for $14.99/w Wi-Fi $19.99(There are qualifying requirements to get that price).
I just googled 2019 Charter Spectrum residential rates and you should be able to check into it.Good Luck!

 

[primestar31]

have you tried calling to see what you can get,in our area we can get Spectrum internet assist 30MB/4MB for $14.99/w Wi-Fi $19.99(There are qualifying requirements to get that price).
I just googled 2019 Charter Spectrum residential rates and you should be able to check into it.Good Luck!

I don't meet any of the qualifications for that program. I'm not 65+ on welfare, and I don't have a kid in government school lunch programs. Either of which are REQUIRED to get that.

Now, why a 65+ year old couple are likely to have kids young enough to be in a school lunch program, beats me.

Charter/Spectrum in our area won't give ANY discounts, under ANY circumstances that they aren't forced to give under government force. Beyond bundling discounts that is, and all I have from them is internet-only, so no discounts.

 

[EarDemon]

I don't meet any of the qualifications for that program. I'm not 65+ on welfare, and I don't have a kid in government school lunch programs. Either of which are REQUIRED to get that.

Now, why a 65+ year old couple are likely to have kids young enough to be in a school lunch program, beats me.

Charter/Spectrum in our area won't give ANY discounts, under ANY circumstances that they aren't forced to give under government force. Beyond bundling discounts that is, and all I have from them is internet-only, so no discounts.

Your post makes no sense.

You say "I'm not 65+ on welfare, and I don't have a kid in government school lunch programs. Either of which are REQUIRED to get that" and then you go on to say "Now, why a 65+ year old couple are likely to have kids young enough to be in a school lunch program, beats me."

Your first statement is correct. it's either 65+ on SSI OR have a child in the NSLP. Your second statement makes it sound like you then think both are a requirement, which is incorrect.

The other qualification is living in an area where all kids qualify for the NSLP under CEP.

Low Income Internet Assistance for Families, Students, & Seniors | Spectrum

 

[primestar31]

Your post makes no sense.

You say "I'm not 65+ on welfare, and I don't have a kid in government school lunch programs. Either of which are REQUIRED to get that" and then you go on to say "Now, why a 65+ year old couple are likely to have kids young enough to be in a school lunch program, beats me."

Your first statement is correct. it's either 65+ on SSI OR have a child in the NSLP. Your second statement makes it sound like you then think both are a requirement, which is incorrect.

The other qualification is living in an area where all kids qualify for the NSLP under CEP.

Low Income Internet Assistance for Families, Students, & Seniors | Spectrum

Well, I don't want to contradict you, and I appreciate your bringing this up in case I didn't already know about it, but here's their posting on my local Spectrum site. It doesn't say ANYBODY in the area qualifies, only people meeting one of these 3 specifics. We don't meet any of them, and locally, Spectrum CSR's are real a-holes and will NOT give discounts to customers unless they are forced to, I've tried. I can NOT play Russian Roulette and threaten to leave them if they don't give me a discount since I have no options for other internet. They'd close my account before I could finish my sentence, and then charge to reopen it. The 4th requirement (in small print at bottom of their page), is you can NOT have subscribed to Charter/Spectrum internet within the past 30 days:

"To qualify for Spectrum Internet Assist, a member of the household must be a recipient of one of the following programs:

• The National School Lunch Program (NSLP); free or reduced cost lunch
• The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) of the NSLP
• Supplemental Security Income ( ? age 65 only)"

 

[ncted]

Yes, I am aware what full duplex means. And yes, all modern methods of connecting to the information superhighway can transmit and receive at the same time. I'm not aware of anything that can't. I think you are missing a key component of what this means. It's goes deeper then the end user being able to download a song while uploading a video at the sametime. As stated in the article I linked to, "In Full Duplex communication, the upstream and downstream traffic use the same spectrum at the same time, doubling the efficiency of spectrum use."

Currently, in my area Charter uses 24 channels in-between 531 MHz to 663 MHz QAM on Rx and 4 channels in-between 19.4 to 37.0 on the Tx side. Full Duplex DOCSIS means that all 32 of those frequencies will be used for both Tx and Rx simultaneously, resulting in speeds up to a symmetrical 10 Gbps. There is no changing of words. Full Duplex is the technology, Symmetrical Speeds are a result of the technology. Currently downstream frequencies only are used for downstream, upstream frequencies are only used for upstream. With 3.1FD, the separation is irrelevant. The article and video make it clear that its full duplex on a frequency by frequency basis, not the service as a whole, which as always been FD.

I 100% agree, in mobile it should be refereed to by technology, not some fake generation. One of the first widgets I ever downloaded on Android back in 2010 and still continue to use to this day is Network Signal Pro. The widget gives the type of network it's connected to and real signal strength in dBm. When I had Sprint, and they were first prepping to launch LTE, I could gauge which areas were upgraded and were going to go live with LTE shortly as the network identifier changed from EVDO-A to eHRPD when connected to towers that were upgraded but not live. To me, that was 1000x times more useful then a 3G icon in the status bar.

Now wifi is going down the idiot road. A retroactively named Wi-FI 4 means nothing to me. It will always be IEEE 802.11n in my book.

Due to physics, I don't think you'll ever see latency as low on DOCSIS as on fiber. I get inbetween 12-24 ms latency on my favorite Ookla speedtest server at home, I get a solid 5 ms going to the same server 99% of the time on DIA enterprise grade fiber at work. Fiber is the superior technology, and while DOCSIS does come and will get even closer, fiber will always be a tick or two better.

Ah, you are correct that I did not fully understand the TX/RX would happen on the same frequency at the same time. That said, that is different than the generic term Full Duplex in my mind. Full Duplex, to this point was achieved by separating the RX and TX from each other by Time, Frequency, or a physical separation. Being able to send and receive on the same frequency simultaneously is a big achievement. So much so, it probably needs a new name. Even 100Gb Ethernet uses different wavelengths and multiple lanes to achieve Full Duplex.

 

[comfortably_numb]

it probably needs a new name

And "10G" is not it!

 

[Jhon69]

I don't meet any of the qualifications for that program. I'm not 65+ on welfare, and I don't have a kid in government school lunch programs. Either of which are REQUIRED to get that.

Now, why a 65+ year old couple are likely to have kids young enough to be in a school lunch program, beats me.

Charter/Spectrum in our area won't give ANY discounts, under ANY circumstances that they aren't forced to give under government force. Beyond bundling discounts that is, and all I have from them is internet-only, so no discounts.

I do want to apologize I did not know,heck I'm older and I don't qualify either,but when you compare Charter Spectrum to Comcast I don't feel so bad at all.

 

[Juan]

Well, I don't want to contradict you, and I appreciate your bringing this up in case I didn't already know about it, but here's their posting on my local Spectrum site. It doesn't say ANYBODY in the area qualifies, only people meeting one of these 3 specifics. We don't meet any of them, and locally, Spectrum CSR's are real a-holes and will NOT give discounts to customers unless they are forced to, I've tried. I can NOT play Russian Roulette and threaten to leave them if they don't give me a discount since I have no options for other internet. They'd close my account before I could finish my sentence, and then charge to reopen it. The 4th requirement (in small print at bottom of their page), is you can NOT have subscribed to Charter/Spectrum internet within the past 30 days:

"To qualify for Spectrum Internet Assist, a member of the household must be a recipient of one of the following programs:

• The National School Lunch Program (NSLP); free or reduced cost lunch
• The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) of the NSLP
• Supplemental Security Income ( ? age 65 only)"

And people wonder why new york threw them out

Sent from my SM-G950U using the SatelliteGuys app!

 

[Stargazer]

I never thought I would get broadband in my rural community but not only did we end up with DSL upgrades to bonded connection to get 24 mb (that’s a big deal when you had satellite or dialup only), but a cable company ran new fiber and hubs out here as well a few years later. I never imagined we would ever get anything.

I think these speeds will be greatly needed in the future due to virtual reality and virtual computing where we will not have the computing or gaming machines at our homes but will be accessed remotely like we access websites, from servers. I have read about some of those services already available. Perhaps this will be important to make the computing power more affordable to make the enhanced future virtual reality a reality.

I also think cable companies have a great opportunity for mobile service since they could use each customers home as a gateway / signal to service the area for cell phones.

Sent from my iPhone using the SatelliteGuys app!

 

[harshness]

I agree. The average household will never need this sort of speed. Not to mention what they'll pay with overage costs, because they aren't going to keep the "no data limits" for long, even if some companies do now.

Most of the "no data limits" talk comes from Spectrum users who's "unlimited" clock runs out in a few short years and wireless people who have been warned (should they choose to read the fine print) about throttling (this also applies to Spectrum users).

Once most have hard ceiling broadband limits, the rest of the providers will lower the boom and transition from their wishy-washy "we may prioritize" to "you owe us".

 

[harshness]

As stated in the article I linked to, "In Full Duplex communication, the upstream and downstream traffic use the same spectrum at the same time, doubling the efficiency of spectrum use."

You've made a grievous error in interpreting what this means in practice. It doesn't increase the bandwidth one way or the other. It simply allows subscribers to eat twice as much bandwidth (and reach their cap sooner) should they choose to upload while they're downloading.

Currently, in my area Charter uses 24 channels in-between 531 MHz to 663 MHz QAM on Rx and 4 channels in-between 19.4 to 37.0 on the Tx side. Full Duplex DOCSIS means that all 32 of those frequencies will be used for both Tx and Rx simultaneously, resulting in speeds up to a symmetrical 10 Gbps.

There's a certain overhead involved in carrying bi-di traffic that this technology will introduce. Latency will likely increase with that overhead. At the other end, you can bet that the outgoing bandwidth from the ISP is going to be limited.

Next thing we know you're going to be campaigning for full duplex Wi-fi and full duplex Bluetooth. Broadband is a shared resource and no matter how it is partitioned, the aggregate amount doesn't change.

Do you recall what Spectrum's AUP says about how you may or may not use the bandwidth you pay for?

You speak of downloading a song, but how long does that take? Two seconds?

 

[Jhon69]

Most of the "no data limits" talk comes from Spectrum users who's "unlimited" clock runs out in a few short years and wireless people who have been warned (should they choose to read the fine print) about throttling (this also applies to Spectrum users).

Once most have hard ceiling broadband limits, the rest of the providers will lower the boom and transition from their wishy-washy "we may prioritize" to "you owe us".

Charter Spectrum no caps are for 7 years,which means 5 more years of no caps.

The FCC won’t let Charter/Time Warner put data caps on internet plans

P.S. I have never caught Charter Spectrum throttling my internet speeds,in fact our internet speeds
have always been faster than what I pay for.

 

[dsmith0429]

10G... they just forgot the "X" between the "10" & the "G", for 10 times the GARBAGE channels they make us pay for that we don't want... ROTFL

 

[harshness]

P.S. I have never caught Charter Spectrum throttling my internet speeds,in fact our internet speeds
have always been faster than what I pay for.

Yet there may be no other industry (except maybe wireless) that better drives home the rule that Your Mileage May Vary.