IPTV may be coming to the US, but chances are you'll need to upgrade your bandwidth...if you can!

I'm an NA for an ISP, and I uncorked my modem temporarily to see how good it could do, I got 28Mbps out of it (standard speed is 8Mbps, theoretical on this particular modem is something like 36), but we don't need to worry about IPTV since we're a digital cable company anyway!

We have fiber to all of our nodes and some commerical customers with fiber to the premises or between sites up to gigabit speeds, doesn't matter if you have fiber to the home if the internet connection from isp to telco is slow, and I can tell you that ALL ISP's "overbook" their bandwidth even att , just gotta find one that's not too bad! And if/when IPTV takes off, that will really hurt performance as tv isn't used sparadically like internet access is; it'd be like EVERY user streaming video at the SAME time ALL the time. Cable networks can handle that, dsl could too, but telco to provider would cost too much to effectively do that, unless the big guys (sprint, mci, att) drop their circuit fees. Cable operates have an advantage here, they won't need as much bandwidth out since their tv is on the local network. At least thats my take on it, glad I don't deal with buying what's needed, I just need to let them know when it saturates!

thomaslompton: that's cool, it's very easy to up that fiber to gig or 10 gig down the road, they just need a few oc48's or bigger to the net!

He means he uncapped his cable modem. When a cable modem initalises it requests info on its max speed up/down from the cable co. Its possible to load your own max speed into the modem and see how fast it will go.

Its illegal and most cable cos will cut off your net for doing it, (uncapped modems are easy to detect, *cloned* modems are not but thats harder to do...)

But as he said hes the Network Admin for a cable ISP so he was allowed

EDIT: For the record, I'm in the UK and have DSL (no cable where I am) before someone accuses me of uncapping my modem

UK internet is finally starting to improve, I have 10mb blueyonder. All we need now is more upload speed, I only have 384k so with 3 PCs in my house being used at once gaming can be difficult.

Two words: Verizon FiOS

I wish I could get Fiber...I still gotta work out DSL from Bellsouth. I'm waiting for Verizon to find Kentucky, then I switching the moment they move in.

~Ibrahim~

Internet Protocol Television. Basically the telephone companies and other dsl providers will be able to sell you TV service to compete with cable and satellite TV providers.

The large North American companies (Verizon, BellSouth, Bell Canada) are whating until they can deliver HDTV bandwidth (probably mid 2007) before they deploy the service. In Europe and Asia providers are already deploying IPTV with standard definition TV and will upgrade to high definition in the next year or two.

What's the highest for cable these days?