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Residential Broadband: An Insider's Guide to the Battle for the Last Mile
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by Kim Maxwell
Sales Rank: 1766149
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$0.04
At Amazon
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Paperback: 400 pages
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons; 1 edition November 23, 1998
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0471251658
ISBN-13: 978-0471251651
Product Dimensions:
9.2 x 7.4 x 0.9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
Product Review
Everyone wants a faster Internet connection at home, and cable modems, ISDN lines, and other speedy links have already begun to infiltrate home offices. But this is just the beginning, as Kim Maxwell explains in Residential Broadband. Lots of new technologies will fight to provide "last mile" service into residences in the near future. As in any battle, there will be winners, losers, and bit players here. Maxwell gives you a line on what will work and why.
Residential Broadband first provides some historical context, explaining how Western Union provided transcontinental telegraph service--and made a profit doing it--in the 19th century. Then, the author details how a standard telephone line into a home works--fascinating reading for anyone who's always taken such technology for granted. From there, Maxwell makes the leap into data- communications technologies, including standard modems (which Maxwell helped invent), ISDN lines, various Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) schemes, and cable modems. The author shuns wireless residential broadband technologies, saying that adequate bandwidth can be had only through satellites, which are too expensive.
Rather than treat his topic in a dry, technology-centered way, Maxwell spends a lot of time explaining the research he's compiled on the applications--research that will spur deployment of high-speed network connections to residences. The ultimate driver of communications technologies is making money, he writes. Electronic commerce will be a big player here, as will videoconferencing and (eventually) entertainment technologies, such as video on demand. --David Wall
Book Description
Integrated analysis of the technologies, markets, and business of Residential Broadband In thirty years, the worldwide market for high-speed information services to the home will reach SI trillion. This book explains how and why. Beginning with tutorials and a few touches of history to position residential broadband today, this essential guide examines how competing technologies will struggle for supremacy in a chaotic market. It stakes out the battles between ADSL and cable modems, IP and ATM, telephone companies and CATV companies, televisions and personal computers, and professional applications and consumer applications. It does so with reverence for none-some will win and some will lose as the market emerges over the next decade or so. Our guide is kim Maxwell, an entrepreneur and executive who has spent twenty-five years inventing ways to make communications technologies and markets fit together. His analysis takes some surprising turns:
* The Internet will not be the dominant network for residential broadband.
* Despite its current power, IP may over time give way to ATM for residential broadband.
* Cable modems have the early lead, but the DSL tortoise will catch up.
* Fiber to the Home and the Information Superhighway are at least fifteen years away and depend upon HDTV.
* Despite regulatory intentions, residential networking will return to a monopoly within thirty years.
* Computers and televisions will not converge.
* Ethernet will dominate home networking.
* Video-on-demand will not be a viable market for at least five years.
* In the long run. Consumer applications such as shopping and entertainment will dominate the more near-term applications for Internet access and telecommuting.
* But, the market can only begin with the personal computer and its natural applications-Internet access and telecommuting.
Customer Reviews & Comments
I admire the author of this book for being provocative, as opposed to simply cataloguing information in the way that virtually all other books of this ilk do. I don't fully agree with all of Maxwell's predictions -- in particular, his guess that ATM will have a much larger role to play in this part of the network -- but he identifies all the issues. Hats off for a tech book with a strong point of view and a ton of great insight.
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Residential Broadband: An Insider's Guide to the Battle for the Last Mile
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