Screeb:ojala: I had to double check the dates on this thread.. DOCSIS 3.0 was released in 2006.
Here in our little country they started the EuroDOCSIS 3.0 trials back in 2007 and the service has been out since 2008 with both the bigger (300,000+ homes) and smaller cable tv operators. 200/10 service has been available for about a year now. The sales have beat all the estimates.
UPC Netherlands, up and running up to 120/10 since 2008. (90% of households in the Netherlands have cable TV)
Numericable France, up and running 100 Mbit/s since 2009. In just a few months they reported 30% sales increase.
Cablecom in Switzerland and UPC Austria, 100+ since 2009. They landscape in Austria and Switzerland is pretty challenging.
Why wait years, or benchmark against the conservative british market, when the world is full of success stories? The business is there to take, just imagine how TelstraClear's 100 Mbit/s internet access would have looked in the NZ internet market two years ago, when similar services were being rolled out in continental Europe. Small country means easy, not difficult or impossible.
PS. Love (not) living 500 metres from both the FTTH and cable TV, stuck with ADSL2+ since 2004..
TelstraClear under Freeth likes to pretend it's in the same position as Telstra (for its cable network). It doesn't of course, but it still exists in a weird "one-way competition" bubble. TelstraClear only has to be marginally better than the comparable alternatives (ie Telecom based DSL), but Telecom/other ISPs won't compete against TelstraClear's cable network. Telecom, because they don't want to get into regional pricing/feature wars - and the other ISPs because getting into a price/feature war with a larger ISP would kill them. Maybe they're also scared that TelstraClear would have the backing of Telstra in order to out-compete anyone that dares try (I doubt that would actually happen though). The end result is TelstraClear being incredibly slow to actually achieve anything (hang around the TelstraClear forum here for an idea).
You mean that they drag their heels like their parent does? Telstra has been very slow in upgrading to DOCSIS 3.0 in Australia despite a ~30% uptake of homes passed on its HFC network. Why continue to serve customers on copper when you have your own "better" HFC network in the same street? Makes no sense.
And slow in launching a HD PVR for those HFC customers instead relying on Foxtel to offer a solution.
The only "dramatic" leap undertaken by Telstra, IMHO, has been the NextG network - and that by the Three Amigos before they flew off into the sunset. Back to slow incumbency I fear.......
