A recent report over at Light Reading claims that more than 50 percent of U.S. homes do not have sufficient DSL bandwidth to receive a single HD channel plus concurrent broadband access at 5Mbps. MPEG-4 AVC compression will certainly help matters some, because it basically cuts bandwidth needs in two, but DSL providers looking to go the IPTV route are going to have a tough go of it. The conclusion from one unnamed vendor in the piece was: "Operators deploying fiber-to-the-home [FTTH] are looking pretty smart right now."
The report also casts doubt on whether AT&T will be able to make good on its promise to deliver two live HD streams, two SD streams, data and overhead the 25Mbps offered via U-Verse VDSL without compromising quality of experience.
For more on the Light Reading report:
- read it here