[11367] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
CATV Modems
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (George Gilder)
Wed Mar 30 11:47:47 1994
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 1994 12:33:43 -0500 (EST)
From: George Gilder <0004091174@mcimail.com>
Reply-To: George Gilder <0004091174@mcimail.com>
To: Privatizing the Internet <com-priv@psi.com>
[Cross-Posted from Telecom Digest]
Digital Equipment in Littleton, Massachusetts, offers a CATV modem
called Channelworks that offers full duplex 10 megabit per second
Ethernet services of up to 70 miles over two cable channels.
Intel, General Instrument, and Hybrid Technologies have announced
an asymmetrical CATV modem which receives at 10 megabits per second
but sends at 256 kilobits, with plans for upgrades to a megabit.
Cable coax, reaching 63 percent of the nation's homes and passing some
90 percent, is a huge untapped resource for computer communications
and in the future, I predict, will be used more by computers than by
TVs. Each cable has a two-way potential of one gigahertz. Because
CATV operates at over 50 decibels of signal to noise, however, it can
accomodate as many as 16 bits per hertz, for a total capacity of some
16 gigabits per second.
