Overview

At the time of this writing, the vast majority of Internet subscribers world wide access the Internet with a dial-up connection via a telephone line. This delivers a maximum bandwidth of 56 Kbps, which is adequate for email and surfing web sites. It is not adequate for video and other bandwidth-intensive applications. Some areas of the United States are served via a digital subscriber line (DSL) made possible by provisioning on the subscriber's telephone line where the service is usually a maximum of 256 Kbps. This is only marginally faster service, which is still not adequate for live video or the downloading of video on demand.

The chief bottleneck or limitation here is the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), which was not designed to offer high-speed data services. Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers (ILECs) have tried to cobble together DSL/Class 5 configurations to serve their subscribers, but at the time of this writing no ILEC offers DSL service to more than 10 percent of their subscribers. True broadband at, say, 10 Mbps (no agreed-upon bandwidth exists for the term broadband) does not appear to be practical via the PSTN as we know it.

Cable TV companies offer broadband; however, cable TV companies have yet to roll out a truly converged data, video, and voice network. Where voice is offered with cable TV service, the cable TV company uses a Class 5 switch; that is, they must manage two networks, one cable TV and the other voice. No...