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The ad that landed Time Warner in court.  (Source: Time Warner)
Humorous ads poke Verizon in all the wrong ways

A friendly rivalry between Time Warner Cable and Verizon FiOS turned serious this Wednesday, with Verizon suing Time Warner over claims of false advertising.

The suit refers to a recent ad campaign launched by Time Warner (viewable here), featuring an annoying door-to-door salesman who uses an excessively uppity sales pitch and special effects to call Verizon’s service inferior: a shortened version of the ad infers that Time Warner had fiber optic before Verizon, and a longer version insinuates that Verizon FiOS TV requires a satellite connection.

Verizon is asking the courts for a permanent injunction against the spots, $75,000 in damages, as well as the creation of a follow-up ad to correct the errors.

In Time Warner’s defense, both points raised are somewhat true: in a handful of markets, Verizon partners with DirecTV to offer video service via satellite when it would be otherwise unavailable, and both companies have used fiber optics in their backend for some time now: “All network companies have used some fiber for more than a decade,” writes Verizon Executive Director of External Communications John Czwartacki, “but only one, Verizon, takes that fiber all the way to your door.“

Time Warner spokesman Alex Dudley called the suit “without merit,” noting that the company “[looks] forward to defending against it in the appropriate venue.”

The two companies’ rivalry began when telecommunications giant Verizon made forays into the TV and internet space, in an attempt to crack the satellite/cable TV monopoly held by companies like Time Warner and Comcast. The battleground – really a free-for-all match between Verizon, AT&T, Time Warner, Comcast, and a handful of other carriers as they make inroads into each others’ territories – has since widened with the advent of the “FiOS-killer” DOCSIS 3.0 standard, which promises cable line bandwidth of 150 to 300 megabits per second over conventional copper wires.

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FIOS KIller ROFL
By HrilL on 4/10/2008 10:18:51 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
with the advent of the “FiOS-killer” DOCSIS 3.0 standard, which promises cable line bandwidth of 150 to 300 megabits per second over conventional copper wires.


That makes me laugh. While those speeds are possible that's not what the consumer is going to get for a very long while. And also the upstream is less than that. Where as with Fios they could give you over 1gbs over their fiber cables. And for gamers fiber will always be better as it has lower latencies. Copper will never be able to compete on par with Fiber.




RE: FIOS KIller ROFL
By TomCorelis (blog) on 4/10/2008 10:49:24 PM , Rating: 5
Keep in mind that 150-300 megabits number carries TV, phone, and internet service.


RE: FIOS KIller ROFL
By drebo on 4/11/2008 1:07:30 AM , Rating: 5
And it's to the node, not the home. They gloss over that fact. Quite conviniently, I might add.


RE: FIOS KIller ROFL
By Alexstarfire on 4/11/2008 3:17:56 AM , Rating: 4
If you look close enough, all ads gloss over the details.


RE: FIOS KIller ROFL
By jtemplin on 4/11/2008 8:43:29 AM , Rating: 3
They spend more money on the glossy paper in their ads, then they spend giving a crap about the details for us poor consumers :(


RE: FIOS KIller ROFL
By RaulF on 4/11/2008 4:48:18 AM , Rating: 2
I thought TV and Internet work in different channels via cable, so one does not interfere with the other.


RE: FIOS KIller ROFL
By somedude1234 on 4/11/2008 9:24:57 AM , Rating: 3
On a low level, there isn't much of a difference between your internet download traffic and the digital video traffic used to deliver the TV programs. It's all QAM256 encoded binary data streams.

You can only squeeze so many of these data streams in each channel, giving you a finite amount of bandwidth to each neighborhood node.

The cable companies currently squeeze the following services onto the same wire:
- analog tv programs (a giant bandwidth hog)
- digital tv programs
- video on demand
- internet downstream
- internet upstream
- voip telephone

They have to balance how much bandwidth is allocated to each service. So they could offer faster internet downloads, but they'd have to cut back somewhere else (less analog channels is a good place to start).

This is why there has been recent news about comcast increasing the compression on a lot of HD channels. By lowering the bitrate of the video streams, they can use the recovered bandwidth for something else.

Docsis 3.0 (I'm guessing) increases the amount of data they can deliver by using more advanced digital modulation techniques... to squeeze more data on the same cable.


RE: FIOS KIller ROFL
By tastyratz on 4/11/2008 9:46:26 AM , Rating: 3
They do
You guys are forgetting that docsis 3.0 is PER 6mhz QAM.
docsis 2.0 is somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 megs IIRC.

This is a several fold speed increase and I for one welcome it.

Perhaps we will never see those speeds but it will allow comcast to pony up and stay reasonably competitive with fiber keeping market prices in check for both of them.


RE: FIOS KIller ROFL
By sgtdisturbed47 on 4/11/2008 5:17:45 AM , Rating: 2
Funny that you say that "for gamers fiber will always be better as it has lower latencies", I have never had latency issues with my TWC Roadrunner cable internet, at 15 Mbps down/2 Mbps up. Latency is consistently great. I'm 20 miles south of Los Angeles and I get a ping of 50-60ns to the Chicago servers I play on in Call of Duty 4.

What also needs to be considered is that sort of bandwidth comes with a price tag, and so far, home users are limited to a certain amount of that bandwidth. Comcast has raised the bar to 25 Mbps I believe, and pretty soon I'm sure TWC will up the limit.

Business users on the other hand can utilize far more, but at a huge price increase. Oh, and gigabit is pretty much limited to large buildings at a ridiculous price tag. Honestly, what we are looking at is what home users are looking for, not aimed at business users. Fios can give you 1gbps, sure, but home users will never touch that speed.

Also, fiber never comes to your home. It's the main lines that are fiber, whereas the cable that reaches your home is still copper wire. The point is it doesnt matter if you use "Fios" or cable, the reality is we will all be using cable for quite some time.


RE: FIOS KIller ROFL
By kextyn on 4/11/2008 7:41:40 AM , Rating: 4
Sorry to burst your bubble, but you're wrong on a couple points.

First, I'm in Virginia on FiOS (30/5). I just tried pinging CoD4 servers (from a few different providers) in Chicago and Los Angeles and received ~30-38ms and ~44-50ms respectively.

Second, I DO have fiber coming all the way into my apartment. I sat there and watched them bring a strand of fiber through the attic and into my closet. It then went into an ONT which converted it to coax for my cable and Cat5 for my internet (although you can use coax for both.)


RE: FIOS KIller ROFL
By melgross on 4/11/2008 7:56:58 AM , Rating: 3
You mean milliseconds, not nanoseconds.


RE: FIOS KIller ROFL
By melgross on 4/11/2008 8:00:51 AM , Rating: 5
You mean milliseconds, not nanoseconds.

Oh, I forgot. In most markets, ATT only has fiber to the node, and copper to the home. But in new neighborhoods, with new construction, they are going fiber to the home, as it costs about the same to string new fiber as it does to string new copper.

All FIOS customers have fiber to the home. Very expensive to lay new fiber where copper already exists. ATT is going the cheaper route, only doing it when it doesn't cost extra..


RE: FIOS KIller ROFL
By nomagic on 4/11/2008 9:08:03 AM , Rating: 2
I find your lack of knowledge disturbing.

When I click on "Post Comment" in about 10 secs, this message will be posted from a FiOS HOME user.

People should check their facts before they post.


RE: FIOS KIller ROFL
By Carter642 on 4/11/2008 9:36:29 AM , Rating: 2
Just a little lesson on how data transmission media works in the real world. Latency is not directly related to bandwidth, infact, latency over any media can be high or low mostly depending on the routers between yourself and your data's destination not whatever your home internet connection happens to use.

Your bandwidth is based on your channel allocation (what your pay for in up/down speeds) but it makes no garentees about latencies. It's possible to have a very low latency connection with a small channel allocation, and conversely using something like satallite you can have a half second latency with a huge channel allocation.

Read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_latency...

Now, Fiber has a theoretical bandwidth in the terabits and coax is lower but still far more than your computer can handle at a time. Even good old phone cord has more capacity than most "high speed" connections available to the public if the phone company wasn't severely limiting the available frequency range. So the only practical difference between fiber and cable is how much bandwidth your ISP is giving you. Now quit E-peening with your fiber.


RE: FIOS KIller ROFL
By HrilL on 4/11/08, Rating: 0
RE: FIOS KIller ROFL
By HrilL on 4/11/2008 12:58:33 PM , Rating: 1
Oh I forgot to add this. At home I have cable for example. and the Best I ping to my first hop. My gateway router is 12-20ms. That router is about 3 miles away. At school we have a fiber connection and it's first hop it is <1ms. When you ping LA which is about 100 miles away you get 7-8ms that would be the second hop. The difference of latency in a all fiber network is a lot compared to a copper and fiber network. My connection is on copper for 3 miles and that adds most of my latency. Also remember that Coax is HALF-duplex meaning it can't download and upload at the same time. That adds quite a bit of latency.


RE: FIOS KIller ROFL
By Carter642 on 4/11/2008 2:14:24 PM , Rating: 2
Signals in copper move at ~2/3 C vs Fiber, in reality the time taken by the router to process the packet is much longer than the time taken for the packet to get there.

For instance, even at 2/3 C a signal in copper takes about .024ms to get to your router versus .016ms for fiber. Either way it's not a significant part of your latency.

HFC networks (which is what your cable modem works with) are indeed full-duplex with different up and down stream bands, this is why your TV doesn't quit working when you're uploading a picture. A little informative reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_fibre-coaxial

What is likely causing your latency is network conjestion, which isn't media dependant and is entirely the fault of your ISP's cheapo accountants not the cable in the ground.

I'm not defending cable here, and certainly fiber to the door is the way to go, being cheaper, more space efficient and with a greater theoretical bandwidth. Just remember that when it comes to the technical side to point fingers in the right direction.


RE: FIOS KIller ROFL
By Araemo on 4/11/2008 9:43:32 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
I have never had latency issues with my TWC Roadrunner cable internet, at 15 Mbps down/2 Mbps up.


Apparently time warner has competition where you live.

Even if I paid an extra $30/mo over the standard 7Mbit down/384k up speed, it would only go up to 15Mbit down/512k up. I am hard pressed to find downloads that saturate my 7Mbit, what I really need is more upstream, but 128k more bandwidth isn't worth $30/mo.


RE: FIOS KIller ROFL
By wetwareinterface on 4/11/2008 4:25:05 PM , Rating: 2
50-60 ms
wow and that's low to you?
i get 17 ms pings to la and san francisco servers (i'm in northern california) and 30-45 ms pings to chicago, dallas (yeah go can't stop gaming cs source), new york and seattle.

i'm on dsl even not even on high speed fiber to the curb dsl just old copper all the way dsl from way back when. of course i have a static ip so that makes a huge difference in latency more so than fiber vs. cable.

basicaly all i'm saying is that cable is going to have higher latency than either fiber or dsl as you have to bounce from node to node across the cable network before you even hit the internet connection of the cable provider. all those node bounces = latency added. fiber doesn't have node to node switching it just goes straight to the home center of the provider, same as dsl. as long as your rate for dsl is above 256/768 you are in the clear as far as gaming and latency. having a static ip also lowers the latency over dynamic ip's as there is no latency incursion for nat.


RE: FIOS KIller ROFL
By MrTeal on 4/14/2008 9:44:59 PM , Rating: 3
I call BS on your pings. 30-45 ms from California to NY is simply not possible. Light roundtrip in a vacuum on the almost 10,000 km round trip is 32 ms; even if you had no processing delays and a straight piece of cable between you and NY you wouldn't get less than 45 ms since the speed of light in glass is ~66%*c.