I've yet to meet a single person who has broadband who would give it up.
You are absolutely right about that. For me the "broadband" doesn't mean as much as "always connected" (for kids enjoying Disney content "speed" is apparently more important). This stuff is an absolute necessity, just like you never doubt what's gonna happen when you turn the faucet, or flip the light switch. The moment your finger touch the mouse, information has to be there (well not exactly right away, Win98 still need to wake up and that takes about 10 seconds. Win2K with support of Suspend-To-Memory, one tiny feature save the world billions of hours and electricity dollars).
I just looked at last month cell phone bill, it costs me $66 last month, quite expensive consider that I rarely use my cell phone. I am not a sales person and my job is always at a casual pace, so I can live without cell phone. But, it's impossible to live without broadband access to the Internet. Compared to cell phone, cable modem service is too cheap for $44.95 a month (consider I have 4 workstations can all access at the same time), and you know the street think that price as sinfully high.
WAP is heating up pretty good, made me some awesome profit last year before I know what exactly that's all about. But let's face it, how much time, for the foreseeable future, you are going to use cell phone to browse the net unless it's absolute necessary? And how much that's going to cost you at what speed? Worry about cell devices boiling your gene, how about spend hours surfing the net with it? My point is that I believe things (or history) are always moving along the "reasonable" track no matter how deviated it could be. I see money goes into wired internet access before wireless, well, investors apparently don't think that way for now, but money has to reward the winners in this business, is ATHM at the right place at the right time to catch the ball?
With always uninterrupted connect, the key is that you tend to use it more, and that make some services on the net become very usable. For example, this site www.books24x7.com, read just about every latest version popular technical book on-line for $199 a year, not a bad idea at all. The ONLY concern is that most people aren't used to read books on screen, and their eyes get tired easily - true. I am using a flat panel display (LCD), no flickering and very comfortable to eyes, so I can deal it with. But for books by Steven King, I have to start after midnight on a warm bed - it's a requirement. For tech books, I would say 80% of the people should have no problem to read on-line, and that goes to about 100% for younger generation. Would business like that kills the growth of AMZN? Well, at least I think it's unwise to buy any tech books (heavy bricks) that will be outdated in 6 months, no make it 3 months, make it one month for Java. |
