As I said, Direct Duo is really 2 separate systems bundled together with no price savings.
DIRECPC is good for speed, but it is expensive ($49.95 one-time setup + $39.99-$129.99/mo usage + $9.99/mo. access fee+ your own ISP charge)and not very well penetrated. The hardware costs have fallen about $500 or so in the last year as Hughes has scrambled to try and find a price point that makes the service attractive.
Adelphia is running a cable modem test in our area that is really fast, faster than T1, 2-way, but they have already announced that all future deployments will be 1-way with a telephone return path, like DIRECPC.
The basic cable modem service runs about $40 per month, but you have to have cable TV service (a $31.50 extra) first.
If DISH wanted to provide a DIRECPC-style service, they could serve 30K users per transponder. If they devoted all 32 transponders of the
ECHO III satellite at 30,000 users each, they could serve about 960,000 internet customers with the whole satellite. That is less than the number of total subs they have now.
Of course, only a small fraction of homes have high-speed access right now, but it is anybody's guess how fast that will grow. I'm sure that they would hate to get into a business then reach an upper limit on sub growth so quickly.
More likely is that they will offer a "broadcast" service of top web sites and other data. This they could accomodate with little bandwidth. It seems to be a better niche for them, but if cable modems become the only high-speed alternative, their bundled service could be problematic for companies like DISH that are seeking to capture the cable portion only. After all, DISH is far superior to cable, but would you pay for both cable and DISH? Most people probably won't.
So don't be surprised if you soon see petitions at the FCC or lobbying in congress to force cable companies to unbundle their cable modem service. After all, public feelings toward cable TV are at an all-time low, even if wall street is starting to like them (cable)again.
A likely comparison will be that between local and long-distance calling before the breakup of AT&T. What would the stand-alone pricing of cable modem service be? Hmmm...
NOEL |
