Kjs, I agree with you about the marketing model.
I'm not so sure I share your view on the content/ services side. I would note that making the service compelling to the wider market will require more than just 'faster internet access'. Given the economics, the cable cos will need more than just the internet speed fiends to justify this. Creating a compelling user experience that truly leverages the bandwidth will require new types of content, and @Home have more of an interest than anyone else in getting TV-quality streaming video integrated into the standard web experience.
I would note that WebTV is another company that clearly believes they have real value to add by building a service front end that is adapted to the medium. Also Winstar (WCII, which I'm in), offering wireless broadband service to businesses, has a substantial and increasing proportion of its revenue coming from information services.
The bigger one though is surely telephone service. In the UK (where I'm from) many of the Bells have been getting into cable, and offering phone service, which then accounts for a substantial proportion of those systems' revenue, as well as decreasing churn etc. (I did some work on this business as a management consultant some years ago).
I'm surprised not to have heard / read more about when and how cable cos will be implementing this. Legally it's now OK, right ? It's not such a bandwidth hog, but the 2-way conversion that cable cos need to enable @Home is I would suppose similar to needed for telephony. (Obviously @Home is sufficient for telephony, given the existence of IP telephony such as AT&T is supposed to be launching soon).
The relevant questions would then be:
a) can @Home capture any significant portion of this value, or
b) even aside from that, would the more favourable economics lead to
an acceleration of the network conversion by cable cos, and thus
thus faster @Home rollout.
Roger. |
