What you say about the economics of serving businesses is positive. I have my doubts about how fast this might happen, if it means digging up more roads rather than just upgrading plant. I'm inclined to agree about ADSL, wireless seems more real long term. I wonder if wireless might not get to those businesses not already passed by cable first. Does anyone have any information about the business demographics ? I'd be interested to know:
- businesses passed by cable
- businesses in cable areas, but not passed by cable
- how much this overlaps with the metro markets the Winstar, Teligent
and other LMDS players are targetting
I wonder how clearly ATHM has answered the home vs business question themselves. The cables that have been laid seem to point one way. The economics perhaps another. I work for Intuit, and this question has also been slow to be addressed clearly there too.
I'm inclined to be medium relaxed about the backbone issue. Sure, there's a big issue as bandwidth explodes. (Worldcom's John Sedgemore citing 1,000% percent annual growth in internet bandwidth demand). But so many people who understand this (collectively) far better than us are must have done the sums, and seen that there's huge opportunity there. ATHM themselves, not least, have surely thought about how and when they'll need to scale the backbone beyond their current architecture. Any involvement of AT&T looks positive too for enabling a massive roll-out.
Not that it's trivial. But solutions will come along just-in-time, as they always seem to on the internet, and broadband industry concentration could mean deployment of new technology is faster. |
