Drake, retailers *are* moving their catalogues to the web. However, the display of colored graphics is quite bandwidth intensive.
At the moment ,the CONSUMER is bandwidth constrained in the local loop (from the telco central office to your home).In other words, waiting 10 seconds for a picture to appear is not conducive to a pleasant shopping experience.
However, on the business side, many businesses DO have adequate bandwidth via their T-1 line (1.5Mbps). It is indeed the CONSUMER bandwidth who is DEPRIVED. For example most consumers are accessing the web with analog modems or ISDN.
The good news is that cable modems and XDSL will bring abundant bandwidth to the average consumer to view those catalogues online.So--
Why is it taking so long to roll these high bandwidth services out you ask?
The problem is that xDSL and cable modems bandwidth will be available at MUCH cheaper rates than traditional T-1 lines. This means BIG PROFIT EROSION FOR THE RBOC's if business customers switch from T-1's to xDSL. The price difference for the same bandwidth is enormous. ...To the tune of a T-1 cost ~$1000 vs. xdsl at $300.
So you can imagine that the RBOC's don't want the CLEC's to offer a service like Xdsl because it could cannibalize their installed base of T-1 revenue.
You might be saying...ok I get it, but so what? Why don't the CLEC's (competitive local exchange carriers) just start offering XDSL? Good question with a very non-politically correct answer---->The CLEC's are dependent upon the RBOC's in order to roll out xDSL. In order for the CLEC's to be enabled to offer xDSL, they need access to the telco central office CAGE , which is RBOC controlled. That's a 10' by 10' wire cage in the telco central office where the xdsl equipment must be installed .The process of getting into the cage is called Colocation. The problem is that the RBOC's are denying CLEC's access inside the cage. And in some cases, the cages are already full.
So you see--the *real bottleneck* is really the cage.
Thus, the answer to your question is that retail catalogues *are* moving to the web and that will accelerate*AS* bandwidth in the local loop (xdsl and cable modems) becomes more abundant.
Hope this helps.
Leeza Rodriguez |
