From Business Week, 11/30/98:
Bandwidth Woes: What A Drag
A bump has shown up on the road to Internet nirvana: Cable-TV companies may have overpromised the potential for Net access via "cable modems." Witness @Home Network, which, federal filings show, has imposed a 10-minute limit on the TV-quality movie clips its customers can download off the Net. What gives? The lack of bandwidth.
While @Home delivers data 100 times faster than standard modems, most cable companies devote only a tiny slice of their cable to Net access. And unlike phone-line modems, @Home uses a shared network. So just a few of your neighbors downloading high-resolution movies at one time will clog @Home's netowrk. "'Video on demand' at TV quality is nowhere near reality in the next fiveyears," @Home concedes.
True, cable modems are still scare. But penetration is pegged to jump 6% within two years, and more bandwidth-hogging applications are coming. No wonder Kent Oyler of rival HSA complains about @Home's big promises. "At the very least," Oyler says, "everyone should know the rules before they get on the road." Including speed limits. |
