Interview with Tom Jermoluk: part7
No Place Like @Home
page 7: Scammers
You've had problems with people hogging bandwidth. Is that
something you can fix? Yeah. The benefit of running your own
network is [that] you have the knob to turn. What happened in
Fremont [had to do] with a group [that was transmitting] animal porn,
child porn and all [that] kind of crap. These people were setting up
servers in their homes, downloading and updating this stuff 24 hours a
day and serving it out of their homes to other people [using our
service]. Then we found there were 12 people running MP3 music
servers out of their homes with our service. [MP3 is a standard for
compressing digitized music for downloading via the Internet.]
There's no way that for $40 a month we can give people the kind of
bandwidth [to run] commercial businesses [from] their homes, so we
put in controls to stop that. But then [people] called their local
newspapers and city councils and [said], "The cable guys are being
bad." The city council [members] don't understand the technologies,
they just think, "The cable guys are acting bad again."
So how do you fight scammers? The first time you try to shut them off,
they either sue you or scream [about] freedom of speech.
Orlando experience
What went wrong with the Orlando Time Warner broadband
cable trial? (Between 1994 and 1997, Time Warner offered an
experimental interactive-TV service called Full Service
Network to 4,000 homes in Orlando; the company pulled the
plug because the program was costing it too much money.) What
did you learn from that experience? As a technology experiment, it
was great. As a consumer experience, the problem was that the Full
Service Network [program] was done before the Web took off, and
we didn't have an API--no way for people to get us applications or
content because there wasn't a Web yet. As a result, any time you
wanted to get an application to order pizza or postage stamps, for
example, you had to find some company to build something. Of
course, these [companies all said], "You [only have] 4,000 homes.
Why should we build this? You'll [have] to pay us a lot of money." So,
we never got the breadth of content we needed to make the Full
Service Network commercially deployable.
It was a little ahead of its time. It was. [The Web] standardized the
interface, much like what happened [with] PCs. The lesson I took
[from] that is that no matter what, use the Web. Don't invent anything
proprietary for broadband. Use the Web API. Run a standard client, a
standard server interface, [and] let 100 percent of the content on.
Don't try [to create] your own content.
I think the Achilles' heel of AOL is that they're running a proprietary
client and a proprietary content interface, so the only things they
[display come from companies that] are playing ball with them.
Consumers want choice--to be able to go anywhere and see anything.
I think that will be [AOL's] downfall. They've recognized [the problem
and have] bought Netscape, [and] they're going to try to figure out
how to move into a standard Web environment. That will be hard
because it's not their culture.
For a long time, it appeared that you were on the verge of doing
something serious with AOL. How did that get off track, and is
that bridge irrevocably damaged? I don't think [the damage is]
irrevocable. Certainly, [AOL's] decision to fight us in the regulatory
arena pissed off a lot of people.
AOL is demanding access to your network. Yeah. If that's the way
they want to go, then it's kind of like, "[OK, it's] flamethrowers at 40
feet." I kept saying, "We're ready to do a deal." The problem was
[that] they never wavered. Their deal was simple: "You guys be a
dumb pipe. We own the subscribers, and we own the content." You
know what? That doesn't work anymore! If you want to share the
subscribers, I'm all ears. If you want to share the content, I'm all ears.
But don't cut me out of the equation. What, do you think I'm stupid?
I tried one deal after another, and [AOL always] came back with the
same deal. I finally said, "Forget it." [Then] they [went] to the
regulatory thing. And they lost. They didn't stop the [AT&T-TCI]
merger. Now what do you want to do? Fight another two or three
years? Slog it out in Congress? Or do you want to [make] a damn
deal? I'm ready to listen, but they [have] to get off the "dumb transport"
thing. |
