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Strategies & Market Trends : Rande Is . . . HOME -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: xcr600 who wrote (10561)	8/8/1999 1:18:00 PM
From: Rande Is	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 57584

. . . . WIRELESS vs. CABLE vs. xDSL. . . . . XCR and all, I think at some point you have to ask yourself. . . "What will my conservative mid-western middle class parents or aunt or mail carrier or next-door neighbor or the guy that fixes my car do when faced with a choice of broadband formats????" Assuming that wireless, xDSL and Cable all have similar capabilities. . . Will that group of consumers go wireless and carry a notebook or wearable PC around with them everywhere they go and spend a hundred or two hundred per month in service charges, so they can stay linked to the information highway from the grocery store or local bar or wherever they might be? Do they live in a densely populated area that will be best served by xDSL tied into their personal computers via an xDSL encode/decode modem. . . then pay 50 bucks per month extra for premium high-speed internet access via their home Personal Computer? Or do they live in suburbia. . . and will they add on to their existing cable TV service and allow the cable company to change out their current set-top box for one that receives the internet and has a cool looking remote control keypad for 'surfing the net' from their sofas at the speed of light for 50 bucks per month over their current cable bill? The answer to, "which of these competing formats will be the winner?" lies somewhere in the answer to that question. Personally, I believe all will co-exist and appeal to different segments of the population in the same manner that some people prefer to be tied to home PCs, while others would rather carry notebook computers. . . .or another analogy is how some people prefer to carry cell phones, while many would not be caught dead with one on their possession. . .some are satisfied with pagers. . others use pay phones. . .and still others avoid communication altogether. But having spent 3 years of my life selling and marketing the set-top box with remote control keypad, with virtually the same online service capability as say, Prodigy or AOL . . .and seeing first-hand how by placing it in the family room where the TV sits. . . it brings the family closer together. . . .my vote goes squarely with the set-top box using digital cable lines, like the one that runs outside my house right now. This is the one that I believe middle America will embrace with open arms. . . and why A.T. and T. has bet so much money accordingly. In my opinion, hard core techies and business customers will prefer the wireless and will accept the high per month charges associated with it. . .while urban customers and those that have copper wire, but no digital cable lines. . .will take xDSL. People in advanced tech countries have been using wireless communications as their primary source for many years. . .and in places like France, they have had videotex attached to their telephones for 15 years. But, generally speaking, Americans are relatively slow to adopt changes in basic communications and favor the familiar to the high learning curve that is associated with paging thru menus of a wireless internet device. And I believe that the set-top box, with for example, NBC broadcasts having direct links to MSNBC data . . .which can be simultaneously viewed, while communicating directly with the network or while talking on the phone. . .will be more than enough "high-tech" for the public that makes shows like "Rosanne" number one in the country for a half dozen years. . .and that have made the TV the single most important appliance in the home. Just because we have this incredible technology.. .does not mean that the public will adopt it as their own and wish to spend their own discretionary income on hooking it up, learning how to use it and incorporating it into their daily lives. . . .heck, most Americans don't even have PCs yet and aren't planning on buying them any time soon. Rande Is