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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla Game Investing in the eWorld -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: StockHawk who wrote (93)	9/4/1999 1:24:00 PM
From: Brian K Crawford	Respond to of 1817

StockHawk, that was a very informative overview of high bandwidth options! Thank you. Brian

To: StockHawk who wrote (93)	9/4/1999 4:30:00 PM
From: NY Stew	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1817

Stockhawk, Thanks for the overview. Any comments on this article? Broadband Week for September 6, 1999 Telcos Move Closer To Video Over ADSL By FRED DAWSON September 6, 1999 Internet-based technical innovations coming this fall promise to bring entertainment services closer to reality for telcos and other entities deploying ADSL links. Examples can be found in the service territories of NBTel in the Canadian province of New Brunswick and Kingston Communications Group in the East Yorkshire region of England. Those companies have begun commercial offerings of digital-TV services over asymmetrical-digital-subscriber lines in preparations for full-scale rollouts in the weeks ahead. In both cases, the companies are deploying "headend-in-a-box" hardware from PixStream Inc., in conjunction with the digital-TV operating system developed by iMagicTV Inc., to offer customers a full slate of TV services delivered in MPEG-2 format via Internet-protocol-multicasting technology. At the same time, in unrelated developments that represent further advances in Web-based entertainment, Internet content providers are turning to two suppliers of a new type of distribution service that could overcome Internet bottlenecks that impede video delivery. Akamai Technologies Inc. and Sandpiper Networks Inc. are offering Web-site owners services that deliver content to Internet-service providers' points of presence using proprietary technology that greatly enhances caching and other speed-up techniques. Such developments were once of little concern to major telephone companies. But the threat of bundled full-service competition from AT&T Corp. and other MSOs made incumbent carriers realize the danger of not having TV services to go with high-speed-data and voice services, PixStream vice president of marketing David Caputo said. "Besides the deals with NBTel and Kingston, we have trials under way with five carriers, including one large incumbent in the United States and one in Canada," he added. While ADSL doesn't represent the ultimate answer to meeting the cable-TV threat, it is proving to be a more viable bridge to digital TV than many had thought -- thanks partly to capabilities represented by the PixStream/iMagicTV combination. NBTel, for instance, is offering the full slate of government-approved TV services -- representing 76 channels, along with 30 digital-audio channels -- over full-rate ADSL links. That capacity could expand to hundreds of channels if services were available, said Marcel LeBrun, president and CEO of iMagicTV, which is owned in part by NBTel parent Aliant Inc. "The data rates on their ADSL lines range from a minimum of 4 megabits per second to 8 mbps, so there's enough capacity to serve multiple TV sets in the home," LeBrun noted. PixStream and iMagicTV use IP multicasting between the headend and the DSLAMs (DSL-access multiplexers) that typically reside in central-office-switch enclosures. The PixStream headend takes in analog or digital video from any source, converts it to MPEG-2 and encapsulates the MPEG frames into IP packets. The IP-multicast protocol allows all of the channels to be streamed to all of the DSLAMs, and it offers a means of channel tuning that is key to keeping costs down and keeping the process simple, Caputo noted. "By employing very dense, integrated processing technology, we're able to do in a single module what it takes 10 to 20 seven-foot racks to do in an analog cable headend," Caputo said. "So telcos only have to spend $1 million to $2 million for our gear, compared to the $20 million or more they'd have to spend on traditional headends." The downside for telcos is that full-rate ADSL can't be delivered on a ubiquitous basis without major upgrades. That is why most carriers are offering a much lower-rate ADSL service as the basic-level high-speed-data service -- typically in the 384-kilobit-per-second to 768-kbps range. Even at these rates, current coverage is limited to about 60 percent of the total lines. That percentage is about to go up, though, as new equipment is designed to work with lines that are connected to remote terminals served by digital-loop carriers. But the full-rate ADSL option offers a low-cost transition into the video business for telcos, insofar as the ADSL systems they deploy can be operated at full-rate, LeBrun noted. For example, telcos that can't deliver a 5-mbps or better line rate to some customers could begin deploying fiber deeper and using the variation on DSL known as "VDSL" (very high-rate DSL), which uses shorter copper-line distances to deliver data at 26 mbps to 52 mbps. Telcos and ISPs are also exploring ways to tap enhanced content from Web sites, which can be delivered to TVs using the types of set-tops being supplied by Pace Micro Technology plc and other vendors. To do so, telcos need to deliver streamed media efficiently across the Internet and related long-haul lines -- which is where the Akamai and Sandpiper technologies come into play. "Akamai's core specialty is the ability to get content out to points of presence that are close to end-users so that just a few users are impinging on the servers at any one time," Cisco Systems Inc. vice president of marketing Larry Lang said. Cisco is working with Akamai on a Web-streaming demonstration. Akamai's system uses distributed servers to instantly deliver the initial outline of each Web page in HTML (HyperText Markup Language) format to the end-user from the closest POP, and then to tap other locations for cached content to fill out the page shells. A similar capability is being offered by Sandpiper, which recently contracted with RealNetworks Inc. to equip its servers with RNI's "G2" streaming technology. "There's a lot of attention on the last-mile problem, but there's also a first-mile issue, and that's what we're focusing on," Sandpiper president and CEO Leo Spiegel said.

To: StockHawk who wrote (93)	9/5/1999 12:06:00 AM
From: Teflon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1817

As I think your post suggests in a subtle fashion, StockHawk, the consumer is confused and so is the Street. The reality is that both DSL and Cable Modem technology will coexist over the long term, much the same as the argument over "wireline vs wireless" will in the same fashion. The real question is how do they differentiate themselves from a value proposition perspective other than trying to prove that they have the fastest service...this week anyway!!! For this very reason, as much as I love ATHM and their story, I am thinking about cashing out of my position. Teflon