To: Paul Fiondella who wrote (28213 ) 9/22/1999 9:04:00 PM From: Steve Hufnagle Respond to
SI Inbox (2) | Folders Bookmarks | People Hot | New Subjects Options | Profile biz.yahoo.com of the deal between Akamai (to IPO next month under ticker AKAM) and FRO (soon to be merged into GBLX). The point to realize is that within a very few years the net will be the communications infrastructure for everything: voice, data, video, TV, etc. Consider the logistics of broadcasting the Superbowl, Olympics, or the World Cup finals to the world via the net. While the backbones will carry the main load you need local caching to handle the snarls and to smooth out the "jitter" that would otherwise result in such massive multicasting. Storage on demand means that the network can provide automatic buffering for preloaded content (e.g., commercials, especially regional ones) as well as handle the separate commentator and replay features that different locations will demand. This isn't 20th-century TV. An Italian businessman in a hotel in Sao Paolo may well wish to listen to an extended interview with the Italian goalkeeper being held by an interviewer from Milan which would be of limited interest to the local Brazilian audience. gildertech.com and spend 4 shares of EMC for a subscription to the Gilder Technology Report. While EMC is not one of Mr. Gilder's companies, GBLX and many others are and his track record in identifying tomorrow's tech leaders is little short of amazing.
