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To: Paul Engel who wrote (90690)	10/20/1999 4:43:00 PM
From: Barry Grossman	Respond to of 186894

Paul and all, Anticipated Explosive Growth of Entertainment on the Internet May Create Gridlock Problem Industry Must Deal With, Internet Exec Says News provided by Business Wire Oct 20, 10:15 am AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands, Oct 20, 1999 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- The quantity and variety of entertainment available to consumers on the Internet will increase dramatically in the next few years, and in so doing will create tremendous opportunities for investors, an Internet company executive said today. "But this surge of new traffic is likely to create some problems that the industry must deal with or face the threat of government regulation, " said Jan Brzeski, chairman and chief executive officer of STV Communications Inc., Santa Monica, Calif. The occasion for Brzeski's remarks was "Streaming Media Europe '99," a conference billed as Europe's largest Internet audio and video event. Streaming media is the term used to describe the delivery of video and audio over the Internet. Brzeski, whose company does encoding and hosting of streaming media, said the coming explosive growth of programming available over the Internet will increase consumers' choices far more than cable television did. "There will be much more vertical, niche-market programming," Brzeski predicted. "Almost every group, even those that are very narrowly focused, will be have their own special shows. Not only will there be `The Dog Channel,' there will also be `The Great Dane Channel' and `The Dachshund Channel'." To bring this huge wave of new content to consumers, a great deal of infrastructure must be built, Brzeski said. "Some of this is already being put in place but so far it's just a trickle," the STV Communications CEO said. As an example, Brzeski cited the recent announcement by Intel Corp. that it will install 8,000 server computers in its new data centers. "Assuming that only 20 percent of those servers will be used for streaming media -- and I think that's a reasonable assumption -- the number of people that can be reached will be only in the tens of thousands," Brzeski said. "But the number who want entertainment on the Internet will in the tens of millions." At the same time, Brzeski said, more and more companies will be using the Internet to communicate with offices near and far, and to educate employees. This all adds up to a bonanza of investment opportunities, Brzeski said. "Some of the big winners will be AT&T, MCI, Qwest and the other Tier One Internet service providers. But others will be companies that aren't even on the drawing board yet." Brzeski noted that there have been predictions of gridlock on the Internet as a result of the growth of streaming media traffic. "Streaming media has been criticized because it tends to crowd out data and other types of traffic," Brzeski said. "It's like a fire engine racing down the street with its sirens blaring and its red lights flashing. It doesn't obey traffic laws, and everyone else has to stop and pull over until it passes." Most Internet traffic is sent in "packets" that are separated by seconds or fractions of a second, causing no problem for the parties receiving them, Brzeski said. "But if streaming media music or video is to be enjoyed, it can't be broken up into packets. Imagine listening to a song or watching a movie and having the flow constantly interrupted by one-second delays. That would ruin the experience, and few people would bother to listen or watch." What's needed, Brzeski said, "is for those of us who are driving the growth of streaming media to put our heads together and come up with solutions to this potential problem." Although the Internet creates some challenges, "they make this industry exciting and present great opportunities," Brzeski said. "If we work together to address the traffic-congestion issue, everyone will benefit -- consumers and industry alike."