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Technology Stocks : LAST MILE TECHNOLOGIES - Let's Discuss Them Here -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MikeM54321 who wrote (5851)	11/5/1999 8:51:00 AM
From: Valueman	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 12823

If the thread would be so kind, I would love to hear suggestions involving not the "last mile", but the "last hundred yards." I have a new house in the works, and would appreciate any and all suggestions as to how to wire it up before the sheetrock entombs the structure. It is a satellite TV and dial up connection area for now, but I retain hope for faster access coming to the neighborhood in the future. What should one install now that would save that sheetrock from being disturbed in the future? Networking, internet, video, and audio are the keys for me.

To: MikeM54321 who wrote (5851)	11/8/1999 12:33:00 PM
From: elmatador	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 12823

Too LESS capacity yada yada... Broadband Broadcasting: Revolutionary And Dangerous By David Haskin Managing editor, allNetDevices November 8, 1999 -- Despite thousands of miles of high speed fiber being put in the ground in recent years, despite fast technology like DSL becoming widely available, there will never be enough bandwidth. We thought the speaker who said that at the recent ISPCON show was being melodramatic. Then we walked onto the show floor for a demonstration of a new generation of set-top box and software for ISPs that convinced us he was right. This is broadband broadcasting and it's revolutionary stuff. In the short term, however, it's also dangerous. It works like this. You missed your family reunion, so you turn on your television and broadband set-top box. From a simple on-screen portal interface, you select a video of the gathering that a cousin produced. Stored on a remote server, the video plays on-demand and full-screen at a flicker-free 30 frames per second via your home DSL connection. This revolution is happening now. The set-top boxes and server-side software will be available within months. The people who bring you fast connections -- ISPs and Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (CLECs) -- love it because it gives them a powerful weapon in their war against the Baby Bell telephone companies. This technology is revolutionary because it democratizes audio and video broadcasting the same way that the Gutenberg printing press and the Web democratized publishing text. Now, anybody with a HTML editor and a little bit of server space can spew their text rant to the world. Soon, if you have a videocam or recording equipment and the right ISP you can be a radio or TV broadcaster. The danger: There's not enough bandwidth for this revolution. At least that's what David Schwartz, president of ImaginOn, the company that makes the portal software, has the guts to admit. He thinks the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) can solve the problem by allowing Internet signals to piggyback on standard television signals. There's a tremendous irony here. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) often is thought to be in the hip pocket of the big broadcasters, who will hate this technology once they figure it out. After all, they're already nervous about people abandoning Dharma and Greg in favor of their Web browser. As a result, the FCC is unlikely to seriously consider Schwartz's proposal. Yet the FCC helped create this revolution with its implementation of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. That legislation opened the way to telephony competition that, in turn, has led to rapidly expanding broadband services such as DSL. And the spread of DSL has led to everybody's-a-broadcaster set-tops and software. From the beginning, the Internet has been about wresting control of information from the few and giving it to the many, and that's what this new technology is about, too. If it catches on in the short-term, however, it may kill the goose that laid the golden Internet egg by clogging the Net and driving people back to Dharma and Greg. Then, the broadcasters will have won. The solution? CLECs, those companies that brought competition to communications, can prevent this problem by being even more aggressive in bringing more low-cost bandwidth to more people. allnetdevices.com