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

To: John Stichnoth who wrote (7295)	6/12/2000 6:39:00 AM
From: MikeM54321	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12823

Re: ISP or SP- Does it really matter? John and Thread- Thanks for all the great commentary from everyone on the open/forced access debate. Overall I got the feeling from most that upcoming multiple access broadband pipes do seem, or will, make it moot debate. After reading all the responses I'm of the belief that it's somewhat a shame that the term, "ISP," ever developed. As more access pipes are being developed, the role of the ISP is merging in a similar manner voice, video, and data will. IMO by creating the term ISP, it opened the door to competitor's throwing up roadblocks in front of each other to stop a quicker competitor from advancing. If you really think about it, who cares who the ISP is? As I've mentioned before, I have no idea who mine is. I never will. As far as I'm concerned, it's just an on-ramp to the Internet with a hundred million options for content selection. Yes a home page can be given to you initially by an ISP. But within five seconds, you can change it. Pop! There goes the ISP eyeball/ear initial contact advantage. My feeling, as time goes on, the term ISP may indeed drop from our vocabulary. An access pipe will be an access pipe. Subscribers won't even know what means of access they are using, much less who the ISP happened to be that provides their on-ramp to information highway. Heck, I bet you most don't even know where their electricity comes from and probably fewer, where their water comes from. Electricity comes from the outlet, water comes from the tap. That is all that matters. As witnessed in the AOL/Time Warner example, the ISP- AOL simply dropped the issue of 'open access' once they teamed with SP- Time Warner's broadband pipe. I hope as other ISPs do similar deals, this whole open/forced access debate dies out to nothing. So IMHO the entire ISP issue today is simply 'noise' that ultimately hurts the consumers as it delays broadband access infrastructure spending plans. -MikeM(From Florida)