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Technology Stocks : The *NEW* Frank Coluccio Technology Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MikeM54321 who wrote (488)	7/21/2000 6:07:58 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Respond to of 46821

Mike, "Say you do the above. Say it's works incredibly well. Then what is to keep the hundreds of millions of content providers, ISPs, anyone and their brother with a iMAC and digital video camcorder, from going to the FCC and crying Foul!" You may have read my mentioning an initiative known as "OVS" in the past. Your question reminds me of it. Open Video Service, or OVS, was an attempt (I believe initiated by the FCC) which was conceived as a kind of "equal access" vehicle for program and content providers over switched media. There was much talk about this five or six years ago when the Bell Atlantic and TCI folks almost went to bed with one another other, but found that they couldn't even live through a one night stand. They and some of the other RBOCs at the time were touting the imminent delivery of switched digital video (SDV) over ADSL, if you recall, which never materialized until recently. ADSL never lived up to its earlier promise, but now there seems to be some proof that xDSLs may get (indeed, now it appears that they "will") at least a piece of the video market. Notwithstanding, the concept and use of the term OVS died down to less than a whisper. I don't recall the last time I've read the term except aside from on my own screen. But, just as you have raised the point as an outsider, I'm sure that there will be plenty of impetus from would be providers going forward, and we may (if one hasn't already been initiated) see another attempt at open video service again, just as we've gone through the open access over HFC by the independent ISPs led by AOL... [as an aside, er,.... what is AOL's position on this now that they own the second largest provider of cable tv modem service? I think that they are embracing it, right? But when will they deliver it? Isn't marketecture great... ] But we're no longer only talking about DSL here, because the enhanced set top box now facilitates the same kind of delivery via head end switching and upstream servers. And probably better than lower speed DSLs can. A main potential difference, however, between DSL and cable modem I think will be the element of choice. Through DSL, an end user may go to whatever site they choose on the 'Net, whereas, I anticipate the MSOs dictating what forms of content will be available via STB, for the most part. Although, they, too, claim to be allowing access to the 'Net via their STBs at some point, but for what purposes, I don't know. I think we'll see a lot of variation and some individual adaptations of STB features over the spread of existing MSOs and independent operators.

To: MikeM54321 who wrote (488)	7/21/2000 11:24:13 PM
From: gpowell	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 46821

Say you do the above. Say it's works incredibly well. Then what is to keep the hundreds of millions of content providers, ISPs, anyone and their brother with a iMAC and digital video camcorder, from going to the FCC and crying Foul! Nothing. But in so far as VoD, switched digital video, and streaming content are not telecommunication services, the FCC will not have jurisdiction. Therefore, the screaming rabble will have to negotiate with the MSO's for access, as any cable only channel does now.