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Strategies & Market Trends : ahhaha's ahs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KailuaBoy who wrote (9)	10/8/2000 1:56:04 AM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 24758

"ATHM has the opportunity to offer a premium service through hosting content directly on the network and by managing the delivery all the way to the consumer." Yes, that is the way it would seem today. Read my post on FCTF that explains how Home is now being viewed as just another contender for bandwidth on T's own systems in the open access trials now taking place. Home has a huge head start. They pioneered this stuff. And logic would dictate that they should be able to maintain a lead. But logic and monopoly-based circumstances rarely meet at an equitable place. It was once strategically advantageous for the MSOs to maintain a system that had limited capacity. No more. Now they must stake a claim on some other part of the spectrum on their systems and claim it for themselves. The part of the spectrum and its associated technology that I am referring to is the part that feeds the set top boxes, not the cable modems. Cable modems will yield crumbs and leftovers, by the time the fairness freaks have their way with open access on a system that was never designed to support more than one operator. The STB stuff will rake in the bucks. Where VoD and interactives will never be suitable over CM -- especially if the other 6000 ISPs want to share a measly 20 or 30 usable Mb/s at best in the downstream, and a couple of meg in the up -- these services are, by design, the fruit of the STB. I am referring to the MSOs' present HFC-based platforms. Not those of future FTTH systems. "Maybe ATHM can back off of just the faster Internet access model and set themselves apart as a niche premium intelligent content delivery network." Yes, like you say, maybe. But not very likely. Not if they are going to depend on the six megahertz chunks which are about to be carved up like so many food stamps and doled out to the other ISPs. As @Home continues to contemplate how they are going to ever manage to do VoD and interactive broadband over the CMTS allocated channel, T and the other MSOs are quietly planning ways to circumvent these problems, despite the help they have received from Washington, by utilizing channels that are available through the set top box. The latter will allow them to garner non-open-Internet related fees in the process. Proprietary pays, Internet weighs. If you read the articles I've cited (URLs posted below) you'll note that they say pretty much the same thing: The largest MSOs are, IMO, settting up the ISPs -- including their own @Home and R/R -- for a sacrificial fall. The MSOs, IMO, fully intend to do an end run around the established cable modem plays by utilizing their two-way capabilities inherent in both today's and tomorrow's STBs. STB channels, btw, that the Home and RR folks don't have a title to. And this is why TWX and AOL want these stricken, or not mentioned at all, in their merger talks. The biggest gamble they face is whether the government and the open access advocates have their way in including the STB in the process of effecting a broader set of open access policies. Read: "AOL Time Warner: What's Up With Set-Tops?" broadbandweek.com A message that I recently sent to Graciella-Bella, concerning the same subject: Message 14499384 Then read this sidebar piece: broadbandweek.com From which: "Notably, Excite@Home-also AT&T's exclusive managed backbone provider, through 2002-is participating as an ISP and won't be orchestrating the trial, as it originally had hoped. That means Excite@Home, just like the other nine ISPs, needs to write software interfaces that work with AT&T's home-grown set of specs-about how to hook up customers, link to billing systems, handle trouble tickets, and behave on the network." Behave, indeed. What a slap in the face. But like they say, that's show biz. FAC