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To: Glenn D. Rudolph who wrote (123825)	4/18/2001 10:50:48 PM
From: Victor Lazlo	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

<<<It is not expensive around here for residential use. I believe it is about $50/month. A separate phone line and one's ISP monthly cost is only $10 less. >> Actually that is a lot of money. And to make it worthwhile you need an updated computer. There are still a lot of early Pentiums out there that are working fine on dial-up. Not everyone can write off their connection and hardware costs, Glenn ! <gg> The main beneficiaries of increased broadband penetration will be the providers of pornography. They will make tons of money if it happens. But lots of folks, or most, aren't intersted in that. <<There is mulitmedia that really will only work over broadband. The other is voice over IP which is a lot less money than long distance calls. I do not know what the hold up is.>> The hold up is that regular long distance is rock bottom cheap. Why bother with jittery unreilable VOIP when you can call anywhere anytime for 4 cents/minute on a regular (good) phone?? My ld bill is about 32 bucks a month, and I would never bother with VOIP to try to save on that. Long distance voice is the best bargain going these days.

To: Glenn D. Rudolph who wrote (123825)	4/18/2001 11:47:44 PM
From: schrodingers_cat	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

Re Broadband: >It is not expensive around here for residential use. I believe it is about $50/month. A separate phone line and one's ISP monthly cost is only $10 less. I think $50/month is quite expensive for the average family. Some things people use the internet for, like e-mail and instant messaging, work quite well on ordinary dial-up service. I don't think voice over IP will matter because long distance voice is already quite cheap. I don't think voice over IP would save enough to justify the cost of the connection I think multimedia will eventually be the killer app for broadband. Napster has shown the way. People like on demand access to audio and video entertainment, if the price is right. The trouble is, the right price may be quite low. Another problem is that the broadband connection would have to be hooked up to the TV in the family room rather than the computer in the study for this to really take off. It'll take a few years for people to reorganize their homes for this. Another possibility is some sort of on-line video game craze, but I don't see parents paying $50/month so Jr. can blast his friends to bits in high definition. More likely is some sort of on-line access to education. School lessons or college lectures distributed, on demand, over broadband connections. People would be willing to pay for this but it'll take years to get the education system to accept it. Bottom line: I don't see anything which will drive roll out of broadband over the next year or so. I think it will be several years and some price reductions before it becomes widespread. Which brings me to Moore's law. If broadband costs fall along with Moore's law (I'm not sure if this is true) then in two years time broadband may be available for about the same cost as dial-up. I guess that installation would still be costly but the price of the equipment should drop.