To: Patrice Gigahurtz who wrote (83163 ) 5/13/2002 12:58:33 AM From: Rob S. Read Replies (3) | Respond to This is certainly a much better time for acquisitions to take place than it was 2 or four years ago when prices were much higher. But I think a large part of the problem is that there has been a massive amount of spending on communications technology before it's time. Much of the technology was immature or inappropriate and much of it was put in with a false vision for what the user would want. Take DSL for instance. Can you do digital video using the existing DSL that's been put in over the past few years? Not really. Yea, you can do some funky, jittery, sometimes OK and sometimes not version of DVB but not the kind of "turn on the damn television my program is on" idiot simple and available broadcast people are accustomed to getting over regular analog video. That sort of capability in digital broadcast takes a richer server network and a larger bandwidth pipe than DSL can provide. What about cable? Cable can deliver the bandwidth needed IF it is not bogged down too much and if some other factors, such as latency of the Internet connections is not too great. So when would everyone want to watch DVB? The same times they watch TV. Drive by the average neighborhood and the answer is easy to see; the glow of TVs in the evening. Another hot time in the morning. Can the existing cable infrastructure handle to load of the "net big thing" . . . DVB? Not currently and not without a massive new round of infrastructure build. Technically cable should be able to deliver as much bandwidth as is needed. I guess from a technical standpoint so can DSL. New technologies, such as multi-line DSL that uses spatial and frequency diversity and newer technology cable can technically deliver over 1 Gbps of bandwidth to each user. . . technically. But that will take a massive amount of infrastructure, even much more than has already been spent. If you can't do DVB with the current infrastructure then what big aps will make it sell faster or for even more money? I don't think there is any. In fact, I think the public and corporations expect cable, DSL and wireless to go down in price, not up.
