To: Steve E. Boney who wrote (20139 ) 2/5/1998 9:27:00 AM From: ENOTS Respond to of 36349
here is the start of the article.. by Rob Gebeloff Frames: [Enable] [Disable] Listen to Rob Gebeloff's comments in Money Clips Telcos Beginning to See the Light(ning) February 4, 1998 -- I have two recurring dreams. In one, I'm being served a heaping hot fudge sundae. I'm plowing my spoon into the layers of whipped cream. But before I can steal a bite, I wake up. Then there's that Internet bandwidth dream. It's early in the morning and I'm double-clicking on my e-mail box. Strangely, my modem doesn't dial the phone. It just blinks silently. My screen says I have new mail, but how could that be? I didn't see that long gray bar that tells me mail is downloading. I click on the first message and instead of seeing words, I see Linda, my wife. She's speaking to me via video e-mail. "I got to work real early today," she says, "so make sure you give Lola half a can of Senior Friskies before you leave for work." At that, my cat leaps onto the desk and let out a meow to second the motion. Video e-mail? I wonder what's on the Web. I launch my Web browser and under the heading "TOP STORIES", I look for the latest headlines. Instead, I see an MSNBC logo and live footage from the Today Show. Al Roker is going bobsledding. I'm horrified and repulsed, yet intrigued. What's going on with my machine? I click on the word "SPORTS" and next to where I usually see the basketball box scores, I'm treated to a highlight reel from last night's games. I look at the little modem icon on my screen and it reports that I'm taking in 1 megabit of data per second, 35 times faster than normal! As I click from game to game, replaying the Knicks win over the Heat several times, I'm interrupted by a phone ringing. A phone ringing? How can the phone next to my computer be ringing if I'm already online? I pick it up. It's my wife. S he wants to make sure I got the e-mail. My cat yelps again in approval. And that's when I wake up, usually. I run to my computer and turn it on. Drat! Same old 28.8 Kbps modem. Same old static Web pages. And Al Roker still has his own Web site. Yes, I've been having the bandwidth dream for almost two years now, ever since I began following the race between the cable industry and the phone companies to build a new world order in Internet access. This new world will be very much like my dreams -- super-fast modems and super-rich content flowing over the Net. In essence, these two industries are trying to see who can be faster than fastest.