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To: sillen who wrote (3304)	12/3/1998 11:05:00 AM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Respond to of 29970

sillen, >>I personally think TCI and the alike was/is caught off guard by the digital revolution/high speed Internet access/interactive etc.<< I think that the folks in MIT Media Labs were also caught off guard, for that matter. >> The cableco's has yet to define what high-speed Internet access means.<< Bravo. that is one of my major points as well. But not to dole all of the blame on the cablecos and the telcos, I don't think that the other SPs, the ISPs, say, know what they want to deliver past the horizon either. >> They are still struggling to figure out how to bill the ISP's using their infrastructure today. Since the cableco's didn't see the digital revolution coming and didn't believe in the Internet in time they now have to be defensive; by, charging the consumer more for less while their infrastructure gets more and more outdated.<< Well said. >>As the last mile "pipewidth" increases Internet/Phone/Tv will merge into one service and that is something the cableco's has to turn their strategies towards in order to stay competitive.<< This too is an elusive concept, for if the state of the art elevates to the point where IP Telephony, or cable-iphony, is viable, then the gates are open for anyone to enter it. One does not need to own a head end to play this game, in other words. What we are beginning to see now is the formation of virtual overlays of what used to be traditional services over dedicated lines, where the new providers can be just about anywhere, as long as they have IP connectivity to distribution centers. Your next comment, either knowingly or not, begins to touch upon this point as well: >>Then again who says AtHome can't partner with a company such as Level 3 for last mile access or am I totally off?<< L3 is among the players I'm referring to. Their ultimate means of penetration will not be exclusively through their physical facilities deployments, rather, through connectivity at... you guessed it, Level 3, a.k.a., Layer 3 of the OSI Reference Model: the Internet Protocol. [Or by one of IP's mutations or heirs.]