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To: B. A. Marlow who wrote (7488)	4/19/1999 1:22:00 AM
From: flickerful	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 17679

RealNetworks Deals Will Expand Broadcast Network Monday April 19 12:29 AM ET By Martin Wolk SEATTLE (Reuters) - RealNetworks Inc. (Nasdaq:RNWK - news) Monday will announce deals with some of the nation's biggest telecommunications companies that will vastly expand access to its emerging Internet broadcast network, executives said. The deals with AT&T Corp. (NYSE:T - news), Sprint Corp. (NYSE:FON - news) and others will help pave the way for an era when Internet broadcasts are routinely viewed by television-size audiences of one million people or more, executives of the Seattle-based Internet software company said. ''This is an important issue to grapple with,'' said Len Jordan, a senior vice president of the company. He pointed out that in the past year events broadcast over the Internet including President Clinton's grand jury testimony, Sen. John Glenn's return to space, and a Victoria's Secret fashion show have attracted audiences of unprecedented size. The lingerie fashion show in particular underscored the shortcomings of the Internet as a broadcast medium. Only about one in 50 people who tried were able to access the show at the appointed hour, and those who did generally were greeted by poor, fuzzy images. Jordan said RealNetworks' system can handle larger audiences by distributing content from the company's Seattle broadcast center through a network of servers and hubs to individual users. ''We're trying to be cautious in terms of any expectation setting but what we can say is fairly quickly millions of additional users will be able to access this distributed network,'' Jordan said. ''That will mean better quality as well as more scalability.'' The Real Broadcast Network was launched in August 1997 as a joint venture with MCI WorldCom, but Monday's announcement will disclose that AT&T, Sprint and GTE Corp. (NYSE:GTE - news) have also adopted the architecture. In addition to such Internet ''backbone'' providers, the network of servers and hubs is being extended to some of the biggest Internet service providers including Earthlink, Mindspring and Concentric, bringing the content that much close to the user. RealNetworks also is teaming with Enron Corp. (NYSE:ENE - news), an energy giant expanding into communications, to offer Internet broadcasts over high-speed fiber optic lines, a key component in allowing a breakthrough to television-like quality. Competing multimedia architectures are being promoted by Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) and Broadcast.com, soon to be acquired by Yahoo! Inc. But with 85 percent of so-called streaming media broadcasts done using RealNetworks software, the Seattle-based company is the market leader, and its stock has soared accordingly this year. ''Right now they're the company to beat,'' said analyst Rob Enderle of Giga Information Group. ''This does make it very clear that not only are they a player, they are one of the significant players in the space, and it certainly shows a potential maturing of the Internet broadcast arena.''