[opendtv] Re: Broadband legal limbo lingers
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 7 Apr 2004 09:26:02 -0400
At 8:33 PM -0400 4/6/04, Tom Barry wrote:
>I am not even sure why portals need to exist, much less why consumers
>would pay for them. Marketing people like the idea they will become
>some sort of gatekeepers but the benefits are more for those marketing
>people, not the customer. And I think the customers are already sort
>of aware of this.
>
>But if you are already providing a consumer communication line of some
>sort it is probably effective to also provide basic ISP services like
>email and basic web hosting. Much of the cost of these is just in
>customer billing and support so the incremental cost is fairly small
>when you are already billing and supporting that customer.
>
>And that is probably also why no one can make much of a competitive
>business doing them as a separate value added service.
Clearly there are incremental profits for the cable systems from the
provisioning of e-mail and web hosting services. But there are also
incremental costs. The ability to provide multiple services via one
bill is a major advantage for the cable companies.
But the distributed nature of the Internet makes the physical
location of your e-mail and web sites irrelevant. And for high volume
users there are a number of service businesses in place to deal with
quality of service issues. Thus, if you are in the business of
delivering large quantities of video streams, you may use a service
like Akamai, which uses MANY servers to get your streams close to the
point of delivery.
And we are all aware of business models where e-mail and web hosting
are essentially free, typically paid for by the insertion of
advertising.
Bottom line, I can see no harm to cable companies by opening up their
lines to competitors. I was a very happy Earthlink subscriber, but
dropped the service when I moved up to Broadband. I would sign up
with earthlink again if I could get a broadband connection through
them. Why?
Because Earthlink ALSO maintains an extensive dial-up network that is
very useful when I travel. With Bellsouth I have free dial-up within
the states where they provide telephone service. Oustide of these
states I must use an 800 number and pay per minute charges.
Looks like all of the parties to this dispute want to fast track the
final decision up to the Supreme Court.
Regards
Craig
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