High Speed Internet costs (was: Email hosting)

[bscott at ntisys.com]

>> I know that, but I imagine they still need equipment.
> 
> But the point you seem to be missing is that the equipment is THE VERY
> SAME equipment which runs the already profitable cable business.

  I'm not missing it at all; I'm assuming that isn't true.

  Look, to deliver television -- even digital, pay-per-view with on-screen
menus television -- you basically have to send the same signal down the pipe
to everyone.  The bandwidth required to report the fact that "Subscriber
#14785983 purchased 'Daisy Does Dallas'" is practically insignificant.  I'm
not talking about *just* the cables feeding the last mile, here; I'm talking
about their entire network.

  Are you telling me that they built their entire digital TV distribution
network to handle symmetric two-way traffic before anyone suspected the
Internet would hit it big?  Why the hell would they do that?  Don't give me
any talk about grand visions of packet-switched networking; the cable
companies didn't see that coming any more than the telcos did.

-- 
Ben Scott <bscott at ntisys.com>
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