High Speed Internet costs (was: Email hosting)

[Travis Roy]

> I not sure how this applies to ATTBI (Cable) 
> technology, which I thought brought this to the 
> surface.  I seem to remember hearing once at a 
> MediaOne presentation that the cable companies 
> had a huge amount of bandwidth available (TV 
> used very little), and they actually had their 
> hardware throttling back their customers.

This is true, during training about how the cable modem works from one
of the guys that helped build it he said something to the effect that
the cable modem users could run 10meg both ways with no problems.. Of
course, you would need a HUGE pipe to the internet.
 
> I also thought she said something about the 
> main problem was upgrading the cable network 
> (neighborhoods), but due to cable's design it 
> was extremely easy to upgrade the central 
> locations (heads?) as more customers signed up.  
> If this were the truly the case, wouldn't it 
> be true that there should be no need for any 
> change in speeds and/or major equipment 
> upgrades at this point?  This would reflect 
> directly on the rate increases which started 
> this little thread.

Right, all they would need to do is upgrade the headend equipment and
the servers.. The actual transport would only need to be worked on if
some idiot hit a telephone poll or something equally bad brought down
the physical line.