Be that as it may, I don't think current methods and techniques in use = will scale well to fully replace antennas, satellite and cable to = provide tv and radio signals. =20 (remembering for example the recent discussion about multicast) =20 They won't, but, that's not what consumers think about when they decide = where to get their content.
Consumers look at convenience, cost, and availability. In some cases, = quality also enters the picture.
If you don't believe that consumer content acquisition is shifting away = from traditional methods towards internet-oriented mechanisms rapidly, = you haven't been paying attention to the bandwidth growth at Netflix as = just one example. Hulu, Youtube, and even the various networks own = web-based episode streaming services are all additional examples that = cannot be ignored.
We're going to have to either find a way to convince consumers to change = direction, or, we're going to have to develop new methods and techniques = that will scale to fully replace antennas, satellite, and cable because = that's what consumers are starting to do.
I've been arguing that we're going to see this for years now and even so it comes up and catches me a bit unaware at times. I can think of two trivial examples. I used to like doing long-haul driving on the weekends because it'd give me a chance to listen to "Car Talk" and a few other things that I found amusing ways to keep myself from being totally bored. With the advent of podcasts, I got away from that... it became possible to download them and stick them on an iPod so I could listen to my convenience. But wait... it gets worse... now I can run an app on a phone that actually downloads the podcast over the cellular internet and plays it to me on demand, so I don't even need to plan ahead and download prior to leaving the house or office. From a network operator's perspective, this is worst-case behaviour because it's using a scarce resource (cell bw) for something that I could have done on normal Internet in advance, but from a convenience point of view, I get to ditch having to worry about iTunes and syncing and all that - I just ask for the content when I actually want it. It works. I feel moderately justified in saying that I pay for the privilege, given what the carrier charges for cell data. It's so *convenient.* I also picked up an Aluratek AIRMM01 clock radio a while back because I wanted to be able to have a radio that played a specific kind of music in a specific room, without much advertising. While I had originally planned to load up a USB thumb drive with some CD's worth of content I already had, upon plugging the thing in and playing with it a bit, it fairly easily hooked up to our wifi, and had a really massive list of available stations, including some of the type I was looking for, and which I've yet to hear any advertising on. From a network operator's perspective, it'd be much better for me to load up a USB flash with some content and let it play that, but from a user's perspective, it's actually more convenient to just let it stream audio over the Internet. Both of these represent use cases where the outcomes were not what I had originally envisioned, and are causing more load on bits of the Internet than what's ideally required. Your average person cares a whole lot less about what's crossing their Internet connection than they care about whether or not "this works" than I do. I continue to be amazed at the quality of Netflix video coming across the wire. Our local cable company just recently upped their old 7M/512K normal tier to 10M/1M, and is now offering much higher speed tiers as well, which isn't going to be discouraging to anyone wanting to do this sort of thing. I guess the most telling bit of all this was when I found myself needing an ethernet switch behind the TV, AND WAS ABLE TO FILL ALL THE PORTS, for Internet-capable TV set Internet-capable Blu-Ray player Networkable TiVo AppleTV Video Game Console Networked AV Receiver UPS and an uplink of course. 8 ports. Geez. That keeps striking me as such a paradigm shift. ... JG -- Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net "We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN) With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.