| Sort of makes sense Lots of pros and cons, but the big picture might well turn out to be a forcing of hands...the comment about getting our video over the internet is really the twist, especially in light of the providers wishing to charge the content providers for bandwidth.
Think about it...
Some of us will pay for a bundle of 6-10 channels we watch regularly.
Some of us will pay for "unlimited" channels.
Some of us still won't pay to watch any tv.
Not very much unlike the internet business model.
Some folks are willing to pay for prepackaged content from their ISP is a "safe" zone (former AOL customers).
Some of us are willing to pay for the 5 to 20 web sites we use daily (excluding search engine results, p2p, etc...). I'm talking www-based "services", such as BBR, Itunes...
Some folks still don't find value in anything connected with the internet.
Should the government drive this? Not sure I am one to say, but obviously the marketplace hasn't really responded to differentiate and their does appear to be a tendency of the large incumbents to settle into a cozy oligopoly.
Imagine making cell phones a mass market product like the old wireline phones bought cheaply at wal-mart. Bring choices to the consumer market and the populace will speak.
Content over the internet will require subscriptions with each content provider, rather than via the incumbent. That's really all ALA Cart appaears to envision as desirable. It certainly is ILEC friendly given their design to utilize IP as the delivery protocol from the start...
Anyhoo...just another idea to toss in the mix. |
