Re: UKNM: freeserve [cheaper bandwidth please]

[Sajid Mohammed]

---Stefan Magdalinski <

stefanisness [dot] org

> wrote:

[Freeserve propaganda snipped]

> 

> And Sajid, what does this say about "the market of people who want to

> get online and can't for a variety of reasons." that Interactive TV and

> thin clients are supposed to crack?


First off, without wishing to libel Freeserve, I give little credence

to this figure of 475,000. It does demonstrate however that the

consumer market is ripe for development - all credit to Freeserve for

their vision.


Yes Stefan we do all know the internet is growing thanks - I've been

using the damn thing for eight years now so I had noticed. The burning

issue around internet growth relates to penetration of the consumer

sector - the mass market which has not been sufficiently exploited in

comparison to our stateside chums.


Intel themselves have pointed out that the high cost of ownership

(thanks to the Dixons hegemony having 50% of the market) has limited

high uptake of PCs in households in the UK. Thin client technology

eliminates this problem by altering the cost structure to one where

people can rent the hardware at a relatively low-cost bundled in with

a service offering.


Yes, the lack of Java & Real support in many of the first generation

of devices coming to market will prove to be a sticking point - surely

the first stratagem of any good PR company to discredit thin clients

would be to point out the lack of extensibility in comparison to PCs.

Existing users will probably find this immensely frustrating - new

users will probably relish the zero-administration aspect of these

devices. Newbies  won't share the spiritually uplifting experience of

staying up till three in the morning trying to get MacPPP to work...


The other key aspect of InTV delivered by cable is that (hopefully)

the cable operators will be able to offer higher bandwidth at low

cost, as opposed to xDSL or Home Highway. Slow access rates via

analogue lines & modem are another deterrent factor in the growth of

the consumer market.


Longer term will people put up with a dribble of data coming down the

line at a whopping 78 bytes/sec as I was getting recently from a

certain ISP? I know NTL won't be offering fast access next year with

their analogue TV/Internet combo but I would hope and pray that C&W

are planning to offer cable modem access with their offering.


This also feeds into another debate about the high cost of telephony

which ails us all. Until Oftel get their act together and force down

the cost of getting online in style, it's going to make our collective


task all that much harder.


Are Freeserve offering free ISDN dial-up? Will C&W be offering cable

modem access? Answers please...


Sajid Mohammed

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