Broadband is a hot news item. Everywhere people are talking about broadband. Daily we hear how broadband will revolutionize the Internet. It will be different. It will be better. It will be just what we need. The hype is building up to an expected crescendo.
Before we get too excited, why not think carefully about what broadband may do.
Last week I read two articles contributing to the hype. One, Changing Channels, by Richard Williamson, in Interactive Week, speaks of the "walled garden," interactive TV that takes viewers directly to the websites of advertisers. The author states:
"The goal is to keep the viewers on your channel and/or your sponsor's website, away from the boundless Internet flea market where rival merchants abound."
The idea is to control what the user does in the same manner AOL does. It is known that 85% of AOL users do not leave AOL for other Internet locations. Capture your viewer with eantertainment. At break time enable viewers to instaneously gratify themselves by clicking on a buy button.
The second item I read appeared in Wired magazine (May 2001). The name of the article: The Future Will Be Fast But Not Free, by Charles Platt. He says that you can not have a business if you supply eaverything free. But his major point is that broadband
"will destroy, once and for all, the egalitarian vision of the Internet."
Up to now, we have been using flat-rate pricing, he says. But this will not continue. Broadband is very expensive to maintain. Furthermore, some people will use orders of magnitude more bandwidth than others. So we will have pay per use and video on demand.
I am sure broadband will come, and I am fairly sure there will be pay per use for interactive TV. Perhaps the communications structure of the Internet will be used to distribute video products, as Platt says. But the images themselves are much more likely to be displayed on TV screens. In other words, both authors are talking about interactive TV.
There will be a "walled garden." Nothing new here. TV today is a "walled garden." With interactive capability, the "wall" will be higher.
But I strongly disagree that the "egalitarian vision of the Internet" will die. If anything, it may be made stronger.
Ever since I started calling the Internet a learning network, I have been criticized by some who said that plenty of people visit sites for fun and not for learning. OK. Fun-seeking people will use interactive TV - the "walled garden." The remainder of the Internet will, more than ever, be the learning network.
Some say the Internet will be divided into 2 tiers: the deluxe for those with broadband, and the common for everyone else. This is not the way I see it. The broadband tier will be used for interactive TV. This medium will be dominated by big corporations, the only ones able to pay the high costs that will be charged. Impulsive buyers will watch and then instantly buy.
The low-bandwidth tier will be the learning network - the true Internet. This medium will be populated by an enormous array of small and medium businesses, as well as educational, governmental, social and political organizations. It will be used by intelligent shoppers who will do research and make product and service comparisons before they buy.
Although the powerful will do well with interactive TV, the small fry - you and me - will have increased opportunities for success on the learning network: the Internet.
