From the Desk of�� John Barker - Industry Trend or Event

Bandwidth Galore? Ha!

Opinion By John Barker, European Correspondent, tossa@pobox.com

I'm really fed up. What really brasses me off are the telcos that keep telling me broadband is coming 'real soon.' They've been telling me that for years and you know I just don't believe anything they say.

You might say it's partly my own fault. I should have bought a house in the big city, preferably next door to the telephone exchange. That way I might have had a fighting chance of getting DSL or cable. Silly of me to prefer to live in a country village. But then I ask myself, where does most of the world live? They live in villages. What chance do they have of getting broadband access in their lifetime?

Why do the telcos bother to spend millions on advertising broadband services if they are unable to deliver them? The answer, of course, is that it is easier to deliver an advertising campaign than to deliver the goods. Here in the U.K., we are supposed to have the least-regulated, most competitive telecommunications environment in Europe. God help the other countries, I say. I should have known, years ago, when I had ISDN installed. It soon became obvious when the 'engineer' from BT arrived to install it. It was obvious from the start that both he and I were on a steep learning curve, and I was slightly ahead in the knowledge arena. Weeks later we got lift-off, after a succession of visits that included a technical whiz that happened to be the local manager (it helps if you are a journalist).

The traumas of installing ISDN did not deter me from craving higher bandwidth. But from where I'm sitting, that prospect looks increasingly remote. BT claims to be installing DSL at around 10,000 new users a month. Do the calculation yourself. ork out how long it would take them to wire a city, never mind a country.

In the United States the situation is little better. Take a trip to the complaint Web site at http://www.dslreports.com. Look at the bad press Verizon [VZ] is getting for its DSL 'service.' You almost want to believe that it is a fiendish way of getting people to spend more time on the telephone when you hear of the hours they spend trying to get through to the emergency repair services. Indeed, Verizon is reportedly being threatened by the New York Public Service Commission with $43 million in fines because of a 36 percent jump in service complaints from residential and business customers last year. Verizon is facing an additional $16 million in penalties because of service problems with DSL and T-1 high-speed lines.

So what do we do with all this bandwidth, if and when we get it? It seems we download Hollywood movies. Isn't this the daftest thing you have ever hear? Last week, Miramax was reported to have become the first major movie studio to send one of its feature films over the Internet with the digital delivery of Guinevere, which users can download for US$3.49. The compressed 500 Mb file takes about an hour to download over a broadband connection. You would need a Pentium II PC, Microsoft Windows Media Player 7, and a credit card to "rent" the film online for 24 hours. The question is: why would you want to?

It seems to have escaped the attention of telcos that there is a technology for delivering Hollywood movies. It's called DVD and it delivers all the bandwidth you could possible need. And DVD players can be purchased for as little as 100 bucks, delivering high quality video and audio at speeds broadband services can only dream about. Perhaps that is why DVD has become the fastestgrowing consumer electronics product of all time.

Telcos have had their snouts in the trough for too long. Now they have their heads in the sand. They sincerely believe that broadband is coming 'real soon.' Obviously, those guys live in the big city and are completely out of touch with the real world. I say to them: 'Get real, and get a DVD player!'

John Barker can be reached at tossa@pobox.com.

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