Wall St Journal announces PSI INTERNET over CATV move

[Gordon Cook <cook () path net>]

> From today's Wall St. Journal

"Cable Company is Set to Plug into Internet

Cable Television will connect to the Internet, information pathway to millions
of personal computer users world-wide, early next year through direct link up
via Continental Cablevision Inc., one of the nation's largest cable operators.

The service, which could greatly alter delivery of electronic information,
would allow Continental's customers to plug PCs and a special modem directly
into Continental's cable lines, said William Schrader, President of
Performance Systems, a Herndon, VA. network services company that is
Continental's partner in the project.

The cable link would by pass local phone and other special hookups to access
the internet directly.  More significantly it would allow customers . . . to
fetch whole kinds of information. . . at information superhighway speeds - as
fast as 10 million bits per second. . . . Mr Schrader said. . . . . "This
isn't some fluffy pie-in-the-sky vision," said David Fellows, a senior vice
president at Continental.  Added Mr. Schrader:  "Other companies such as Time
Warner inc in Orlando are talking about elaborate multimedia service tests.
But our plan is small simple and easy.  This will work."

But while the new service holds much promise, no one is sure what the customer
demand will be, especially at an estimated cost of $70 to $100 a month. . . .
[Comment by G COOK  Here the Journal gets confused.  It seems to assume that
the audience for this service is the same as for prodigy or for CATV home
entertainment.  NOT TRUE!  The audience will be telecommuters, individual
entrepreneurs, and small businessmen with their own LANs, and K-12 school
districts, and local governments for whom $100 a month would be about 20% of
what they would have to pay for equivalent service over regular internet RBOC
phone access channnels.]

Performance Systems, which provides a means for customers to hook up to the
internet system , plans to install computer routers in the continental
network. . . . The routers will be installed in the main hubs or "head end"
facilities in continental's vast network, allowing easy extension of the new
internet service to homes and businesses tethered to the cable company.  For
the customer's home or business computer Performance Systems will provide a
special computer modem to reach the service.

The two companies plan to announce the service today at an industry trade show
in San Francisco.  The first hookups are scheduled to take place in Cambridge
Mass where Continental has many subscribers connected to Harvard University
and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology."

The rest of the article is plain vanilla what is the internet all about.  This
seems to me to be an extremely significant announcement that
does not bode well for the RBOCs.  I'd expect to see the rest of IP commercial
service providers running hard to jump on the band wagon.

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Gordon Cook, Editor Publisher:  COOK Report on Internet -> NREN
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