I have been trying to get NASA TV in Uruguay for a long time, obviously to no avail. Even though it's probably free / very cheap.
I do believe that video over the Internet is about to change the cable business in a very deep and possibly traumatic way. Even I only have 4 megs DSL at home and have almost 250 msec delay to get to Terremark in Miami, my Apple TV plays YouTube reasonably well and I am probably near to the point where I would probably pay for premium content from YouTube or other providers to get over my crappy cable service. Cheers, Carlos On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 5:58 AM, Jeff Wheeler <[email protected]> wrote: > On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 12:26 AM, Jay Ashworth <[email protected]> wrote: >> the 80s when that practice got started -- having to account for each >> individual subscriber pushed the complexity up, in much the same way >> that flat rate telecom services are popular equally because customers >> prefer them, and because the *cost of keeping track* becomes >delta. > > Having personally and solely designed and written a toll billing > system from scratch that directly exchanged billing and settlement > data (and end-user data) with hundreds of ILECs, I can tell you a > number of things I learned: > 1) billing is only as hard as you (or your vendor) make it > 2) if your company can't figure out how to bill for a new product or > service, blame the billing people, not the product > 3) keeping up with taxes and fees consume a lot more resources than > calculating the net bills themselves; so adding products is really > trivial compared to dealing with every pissant local government that > decides to apply a different taxing method to your HBO (or your > telephone calls) > > This is not to say the folks that handle billing at cable companies > are equally capable, but if they had legitimate competitors, they > would figure out how to run many parts of their businesses more > efficiently. Imagine if Wal-Mart was the only game in town that had > bar code readers at the cash registers, and every other grocery chain > had to look up every item and punch in the price to check you out. > Other stores would quickly improve their technology or find themselves > out of business. > >> 2) New networks prefer it, and the fact that it happens makes the >> creation of new cable networks practical -- you don't have to go around >> and sell your idea to people retail; you sell it to CATV systems (well, > > My understanding is that networks/media giants like it because they > can force cable companies to carry 11 irrelevant channels to get the > Disney Channel that your kids want. Would enough people really ask > for G4TV to make producing and syndicating shows for that channel > cost-effective? I don't know the answer, but my suspicion is that > people who really just want CSN, E!, or the Golf Channel are > subsidizing G4 viewers. I wanted BBCA a few years ago, but my cable > provider required that I buy 30 other channels I did not want or had > never even heard of to get BBCA, so I didn't subscribe to it. > > I do not know if a la carte channel selection would be good for me, as > a consumer, or not. I do think the reasons the industry does not want > to offer that to end-users are disingenuous. > > -- > Jeff S Wheeler <[email protected]> > Sr Network Operator / Innovative Network Concepts > > -- -- ========================= Carlos M. Martinez-Cagnazzo http://www.labs.lacnic.net =========================
