Alacarte Cable and Geeks

Fri Dec 17 12:54:40 UTC 2010

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 <jsw at inconcepts.biz> wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 12:26 AM, Jay Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> 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 <jsw at inconcepts.biz>
> Sr Network Operator  /  Innovative Network Concepts
>
>

-- 
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Carlos M. Martinez-Cagnazzo
http://www.labs.lacnic.net
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