Stardate 20011211.1736 (On Screen): With the collapse of @Home after several independent DSL providers went under, there has been rhetoric in the press about whether broadband in the home is a failure. The problem isn't lack of demand, the problem has been lousy business plans. My provider, Road Runner, for instance seems to be doing fine. But its business model was always much different than that of @Home. @Home's plan was to install its own equipment at the sites of various cable companies; RR is more like a franchise. Time Warner Cable (my ISP) actually owns its own equipment and pays the people who run it. We have local connections to established backbones. If RR went away, it would hardly affect us at all; Time Warner Cable would just keep running it. However, the big difference was that @Home (and Northpoint, and all the other dead broadband companies) tried to make it as independent companies concentrating on this business exclusively. The broadband which is alive and well and thriving is that which is being operated by large companies who already own most of the required infrastructure. There's a lot of DSL out there, but it's being operated by the phone companies. RR works because it is owned by and operated by the cable companies themselves. The failure of a company with a flawed business model doesn't prove anything about the viability of the business. As in all business, the real trick is to figure out the correct way to sell it.
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