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In 17th-century Istanbul, a name was given to a gate that served as the entry point for ambassadors delivering and receiving messages and for others who had business with the Ottoman Empire-in fact, it was, perhaps, the earliest form of e-business. Originally called Bab-i Ali, it was later referred to as La Porte Sublime, or the sublime port. And eventually, the name was applied to the Ottoman government as a whole, in the same way that we sometimes refer to the White House as a symbolic seat of the U.S. government.
As the antiquated empire of dial-up Internet service inevitably succumbs to our craving for high-speed connectivity, our own technology empires are now searching for that same kind of grand entranceway And to a user or investor trapped in the languor of dial-up, the most sublime of the competing services appears to be broadband cable. It is the most available, perhaps the most developed, technology and surely the closest to being able to serve as the main form of broadband access.
And for companies in the broadband-cable industry, allusions to empires full of conquest and intrigue are all too applicable to a technology arena made up of huge mergers and alliances. But even if it is first to market, how can these companies be assured of cable's ascendancy?
A Grand Entrance
The underlying technology of broadband cable is fairly straightforward. A cable provider sets aside two television channels for data traffic, one downstream to the home or office and one upstream to the Internet. Somewhere in the upstream path is a cable modem termination system (CMTS) that passes incoming Internet protocol (IP), synchronous optical network (Sonet) or ATM traffic to the hybrid-fiber coaxial (HFC) cabling of most providers. At the user's end is a cable modem that converts the stream to an Ethernet or universal serial bus connection at the PC.
To the user, the advantages are clear: a cable modem is always on; the line is never tied up; the monthly expense of a cable-- modem connection is about that of a dial-up Internet service provider (ISP) plus a second phone line; and broadband cable is perhaps 30 times faster (1.5 Mbps for cable modem versus an ideal 50 Kbps for dial-up) downstream,...