A group of internet luminaries were mulling the bandwidth problems at Jupiter Communications Inc’s Consumer online Services show in New York yesterday and came to varying conclusions. Most bullish about the prospects was David Dorman, the recently- installed president and CEO of PointCast Inc, a company that in the past has been accused by competitors of being a bandwidth hog. Dorman, who was formerly CEO of Pacific Bell Corp and before that spent 13 years at Sprint Corp said the telcos, motivated by fear of competition more than anything else, have now got religion about Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL), especially since the January acquisition of Teleport Communications Group Inc by AT&T Corp – although we have never considered Teleport to be a major ADSL player. Dorman was also encouraged by the formation of the Universal ADSL Group by Compaq Computer Corp, Intel Corp and Microsoft Corp in January, to come up with a simplified version of the technology. This will happen a lot sooner than people think, said Dorman referring to the widespread deployment of ADSL to home users. However, it should be noted that PointCast and its push technology would benefit more than most from its arrival – we are bandwidth-bound, acknowledged Dorman. America Online Inc CEO Steve Case, solidly ensconced in the consumer space, urged a note of caution, noting that 56Kbps modems have not really been adopted by AOL’s 12 million or so users, despite the company supporting the standard and selling the modems online. The phone companies might think of ADSL as a displacement for a T1, he said, but persuading users to upgrade to ADSL is a lot more hassle than getting them to upgrade their modem, and they are not even doing that yet, he said. He warned against trying to race ahead of the technology curve: don’t bet on a lot more bandwidth with the next one or two years, Case warned. Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of internet bookseller Amazon.com Inc said that while bandwidth was not a significant problem for his company, the time computers take to boot and dial-up to their ISP is. This, he says contributes to the fact that more than 70% of his company’s business is from users at work connected via a LAN. Content rich Walt Disney Co does not have significant bandwidth difficulties, says Jake Winebaum, president of the company’s Disney Online service, despite having notoriously-impatient children as its primary customers. Jerry Yang, co-founder and chief Yahoo at Yahoo! Inc drew the freeway analogy – if you add another lane to a freeway, the traffic fills the space almost immediately and people will still want to go faster.
