RE: [TCLUG:18319] "Web Architecture"

["Eric Hillman" <ehillman@cccu.com>]

> > Yeah, true.  Mediaone allready does digital phone.
> >
> > But they dont have the idea of being a 'data pipe provider' yet.  Just
> > some consumer moneymaking engine.
>
> Not sure what you mean there...
> what sort of a 'data pipe provider'?


Well, if he's getting at what I think he's getting at --

The ideal (or rather, "an ideal", not necessarily mine) is for one company to
provide one big fat pipe that carries *all* the data in and out of your home.
Cable TV, phone, internet, ApplianceNet, telegraph, Muzak, the works.  Once you
get to that point, especially if all those services are running on the same
underlying protocol (like, say, IPv6), you get some amazing synergy.  You also
get the potential for a monopoly so massive and powerful that to actually
describe it would necessitate the use of profanity.  Think "Snow Crash" --
wherein a fiber optic tycoon who began his career simply by buying up cable TV
stations and tying them all together (a character based, I imagine, on Ted
Turner) eventually winds up holding a data monopoly so insanely profitable he
buys aircraft carriers for use as private yachts.