Hi Bill,

BG> nearly 8 months of this area being wired for cable). 

PM> Cable modems have a lot of potential, if Optus/Telstra don't get too 
PM> greedy.

 BG> Does it sound a little naive of me to suggest that 
 BG> competition might just keep the bastards honest?  Yeah, 
 BG> I thought so...

We can but hope!. I think the customer will keep them honest, if the want
to penetrate the home market they'll have to make it cheap or most people
will stick with their $30-$40/month ISP that they use now, and there will
be NOmass migration/takeup of the cable network. Similar to what you are
seeing with the Cable TV network now. I am told Foxtel have just INCREASED
their cable TV rates, seems to me they should be REDUCING them to attract
more custom and recover their infrastructure costs, AND they are talking
about screening ads. Seems like a sure way to go out of business real quick
to me.

PM> Having first hand experience with the OPTUS trail 
PM> in Sydney, 50k cps is not 
PM> uncommon from ANU and Latrobe universities to Sydney.

 BG> With ISDN, I'd reasonably expect >50kbps to be the 
 BG> rule, not the exception.

Yep, but we've seen what high ISDN prices have done for ISDN, and Cable
offers up to 10x the transfer rates (in the right circumstances)

 BG> Dunno Pete, I'm not the least bit interested in cable 
 BG> TV for a start, and even if ISDN was available for as 
 BG> little as say $30 per month, I'd still be inclined to 
 BG> continue with an analogue 33k6bps modem, and given that 
 BG> very few in my area have anything to do with PCs or 
 BG> modems, I still can't see the connection rate 
 BG> increasing all that much beyond its current 5% or so.  
 BG> Seems that everybody has their hands out these days, 
 BG> and one simply has to draw the line somewhere...

Absolutely, I watch very little TV myself, and would have said the same
thing in the past. What I meant was telstra/optus need to wake up to
themselves and realise that a $few from a lot of people is much better than
$lots from a few.

regards, Peter.

--- Maximus/2 3.01