[NU Sports] TV and sports

[Mike Nolan]

> I think that this is much ado about nothing.

Oh I disagree here, there are BILLIONS of dollars at stake here!

The current issue is over who gets their pipline into your house.  Many 
if not most people have 3 different wires coming into their house now:  
electricity, phone and cable.  

As I understand it, all three are (or will be) capable of supporting gigabit 
over copper.  (Fiber to the house is IMHO not likely to be a major player
because of the infrastructure costs to string it, and gigabit speeds
over copper isn't likely to be the high end of that protocol either.  When
they figure out how to do terabit over copper, who needs fiber?)

The initial battle will be over who gets control of that pipeline and 
the extent to which it is shared.  (I have both DSL and cable internet,
for example, because I need higher availability than either the phone
company or the cable company can individually delver.)

How will this affect sports viewers?  Hard to say, but in the long run
I doubt we'll see any savings, even with ala carte pricing, because
the REAL money is in the information content, not in the delivery of it.
And as ESPN has already demonstrated, they can pretty much ask whatever 
they want, there are enough people out there who'll pay it.
--
Mike Nolan