The Newspaper Shop -- Thursday edition

[HellBound]

Disney, News Corp to Launch Internet Video-On-Demand Service, Movies.com

A few weeks ago a group of major Hollywood studios banded together to create an Internet video-on-demand service code-named MovieFly. Now Disney and News Corp are following their lead. On Wednesday the two companies announced they would join forces to offer their own Internet video-on-demand service, called Movies.com. The service will be owned equally by the two companies and managed independently. Customers using the service would be able to download movies onto their home computers or view them through on-demand cable services (Movies.com will stress the latter approach). Movies.com officials plan to draw customers to the service by making films from Disney, Miramax, and 20th Century Fox available exclusively on the site for a limited time. Otherwise, films will become available on Movies.com 45 to 60 days after a film's release in video stores. The service is expected to launch early next year.



Excite@Home Loses Key Cable Partners

More bad news for Excite@Home .... Last Friday two of the company's major cable partners, Comcast and Cox Communications, announced that they would dissolve their relationship with the troubled Internet provider by next summer. The cable companies pointed to Excite@Home's financial uncertainty, with its billion-dollar debt and imminent Nasdaq delisting, as the cause. Until the relationships officially dissolve next June, Excite@Home broadband Net access customers served by Cox and Comcast must wait for a new or updated agreement, or consider other options. AT&T, Excite@Home's largest cable partner, has not announced its plans, other than to say it will continue to offer customers cable Internet access. Meanwhile, Excite@Home is weighing its ever-limited options. On Thursday, its board authorized the company to hire an investment banking firm to oversee potential restructuring scenarios.

Bill Gates Says Broadband “Miracle Environment” is In Peril
Microsoft’s founder and chairman Bill Gates earlier this week said that steep high-speed Internet access rates threaten to limit the adoption of powerful new services which would become available in the next few years. Gates said that the broadband pricing problem is particularly frustrating because it is the one piece of the physical infrastructure of computing which is hindering the creation of a "miracle environment" of new applications which would have been created thanks to ever-increasing computing speed, power, and video-display capabilities. Gates urged government policymakers and the cable and telephone industries jointly to determine what it would take to provide broadband services for $30 a month, instead of the monthly fee of about $50 that consumers currently pay for access through cable lines or enhanced telephone wiring. Most of the nation's densely populated areas have high-speed access available, but such access is used by less than 15 percent of the country. Gates expressed no optimism that the complex problem would be solved soon, even as Congress reviews legislative proposals purporting to address the issue. The telephone industry, for example, has been at war over various regulations that some companies say make it too difficult to recoup the costs of deploying broadband without charging high rates.


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