Up with Up
Someone told me yesterday that the battle over internet access was “cable's to lose.” In other words, cable companies have such a great position in the marketplace that all they have to do is persuade content companies to trust them. (Apparently cable royalties to content guys are a bit black-box-like — so the people with content are predisposed not to trust. I'm sure there are other reasons as well.)
Cable wants to provide the internet “triple play”: voice, data, and video.
But here's a problem with this scenario: Cable doesn't care about uplinks. Cable companies provide asymmetrical connections, with download speeds that are much higher than upload speeds. Much, much higher. (Telephone companies also do this, but the differential is higher, generally, for cable.) As CNET reported earlier this month, this is a huge problem for users that actually want to build and share things online, as more and more people want to do.
Citizen journalism? Forget it. Can't get there from here. Video blogging? Can't be done.
If users come to expect slow uploads, they'll be content with … slow uploads. They'll be swallowing “triple play” material managed for them by cable/content behemoths.
So I'm proposing some slogans (send in suggestions, please).
Up With Up!
Up Counts
They Better Care About Up
We Are Up
Up.