Word: bandwidths
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Your cable line, by contrast, has enough data-carrying capacity--or bandwidth--to deliver 60 or 70 channels of live video the instant you turn on the tube. It is, in high-tech parlance, a very fat "pipe"--some 300 times as fat as "twisted pair" copper phone lines. What if, the cable industry breathlessly asks, some of that bandwidth could be diverted to the Internet? How might entertainment and commerce--not to mention the industry's bottom line--be transformed...
...better wire them up quickly. The telephone companies, eyeing the same potential subscribers, have begun introducing their own high-speed services, including ISDN (integrated-services digital network), which offers four times the bandwidth of a standard modem, and ADSL (assymetrical digital-subscriber line), which approaches cable speed. And the telcos are good at running the complex switching and billing systems required to bring the Net to millions of customers...
...cable companies, by contrast, have a lot to learn. @Home's launch was delayed for months as it struggled to find a way to mesh its high-bandwidth system with the rest of the Internet, which is like an old mansion filled with narrow, twisty corridors and data-clogging culs-de-sac. One @Home innovation is to store data from frequently visited sites in giant computer files called caches--a solution that may not work if those sites change too quickly...
...Microsoft spokesman would not comment on any negotiations. For Gates, says Elmer-DeWitt, such a deal would make sense in the long term. "A purchase of part of NBC would offer Microsoft a big boost of content for its Microsoft network, not now, but for later on, when bandwidth has expanded to deliver full-motion video online. His strategy is always to line up proprietary content, and either keep that content within his system or make it open and charge a fee for every access...
...years in prison." The measure in effect would take many of the standards of broadcasting and apply them to the Internet. But TIME's Joshua Quittner says broadcast rules don't mesh with the online world. "Broadcast standards are there because there is a limited bandwidth. Only a few people could use it, and because of that they have a responsibility to the public. The net is unlimited bandwith -- anybody can access it -- and this measure would limit free speech...