Word: two-way
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Other cable companies are already venturing into the telephone business. Among them: Time Warner, the media giant and No. 2 cable firm, which is building a two-way TV system in Orlando, Florida. The company, which last year sold a 26% stake in its cable and entertainment divisions to US West for $2.5 billion, plans to offer local phone service to Time Warner cable customers in Rochester, New York, in 1995. In preparation for that and future phone moves, Time Warner joined TCI and other major cable firms three weeks ago in unveiling plans to spend what could amount...
...disputes could doom the bill and throw the most contentious issues back to regulators and the courts. But any talk of a defeated bill alarms Reed Hundt, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, who argues that the creaky regulations now in effect threaten to delay the arrival of two-way TV. Says he: "It would be a huge mistake to underestimate the current barriers to competition...
...drive for two-way TV also helps explain the Bells' growing appetite for acquiring cable operations. In July, US West agreed to pay $1.2 billion for two Atlanta cable systems over which it plans to provide interactive-TV service. Among other deals, Texas-based Southwestern Bell reached halfway across the country last year to acquire a pair of cable systems outside Washington. Not only is Southwestern Bell gearing up to provide two-way viewing over those systems, but next year it intends to offer telephone service over those same lines and thereby challenge local phone giant Bell Atlantic...
Whatever benefits the telecommunications war yields consumers, it is financially no-contest between the telephone and cable combatants. Thanks to their local phone monopolies, each Baby Bell rakes in more revenues in a year than does the entire cable-TV industry. That, plus the phone companies' long experience with two-way communications, has led some experts to predict that cable firms will have to merge or form joint ventures with the Bells, or with a giant like AT&T, to survive in the interactive era. Cable leaders who have tried this include John Malone, chairman of Tele-Communications...
Even if the phone companies manage to procure enough high-quality programming, other handicaps could stall their drive toward two-way TV. Although they lead in the race to lay fiber-optic cable, much of it was originally installed to carry a high volume of phone traffic into cities and therefore does not connect to individual homes; instead, the fiber-optic trunk lines branch into twisted pairs of copper wires, which carry far less information directly to the customer. That means the companies must either replace this so-called last mile with fiber-optic cable or find a way...