http://www.broadbandreports.com/shownews/75513
Homezone's Walled Garden
Users will only be able to surf AT&T partner content sites?
Posted 2006-06-19 10:18:01
Written by Karl Bode
The Wall Street Journal print edition today reports that AT&T's Homezone, a hybrid satellite receiver, DVR, and broadband driven media-center (using this 2wire box) will be launched next month. AT&T hopes to have the device available in 80% of its broadband market by year's end. This will be AT&T's "stopgap" measure as they deploy "Project Lightspeed."
"After Lightspeed is fully deployed and U-verse is fully deployed, there will be areas that are just not economic to offer fiber everywhere," recently stated AT&T's Homezone managing director Ken Tysell. "Homezone gives us a great product to make available to residential customers in all of the other areas, too. So we are going to coordinate the offer strategy and the rollout strategy between the two."
The service is currently being trialed by some 230 users, mostly AT&T employees. Coming in high-definition and standard-definition versions, the boxes will offer users media sharing, on-demand content (see our Akimbo report), remote DVR programming, and possibly place-shifting Slingbox functionality - if the legal issues can be worked out.
AT&T however won't allow users to browse to just any content, according to the Wall Street Journal:
"While the Homezone set top-box will be connected to the Internet, users won't be able to surf to any Web Site. They will only be able to download content from providers who have made deals with AT&T. In that sense, the service will be like the so-called "walled garden" that America Online tried to create with its Internet service in the 1990s before it was pressured to give its customers access to the open Internet."Dave Burstein, who discusses this via his newsletter, says Verizon's CEO Ivan Seidenberg is a little more friendly to the idea of open content. "We want to get cable out of the house. Telephony and data are our moneymakers, not video, and we’re willing to discuss opening our network," the CEO recently told Burstein.
Homezone's Walled Garden
Users will only be able to surf AT&T partner content sites?
Posted 2006-06-19 10:18:01
Written by Karl Bode
The Wall Street Journal print edition today reports that AT&T's Homezone, a hybrid satellite receiver, DVR, and broadband driven media-center (using this 2wire box) will be launched next month. AT&T hopes to have the device available in 80% of its broadband market by year's end. This will be AT&T's "stopgap" measure as they deploy "Project Lightspeed."
"After Lightspeed is fully deployed and U-verse is fully deployed, there will be areas that are just not economic to offer fiber everywhere," recently stated AT&T's Homezone managing director Ken Tysell. "Homezone gives us a great product to make available to residential customers in all of the other areas, too. So we are going to coordinate the offer strategy and the rollout strategy between the two."
The service is currently being trialed by some 230 users, mostly AT&T employees. Coming in high-definition and standard-definition versions, the boxes will offer users media sharing, on-demand content (see our Akimbo report), remote DVR programming, and possibly place-shifting Slingbox functionality - if the legal issues can be worked out.
AT&T however won't allow users to browse to just any content, according to the Wall Street Journal:
"While the Homezone set top-box will be connected to the Internet, users won't be able to surf to any Web Site. They will only be able to download content from providers who have made deals with AT&T. In that sense, the service will be like the so-called "walled garden" that America Online tried to create with its Internet service in the 1990s before it was pressured to give its customers access to the open Internet."Dave Burstein, who discusses this via his newsletter, says Verizon's CEO Ivan Seidenberg is a little more friendly to the idea of open content. "We want to get cable out of the house. Telephony and data are our moneymakers, not video, and we’re willing to discuss opening our network," the CEO recently told Burstein.
