To glimpse a future in which homes have high-speed links to the Internet, look to Lawrence, Kan. For the Lawrence Daily Journal-World, broad bandwidth is here--and the 18,414-circulation daily has found its niche.
"The information's doubling all the time and there's a need to partner with a high-bandwidth provider," said Dan Simons, manager of new ventures for The World Co., the paper's parent. If the small Kansas town is any indication, that information can carry a premium: Lawrence's cable company charges $30 a month for Internet access and tacks on $4 for the Journal-World's content.
What's happened in Lawrence will happen elsewhere--some say everywhere--and soon. Most cable companies are now testing cable-modem service, and Hearst's @home venture is preparing for a summer 1997 rollout in three cities. Not much later, many American households will be connected by as many as five high-speed links to the Internet, argued W. Russell Neuman, senior fellow of the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.
Neuman predicts that cable and telephone companies will scramble to install competing high-speed networks "just to maintain existing share. At least five two-way broadband pipes into the home, each searching for content. For those of you who are content providers, that's the good news."
New speed opens the doors for new technology--for users with the bandwidth to support it. Already the Chicago Tribune differentiates between its Web site, which boasts such cutting-edge technologies as Java, and its Chicago Online service on America Online--now primarily "a low-bandwidth alternative," said Owen Youngman, director of interactive media.
In the meantime, others warned publishers not to confuse potential with penetration. William Bass, senior analyst of people and technology strategies for Forrester Research of Cambridge, Mass., predicts that in 2000, more than half of all online users will still connect to the Internet through traditional phone lines--at 28.8 kilobaud or slower.
©1997 Newspaper Association of America. All rights reserved.