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 COLUMN
The fall lineup, part 2: DSL sales, Internet collapses, and bursting bubbles LAST WEEK WE TOOK a first look at technology's exciting fall 2000 lineup. This week we'll take a second look in my third-to-last column. Our first nine items in the fall lineup were the November elections (vote Republican), antitrust (settle in Seattle), privacy (corporations and governments), GHz microprocessors (beyond word processing), Linux (queen for a day), push (by any other name), peer-to-peer (surprises ahead), wireless (yes, again), and The Final Episode of From the Ether (Sept. 25).
Residential broadband: About 2.8 million "digital modems" -- CTMs (cable television modems) and DSLs -- were sold in the second quarter, according to Cahners In-Stat Group (www.instat.com). DSL sales are growing by 50 percent per year, soon passing CTM sales. This is big-time infrastructure, soon taking the always-on, high-speed Internet into tens of millions of homes. Applications enabled by this infrastructure will prove the most exciting items on our fall lineup. Government regulation: Politicians often say they will not have regulatory relations with that industry -- Ms. Internet. But in practice, "we prefer Internet self-regulation" actually means "we plan to regulate the Internet back to the Stone Age as soon as we can figure out where the big campaign contributions are coming from." And so now a group of politicians and their contributors, the U.S. Internet Council, has come out with its State of the Internet 2000 report (www.usic.org). They say, "Although most governments have maintained a laissez-faire approach to the online industry, there is more and more pressure by citizens concerned about privacy and security for some degree of regulation and monitoring." Beware their fall lineup. Stock bubble: Recall I forecast the Internet stock bubble would burst on Nov. 8, 1999. Well, not exactly, but dot-coms are now talking as if their stocks have bottomed out. Maybe not on Nov. 8, but expect another half-off Internet stock indices this fall. Internet advertising: Among dot-coms hardest hit will be those monetizing eyeballs with ads. We need better Internet advertising, not just more banners. Remember, television ads actually interrupt the programs. Pay-as-we-go: As advertising settles down on the Internet, other forms of finance will follow. We will want to pay for services and content not supported by governments and other advertisers. Revenge of the bams: We've heard a lot about first-mover advantages in the New Economy ... from first-moving dot-coms. This fall we'll see more brick-and-mortar companies (bams) pressing their advantages from the Old Economy. Broadcast Internet: Entertainment will take the limelight from commerce this fall, and streaming broadcast content will ramp up. But the Internet wasn't designed for audio and video, let alone broadcast. So look this fall for the Broadcast Internet -- the HTML/HTTP/TCP/IP web carried with non-TCP/IP streaming content on broadcast media. Telopolies: This fall the U.S. Telecom Association will continue its post-1996 reassembling of the pre-1984, monolithic, ponderous, and extremely profitable Bell System monopoly. Stand ready to support Federal Communications Commission Chairman William Kennard (even though he's a Clintonista exiting in June) in his fight against telopolies. Internet gigalapse: Not promising to eat anything if it doesn't happen, I did again predict an Internet gigalapse for 2000. With DoS (denial of service) attacks freshly demonstrated, name servers failing, and the Internet growing faster than any fixing of its fragilities, look this fall for more Internet outages (some really big ones maybe) losing more than a billion user-hours. So that's now a total of 18 items for our exciting fall 2000 lineup. The Final Episode of From the Ether will appear on Sept. 25. Help at metcalfe@infoworld.com to gather thoughts on how technology takes its next major steps forward. Internet Collapses and Other InfoWorld Punditry by Bob Metcalfe is still in its third paperback printing from IDG Books. George Gilder's foreword calls Metcalfe "a supreme wit." Bruce Sterling's rebuttal states Metcalfe "does weird, inexplicable, boring stuff with colored wires." Vint Cerf's squib calls Metcalfe a "ranting gasbag," but in a good way.  RELATED SUBJECTS  E-CommerceWeb TechnologiesMORE > SPONSORED WHITE PAPERS 
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