It is difficult to see how a reasonable amount of symmetrical bandwidth capable of marginal, computer video of 1.5 Mbps can be delivered to the home or small business in the short term. Certainly ISDN is not a candidate. Cable companies and telcos can provide this service beginning in 1997.

Cable companies can install point of presence servers at their head end sites and deliver downstream bandwidth of up to 30 Mbps per analog tv channel. However, only a limited amount of capacity is available for transmission. This inherently limits apps to Internet surfing. In addition, most cable systems have no upstream capability.

Telcos have a variety of options to carry anywhere from 1.5 to 8 Mbps in either symmetrical or asymmetric configurations over existing copper wiring to the home. Providing these services requires installing POPs capable of communicating via Internet’s IP protocol.