Here's a curious argument: in

Here's a curious argument: in the US the video on demand industry is in a tug of war over what exactly broadband is: simply faster than, say, 56kbps dial-up modem access, or much much faster - fast enough to deliver streaming video, for instance? The video companies need lots of really high-speed connections to be sold, so that the market for their services is bigger. Broadband ISPs simply need lots of paying customers, so they don't go the way of Excite@Home, which went spectacularly bust last year. So the video companies want to call broadband something that runs at 750kbps (expensive), while ISPs want to call broadband something that runs from just 256kbps (cheap). For consumers, it seems to make sense to have lots of different pricing options: cheaper if you just want to surf today's world-wide web a little faster, more expensive if you want fancy-dan features like video on demand. Only allowing certain speeds to be called "broadband" would be confusing. But there's an interesting - possibly more serious - dispute happening on the sidelines of this particular debate, claims MSNBC. As cable companies become more involved with providing high-speed internet services, and as more entertainment gets pumped down those cable company lines, might the cable cos try and strike deals with content providers (as they do now for cable TV) to govern which ones we can access? For instance, you get Sony movies but not MGM on your computer, because Sony has paid your cable company/ISP and MGM has not? For those cable internet customers, the net would cease to be the net (hey - Onlineblog would have to pay for access to cable internet homes!)... commercial suicide for the cable companies, in other words. And that makes me think this might just be a bit of sabre rattling by the video on demand folks...