Can't we all just get along?: Pacific Bell ads incite Excite@Home

The arguing about cable modems' encroachment into the high-speed access market in a new series of commercials recently launched by Pacific Bell is just a small sample of the words being tossed behind the scenes.

"Damaging" and "misleading" are two key words Excite@Home has linked to the ads, which depict a neighborhood full of residents playing dirty tricks on each other as they accuse each other of hogging bandwidth on their shared cable network.

The action takes place on Laurel Lane, where, as the ads claim, everyone got along fine until residents tried to simultaneously access the Internet via a cable modem. Now, neighbors purposely cut each other's flowers, verbally attack each other and vandalize each other's houses and cars with the words, "Log off" and "Web hog."

"We're depicting shared resources," said a Pacific Bell spokesman.

Excite@Home, however, labels the ads as damaging to broadband Internet access and claims they portray broadband as a frustrating user experience rather than a great new opportunity. The company's main complaint stems from the tagline that accompanies the ads: "Always fast. Never shared."

"DSL inherently is a shared network like all networks," said an Excite@Home spokeswoman. "We feel that the ads are misleading to consumers, and they're misrepresenting the cable offering. To say that DSL isn't shared is simply not true."

The situation goes to the heart of the cable modems vs. DSL and dedicated vs. shared access issues and digs into some of the technical nuances of both technologies. DSL providers often focus on their dedicated connection from the central office (CO) to the home as a point of advantage, but many in the industry downplay its value because the connection is shared from the CO to the backbone.

As for Excite@Home, the company feels it's "early in this stage of the game to start pitting DSL vs. cable," the spokeswoman said. Consumers look beyond speed to features such as always-on connections, online service aspects and broadband content when choosing their Internet connections, she said. "People are mostly confused by the ads," she added.

The company said it has sent a letter to Pacific Bell President Bill Blase stating its case and requested that the ads be pulled. The company also has threatened to take legal steps, if necessary.

Pacific Bell called Excite@Home's complaints a "silly tactic" and claimed the ads simply express the difference between the two broadband architectures.

"If they have a problem with our commercials, they need look no further than their own neighborhood network," the Pacific Bell spokesman said. "We stand behind these ads."

But the carrier has decided to add a disclaimer to the TV ads, which clearly states that the DSL circuit is dedicated from the customer's home to the CO only. The disclaimer already is used in print and radio versions of the ad campaign but wasn't deemed necessary for the TV ads, he said.

"We are proud to put the disclaimer on the end.... We want our customers to be well-informed," the spokesman said. "We want an apples-to-apples comparison."

Analysts are divided on the subject. Pacific Bell will confuse consumers because the commercials likely will go over their heads, said Clif Holliday, president of B&C Consulting. "I'm not sure they're even going to get the connection. They probably think Pacific Bell lost its mind."

What's more, the commercials are technically misleading and "shortsighted" from Pacific Bell's perspective, Holliday said. "It's rather dangerous in such a new field to see one company attack the technology of another. Tomorrow they might want to use that technology."

But the shared vs. dedicated issue is an important difference between the two access technologies, said Jeff Kagan, president of Kagan Telecom Associates. "People are always looking for a reason to choose one over the other," he said. Consumers who plan to invest in a modem, software and a PC deserve all the information they can get up front, he added, "not after [they've] made a decision."