Digital delight

AT&T turns to WorldGate for interactivity AT&T Broadband will see WorldGate Communications can do for its 2.5 million "thin client" digital set-tops.

The multiple systems operator collaborated with WorldGate to develop interactive services for systems passing more than 100,000 homes in Cedar Falls and Waterloo, Iowa, and Tacoma, Wash. The first Waterloo subscribers are using Motorola's DCT-2000 set-tops.

WorldGate represents the "third prong" of AT&T's interactive strategy, said Rich Fickle, AT&T Broadband's Headend In The Sky senior vice president and program director for interactive TV (ITV). "We worked very hard in integrating it with our standard platform that we've been using within AT&T Broadband, including a lot of elements that are part of HITS," Fickle said."If we choose to, we can expand this rather rapidly. We did a lot of work together to make sure this thing is replicable in other markets across our company."

Although AT&T Broadband initially will use WorldGate's TVGateway electronic program guide, it will not replace Gemstar/TV Guide, Fickle said. "We have the ability to go to market trials with other guides," he said."In this arena, we felt it was important to get a product into market and start that learning curve. WorldGate was ready."

TV Guide was not.

"We just couldn't get the pieces to come together in time for a fall launch, [and] we didn't want to delay until the Christmas season," Fickle said."We will bring TV Guide back to those markets early next year and replace the Gateway product."

WorldGate will continue to provide its Internet-over-TV and enhanced TV services, said Chairman and CEO Hal Krisbergh. "What you're seeing here is a clear deployment," he said. "What's being suggested is that these are three major systems to serve as a guide to understand how they could, in the future, more broadly roll it out."

Subscribers will get two inter-active package offers, Fickle said. Basic digital subscribers, who pay $47 per month, will get e-mail for an additional $4.95 per month. An all-encompassing package of e-mail, managed content, hyperlinking and Internet access adds $12.95 per month to basic digital.

Fickle emphasized that the applications will better use the existing - and growing - base of 2000-level set-tops but will not impact the company's commitment to thick client DCT-5000s and interactivity driven through Microsoft and Liberate Technologies software.

Despite its e-mail and Internet access, the service also should not impact AT&T Broadband's high-speed broadband data partner, Excite@Home. "For heavier users, this is not the same kind of service," Fickle insisted, noting that "Internet over television is a browser. You can't download and store on a hard drive.You can't print it."

Nevertheless, AT&T will give subscribers remote keyboards to access the WorldGate features, he said. "Keyboard pricing is something we're going to be testing in the marketplace in terms of do we package or rent, those types of things," he said.

The WorldGate service currently does not include video-on-demand (VOD), although AT&T Broadband already announced its intention to launch VOD in Atlanta."WorldGate will allow us to play VOD and ITV in the same markets going forward if we want to," Fickle said.

WorldGate already includes access to enhanced advertising opportunities through its Channel Hyperlinking, by which consumers can be transported to Web sites with more information on advertised products.

Industry analyst Cynthia Brumfield, president of Broadband Intelligence, said that the announcement was logical, considering the conditions surrounding it. "I had been anticipating some move toward WorldGate, given AT&T Broadband's experimental mode now with its set-top software. This makes it official."