FIGHTIN' WORDS

Cable's avant-garde R&D consortium, CableLabs, foresees a future that is both breathtaking and frightening. Built on the wildly successful DOCSIS high-speed data platform, this vision includes video, high-speed data and voice services linked through home networks that cable operators power via their bandwidth-happy hybrid fiber/coax networks.

The frightening part is that cable's old-guard management will oversee this utopia, probably using the same strategy that today grabs consumers by the throat, slowly tightening a noose of increasing prices and decreasing services.

CableLabs' far-seeing engineers paint a Jetsonesque picture, and it's hard to dispute their point. Anything that simultaneously delivers blazingly high-speed data and ties together appliances to display that data is a consumer boon. Unfortunately, this technological wonderland will be controlled by cable warlords noted for their “take-no-prisoners” approach to serving subscribers.

You can't really blame the cable hierarchy for taking advantage of the current telecom confusion. It's fair to note that cable did spend the money to build the transport networks. And while some claim cable is skilled in battling competition and government regulation, the reality is no one is trying very hard to take away cable's monopoly.

Traditional telecom providers, having seen their 19th century lifestyle overturned, are navigating a world without monopolies. Having crushed the CLECs' weak business models, telcos are reforming, reorganizing and re-arming — at a pace that has cable's quick-moving entrepreneurs salivating.

Fixed broadband wireless wants to help cable provide last-mile service to previously unreachable commercial customers. Apparently, these people never heard of Excite@Home. Why else would they offer their juicy limbs to the beast? Are they that desperate to find some use for their spectrum? Finally, direct broadcast satellite, cable's avowed enemy, is spending its time and effort proving it should be allowed to consolidate instead of truly trying to thwart the cable threat.

Government intervention is as unlikely as it is distasteful. Every time the government meddles, progress bogs more surely than in a standards process.

To be bleak, there appears to be little that will be done to stop cable's juggernaut. There's lip service — the laughable notion that DSL is competitive with cable modems or that fixed broadband wireless will have interoperable equipment anytime soon — but no true cable competitor is apparent.

The networked home concept is so appealing that it obscures the reality. Just compare your most recent cable bill with one from a year ago — or two years ago, if you happen to have one. The benefits of monopoly are all there in black and white, dollars and cents.