War for your Home Entertainment/Internet

A comprehensive battle is shaping up among local Cable service providers, Telecommunications service providers and Microsoft over which technology gets to deliver the various media types to your home. (who will own the rights to deliver Internet data, telephone and television to your home or business?)

"The starting point of cable and telecoms companies, for instance, is as providers of broad band pipes into the home. So they are investing in IPTV (internet-protocol television), a vision in which content resides on the network and is pulled into the home on demand. Thus, says Cyrus Mewawalla, an analyst at Westhall Capital, a broker in London, America's Verizon and SBC and others are investing hugely in laying fiber optic cables to homes (at a cost of about $1,000 per household), hoping that IPTV and the necessary set-top box could 'evolve into the primary gateway to the digital home.' By controlling this gateway, they could offer a bundle of telephony, Internet and entertainment, in effect 'owning' the customer.

Microsoft's strategy is to establish the Windows-run PC as the uncontested hub of the digital home.--- This would allow Microsoft to keep selling Windows upgrades and to earn royalties from hardware and from consumer-electronics companies that make "spokes" for the Windows hub, such as portable music and video players, screens and online services." Economist Sept. 8 2005.

Microsoft's next operating system (recently called longhorn) Vista will be released next year. Through sale of extenders and wireless connection throughout the home Microsoft hopes to captivate the market forcing everyone to use their (Microsoft's) proprietary system.

Microsoft wants to make its system all encompassing for all tasks thus making the home PC a central repository for ALL digital content that will be distributed throughout the household making everyone pay a recurring license fee.

The cable and telecommunications companies want everyone to rely on their broad band pipes into the home for all digital content thereby "tying" the customer to their services rather than Microsoft.

Is the ordinary consumer ready for this?