Hot on the heels of Tele-Communications Inc’s announcement of plans for an @Home venture capital-based start-up to provide Internet services over television cables (CI No 2,658), AT&T Corp’s Network Systems has joined forces with Intel Corp and Hybrid Networks Inc to deliver high-speed data services to personal computers over broadband networks – such as television cables. The venture was previewed in one quarter as an alternative Internet, a description hotly refuted by AT&T. The new services are intended to give home computer users an alternative route onto the Internet, and in addition to provide access to a range of interactive multimedia services such as on-line information, electronic banking and shopping, financial planning, classroom lessons and games. The partners will offer to cable television and local telephone companies technology to create two-way interactive services that they can deliver over their current and planned broadband networks. Intel will provide its CablePort cable modems – wich were designed by Cupertino-based Hybrid Networks and link personal computers to broadband networks, and AT&T will offer to build broadband networks and provide end-to-end network integration. The partners talk of delivery at speeds up to 1,000 times faster than standard telephone modems, implying a rate of 14.4Mbps. Hybrid Networks, supplier of the Hybrid Point of Presence, a networking hub designed to link Internet and other multimedia content providers to the broadband network, will be working with AT&T Network Systems to integrate its Point of Presence CyberMaster and CyberManager network elements into AT&T’s consumer broadband network implementation.
