Following the demise of NetChannel Inc last month, Los Gatos, California-based ICTV, which has developed a service to provide internet access and content over cable systems using head-end technology, popped up to nix industry gossip that the internet- over TV market is a dud. Not so, says ICTV president Wes Hoffman, it’s just that NetChannel did not go about it the right way, especially charging customers $20 a month and upwards on top of their ISP bill. It’s not the consumer appetite that’s waned, he says, it’s just that the first companies to market have not reacted to the market’s needs. Last we heard, ICTV had three quotes outstanding with cable operators in the US, now it has six. The company has just hired a small sales force to spread its message. It also has two bids out in Europe and Hoffman promises news from one of those within a couple of weeks. ICTV’s trial with Cox Communications in Santa Barbara is still going – it was scheduled to be complete by now but Hoffman said Cox was distracted while it was purchasing cable capacity – they’ve apologized to us, said Hoffman. He says ICTV’s service differs from NetChannel and WebTV’s in many ways. Not only is it at the head-end, rather than requiring a set-top box, but it is also faster (10 mbps) and cheaper, he says. ICTV charges the customer based on usage – a typical base price is $7 a month. ICTV recently licensed some of its patented content distribution technology to its nearest competitors, WorldGate Communications Inc. WorldGate offers a service that works with existing cable set-top boxes using the vertical blanking interval (VBI) and has licensing agreements with the main two cable box manufacturers, General Instrument Inc and Scientific-Atlanta Inc, which have more than 90% of the US cable set-top box market between them.
