http://www.portfolio.com/views/columns/the-world-according-to/2007/08/23/Mark-Cuban
http://www.portfolio.com/views/columns/the-world-according-to/2007/08/23/Mark-Cuban
Lloyd Grove: As recently as May 2007, you told the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet that government policy could encourage internet providers to make the necessary investment in fiber optics to significantly increase bandwidth to home users, in line with industrialized nations such as Japan, Germany, and South Korea, and that the economic benefits would eventually outweigh the costs. But last month, you declared: “The internet is dead. It’s over.” You said it’s “for old people” and it’s a “stagnant consumer platform.” Did you change your mind between May and July? Who or what killed the internet? And aren’t you biting the hand that fed you?
Mark Cuban: The internet of today versus what I suggested to the committee would happen if internet speeds to the home increased to 1 gigabyte per second, is like comparing the plane Orville and Wilbur Wright built in 1903 to a brand-new Boeing.
We have reached a point of diminishing returns with today’s internet. The speed of broadband to your home won’t increase much more in the next five years than it has in the last five years. That is not enough to work as a platform for new levels of applications that will require much, much higher levels of bandwidth.
Broadband to the home isn’t fast enough for downloads of movies at DVD quality to be ubiquitous. That means it’s no longer a platform for technological innovation.
Think of it this way. Way back when, electricity changed the world. It was the platform for everything electronic that we do today. Do you get excited about electricity or is it just a utility? Maybe old people who remember the advent of electricity still get excited about it. No one else does.
The internet is in the same position today. It’s no longer an exciting platform for societal and business change. It’s a utility. It’s something that is exciting to people who remember the old days of the internet.
The only way to change that is to upgrade the platform for bandwidth transport across the country to a minimum of 1 gigabyte per second throughout to every home. At that point kids will come up with new and unique applications that we can’t imagine today. That’s when it becomes exciting. Until then, it’s dead and boring.
L.G.: Has buying a distribution company and a chain of 57 theaters worked out well thus far?
M.C.: Yep. They are making money, and they give us the unique opportunity to control our product. No other studio can do a nationwide sneak preview of their movies like we can because no other studio owns a national theater chain. No network other than HDNet can offer Ultra V.O.D. [video on demand], where we allow our V.O.D. partners to sell movies two weeks before they are in theaters. Only HDNet can offer a sneak preview of a movie the Wednesday before it’s released in theaters.
The ability to offer consumers what they want is a great opportunity for us. If any other studio tried it, the other theater owners would boycott the studio in a heartbeat.