By Steven Horn February 19, 1997 This holiday season, it was Tickle Me Elmos and WebTV. Now, not to miss out on the public's thirst for Net toys, the cable television industry is ready to leap on the scene with the much-anticipated, much-hyped cable modem. Cable modems promise to shoot Web content through the same wire that carries MTV, Cinemax, and CNN into your television. The speeds will be ludicrous: a 10MB file that takes 1.5 hours on a 14.4 connection will arrive via cable modem in between 2 and 8 seconds. No more waiting, no more folding the laundry while that 12 second "X-Files" video clip downloads. Are you interested? Of course. Cable modems use the existing one way coaxial cable that most homes and universities already use for data transmission. Telephone wires are soooo yesterday. With a connection to your computer via an Ethernet 10-BaseT network, you'll use the fat bandwidth inherent in cable's coaxial construction to send and receive Web content. You won't need thousands of dollars worth of equipment or even great technical expertise. There will be no busy signals, no disconnects, no tied-up phone lines. Cable modems are not just another gadget. They will completely change the way people access and use the Net. Cable modems could allow a whole new portion of the workforce to work from home. Forget WebTV. With cable modems, you'll sit on your couch, surf, and watch TV, all at the same time. Head to exurbia, head anywhere. Why mess around with that slow-ass T1 when your home cable modem system just absolutely screams? With this change in speed, a change in Net content itself will logically follow. Look for much more audio and video. With the continued development of content producing tools such as VivoActive, each person with a PC and stable of ideas will essentially become their own broadcasting system. Imagine watching "Homicide" while surfing for Yaphet Kotto fan sites. You'll have the power. At the moment, content is the biggest concern for the enjoyment of cable modems. Even if you can download a movie clip or sound file in the blink of an eye, it's still the just that: a file. Yawn. Content providers are going to have to catch up with more interactive and dynamic offerings: streaming audio and video, games, and localized services such as bill paying and grocery shopping. But don't hurl that modem off your roof yet... Many people wonder about the quality of service one can expect from a cable company. After all, doesn't cable service go down for hours when the wind blows? Now, let's throw in a hybrid fiber-coaxial cable, one of hundreds of possible brands of PCs, an Ethernet 10-BaseT network, and a telephone line. Think your local cable company can manage all that, let alone keeping ESPN on the air? If you've read the headlines lately, you'll know that many small cable companies are being gobbled up by media giants, like TCI, Cox Communications, and Time Warner. Starting to understand why? About 10 American cities are now in the midst of cable modem trials. Fremont, California, has as many as 10,000 households testing @Home's cable modem service. Call your cable company and find our what their plans and schedules are for cable modem implementation. Ask them if they're using hybrid-coaxial wire. In order to surf the Net, you need two-way communication: from your end to the server, and from the server back to you. Currently, both of these connection paths are handled via your modem telephonically. In the first generation implementation of cable modems (now and the next 12 months), only one way will be wicked fast. Your requests back to the server you're visiting will likely still be sent telephonically. A new hybrid fiber-coaxial wire will (in about 11 percent of cable systems nationwide) remove the telephony aspect of your surfing by beefing up your end of the bargain with fiber optics. True two-way interaction will occur at nearly real-time. Nice. The majority of homes in the US are wired with one-way coaxial cable. Access to the new hybrid fiber-coaxial cable is expected to grow to 40 percent by the millennium. My advice? Divorce yourself from the idea of starting that lucrative ISP. With the big money and rabid public interest in cable modems, ISPs will join the lexicon alongside such words as Betamax, Edsel, and New Coke. Cable modems are a reality. They are here to stay. In a couple of years, we'll all be connected. Speed will not be the issue. Surgery will. Steven Horn is the Producer of NetGuide's forthcoming Technology channel. His San Francisco-based company, Flat Earth Media, is responsible for creating entelechy and the soon to be launched SoapQueen. He thinks the Net is merely a flash in the pan and that one day we'll all dance naked while eating loganberries in a beautiful torrential downpour of really good Merlot.