Webupon

With the growth of broadband internet and the inevitable marching of computer technology, internet users are starting to realize the power of moving existing services to similar IP versions. Newspapers purists shudder at the thought of the internet, and a future without cheap gray paper and rub-off ink. Even at the ripe old age of twenty-two I can remember flipping through Sears catalogs that even my mother doesn’t bother to get anymore. She frequents Amazon, uses Froogle and I’m starting to worry that she’s an eBay addict. Hardcover encyclopedias? Out. Cookbooks? Don’t compare. Ask the United States Postal Service what the internet’s done for them.

VoIP company Skype has grown tremendously over the last few years, even offering free U.S. to U.S. calls. Anyone with a Wal*Mart in range of them can even go in and purchase a $20.00(US) USB Skype phone preloaded with the software to make the process more natural for the less hardcore nerd. There lies the key. Making these services more natural for the layman can force a complete IP takeover of any given service. Almost anyone signing up for a new landline phone plan today that doesn’t chose VoIP was probably not well informed.

Through the ease of WiFi, USB and PCI making a device to use your service in a natural and intuitive way is childs play for a qualified technologist. The popularity of “GooTube” (the newly formed tag team involving Google Video and YouTube) has made it crystal clear that people are more than willing to watch video content on their computers.

If Skype, Vonage and Gizmodo can be IP phone companies what’s taking so long with the IP cable companies? Certainly the aging cable companies are fighting it, but it’s only a matter of time. A simple program that has partnered with even just ten or twenty stations my $70.00 a month company offers could get ten bucks from me a month. Throw in a device to get my computer image onto a TV without a lot of quality loss and you can gouge me a little more.

Such an IPTV provider could combine stations that I feel I need now (Cartoon Network, Comedy Central, CNN) with internet content. They could make their own stations pointing users toward internet content. The service could even incorporate some type of buddy list to gain suggestions of shows to watch, or show your buddy news clips of his ex-girlfriend getting arrested.

Certainly recent reports that show IPTV can trump advertising dollars of traditional television indicate change on the horizon. Why should we pay a company to keep content regulated and dished out as they see fit though a crappy tiny computer sitting on top of our TVs when we could be using our own computers and a converter with an internet service? I guess their cable boxes do have a clock on the front though. I’d have to learn to live without that.