Little surveyed 1,004 adults in the US telephonically. The survey showed that up to 28 per cent of users are more than interested in cable-delivered internet services and would cough up as much as $40 a month for it. As many as 43 per cent of them said that they would simply discontinue their dial-up access providers, if they were given a choice between continuing with it and cable access at an extra cost of $10.

Consumers dealt a further blow to the DSL brigade when 56 per cent said that they would opt for cable-delivery over DSL telephone line access for their high-speed download needs. A piffling 26 per cent said they would go for DSL lines over cable.

Around a million cable modems todaysit atop television sets or beside computers in the US today out of a total of 38 million who utilise an online service.

Another report released by Cahners In-Stat Group last week, disclosed that ADSL modems will cross 1.2 million by end 2000. However, cable modems will increase their penetration at twice that number. Analysts in the US say that high-speed internet access is here to stay and its need will in fact grow with more video and audio being transmitted over the Net.

For Indian internet subscribers, the choice between DSL vs cable will not be something they will have to decide on soon. DSL is already upon us with Dishnet pushing its service. Others will likely follow with their own offerings.

Cable, however, has got probably a year to become ready to offer a commercial internet access service. Sure trials are on, and various cable MSOs are making a noise about launching the service. But they are just what they are: A noise. Siticable has admitted it will offer a dial-up access service initiallyand probably launch a cable access service much later (six months or so down the line). So, it's quite clear that the DSL folks will have a year-long lead time over the cable guys. But the latter will play catch up double quick. And Indian surfers will end up making a similar choice as the US customers when that happens.

On the VC path
The hoopla over venture capital and the internet is gathering steam. However, speak to advisers and venture capitalists and you hear that very few private equity placements are being made. The reasons: The Venture Capitalists meet in Mumbai recently saw a clutch of them zooming in on a five-star hotel to discuss what they seek from wannabe netpreneurs. One pointer was the business plan; it has to be impeccable. There are but of course many business plan creating sites on the Net, all one has to do is search for them in either Askjeeves, or Dogpile or Google or Metafind or any other good search engine.

The second is the team that the netpreneur can cobbletogether. This includes the founder-ideator's track record. The stronger the credentials of the team and the founder, the better the chances of raising venture finance.The idea is of course of paramount importance, but its implementation and roll-out ability is as important, if not more. It should be do-able and not a flight of fancy as one of the venture capital firm executive says.

Venture capitalists are apparently keen that internet wannabe gurus have thought their idea through in toto and developed a business model which can generate revenues. Hence, it is advisable that netpreneurs work harder on the strategising and thought processes before submitting their executive summaries to the VCs.

The point to note is that the VC executives are under pressure themselves to deploy their fundsas as they are sitting on hot cash, but they will not throw away good money after mediocre internet businesses.

Continuing on the VC track, the news on this front is good. The third quarter 1999 PricewaterhouseCoopersMoneyTree survey has revealed that venture-backed investments spurted to $9.04 billion, a new high. The previous high was $7.64 billion in the second quarter and a much lower $3.79 billion flowed into all industries in the previous year's corresponding third quarter.

Internet-related companies, across all standard industry classifications, skyrocketed to $5.2 billion from $1.1 billion (in third quarter 1998) while the number of companies that were the beneficiaries of VC funding nearly trebled to 473 from 162. Shall we say more power to the internet?

(The writer is developing an internet portal
http://www.indiantelevision.com. Feel free to e-mail with your comments to television@vsnl.com or television@hotmail.com)