Hughes' Direcway service delivers reliable satellite broadband access to subscribers anywhere in the continental United States with an unobstructed view of the southern sky. The service offers download speeds of up to 1 Mbps, along with e-mail features and static IP addressing.

According to research from Frost & Sullivan, Hughes has only tapped part of what could be a substantial market for non-terrestrial broadband services. The firm estimates that as much as 40% of American businesses can't be reached by traditional landline broadband. Moreover, distance limitations on DSL often make the technology unsuitable even in situations where customers can be physically connected.

The promotion, which SBC says could be worth up to $340 per customer, is the most aggressive attempt to date by a large local telephone company to lure customers away from cable. SBC's move comes a few weeks after it lowered the price of its high-speed Internet service to $14.95 per month for new subscribers in its 13-state region.

Executives with SBC, the second-largest U.S. telecommunications company, have said they see a two- to three-year window to grab customers as cable companies such as Comcast and Time Warner ramp up their voice services. SBC expects to roll out its own video services broadly next year.

Between cable companies' voice offerings and wireless telephone alternatives, SBC and the three other Baby Bells are expected to lose some 26 million consumer phone lines--about 28 percent of their total--over the next five years, according to Banc of America analyst David Barden.

Under SBC's offer, cable customers who send SBC a copy of their bill will qualify for credits on SBC's high-speed Internet service and EchoStar's Dish satellite programing. The promotions begin July 1 and are offered for a limited time. The high-speed Internet deal requires a one-year contract.

Net Pioneer Wants New Internet
David Clark, who led the development of the internet in the 1970s, is working with the National Science Foundation on a plan for a whole new infrastructure to replace today's global network.

The NSF aims to put out a request for proposals in the fall for plans and designs that could lead to what Clark called a "clean slate" internet architecture. Those designs, Clark said, could be tested on the National LambdaRail, the nationwide optical network that researchers are using to experiment with new networking technologies and applications.

Two NSF program directors in the agency's Networking Technology and Systems program refused to speak on the record about the $200,000 grant the agency gave Clark to explore his "clean slate" internet idea. Nor would they comment on a broader initiative taking shape at the NSF, of which Clark said his research is a component.

But Clark hinted that the agency is poised to take a leading role in developing new internet technologies.

"There are (program directors) at the NSF who are willing to rally the academic community," said Clark. "They are saying, 'Let's break some eggs.'"

Clark, who served as chief protocol architect for the government's internet development initiative in the 1980s, wants researchers to re-imagine the infrastructure that connects computer users around the world.

The problem with today's internet, according to Clark, is that its 30-year-old design, which allowed for the development of exciting new applications (the world wide web, e-commerce, file sharing, you name it), is now stifling further growth.

In a unanimous decision, the court ruled in MGM Studios Inc. vs. Grokster Ltd. that both content companies and Internet service providers could be sued for illegal music or video file-sharing over peer-to-peer networks.

Network hosts warned the ruling was broad enough to effectively overturn the court's October 1979 ruling on analog videotaping, in which the court held that Sony Corp. was correct to claim that home videotaping of broadcast television constituted "fair use" of duplication technology.

"This could have a definite impact on TiVo or other [personal video recorders], maybe even on analog videotaping," the anonymous host of one Pacific Northwest peer-to-peer networks told users Monday. "It might not end with networked file-sharing, either. What if you use an e-mail client to send an MP3 file to a friend?"

But Andrew Greenberg, intellectual property attorney working with IEEE-USA on its amicus curae brief, said Justice David Souter's opinion was pretty close to the "balanced ruling" IEEE had sought.

Hollywood studios sought a tougher ruling against actual users of file-sharing technology, Greenberg said, but "the beauty of this rule is concentrating not on the behavior of the users, but on the behavior of technologists. Technology developers cannot make specific inducements to engage in infringing behaviors."

"Will this have a chilling effect on broadband use? Only time will tell," Greenberg added. "But peer-to-peer file sharing remains a generic technology. The Internet itself is one big copying machine. The studios may not like that, but let's not forget it, or try to pretend otherwise."

In a second ruling Monday, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in the case National Cable & Telecommunications Association vs. Brand X Internet Services that cable operators do not have to share high-speed lines with nonfacilities-based competitors. The requirement would have been similar to the one applied to local exchange carriers which are required to share facilities under the 1996 Telecommunications Reform Act.