WIRED FOR SPEED

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That's a lot of money to throw at a service that has yet to produce any major revenue. In fact, cable operators' network upgrades are aimed at much richer and more important prizes, chief among them their own survival. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 freed media giants of all persuasions to compete in one another's markets. With everybody from the Baby Bells to Bill Gates breathing down their neck, cable operators have little choice but to lay fiber over their aging coax networks as the old analog media converge into one big digital stream. High-speed Net access, for the moment, is just an intriguing appetizer to a main course comprising telephones, wireless data services and even interactive television. "Eventually this architecture will let us do what we've done in Orlando," says Britt, referring to Time Warner's famously costly interactive TV adventure. "We'd like to attach our cable to any video or telephone device you have in your house."

And, of course, deliver their own programming. Road Runner already offers its subscribers, among reams of Akron-related news and information, a catalog of brand names from the Time Warner entertainment cornucopia, including Time Inc. Magazines, TIME-LIFE Books and Warner Bros. Online. @Home takes a similar tack, signing up a rich roster of content partners and designing a user-friendly interface to guide users to them.

All of which conjures an uneasy vision of media goliaths creating proprietary content slanted toward proprietary programming and delivered to customers over proprietary pipelines. This, of course, is the antithesis of today's chaotic, freewheeling, radically democratized Internet. Oh, well. Information may want to be free, but it's the companies that are paying its freight that will have the final word.