Microsoft's Booster Shots for Broadband
Yahoo | at | by Mike
Things just aren't moving fast enough for the folks at Microsoft. In this case, what they're looking to speed up are the connections between people using all sorts of Microsoft products and the Internet. Chairman Bill Gates has even publicly lamented the sorry state of high-speed Net links in the U.S. "Clearly, if you can get [broadband prices] down to $20, $25 a month [in the next 18 months], something then will happen.... But, you know, in the U.S. it's not clear that will happen," he said in April at the Government Leaders' Conference in Seattle.
Now, after talking up and praying for speedy adoption of broadband seemingly for ages and getting no response, Microsoft is trying a more direct approach. It's offering its MSN.com content to providers of high-speed Internet access to spice up their offerings. The Colossus of Redmond is also building out Xbox Live, an online gaming network with supercool graphics and interactivity, to lure gamers into going broadband. Finally, it's striking more deals with Internet service providers, perhaps in an attempt to help them financially -- essentially subsidizing broadband access for consumers. All told, Microsoft could spend upwards of $3 billion on all these projects in the next two years, according to some estimates.