Pasadena was chosen as a beta-test city because of its economic diversity and strong residential base, plus a variety of businesses, hospitals, libraries, universities, etc. Cable access became fully commercially available on August 1st. The variation depends on the equipment used by the cable television company. Cable modem connections require an Ethernet card and an external cable modem about twice the size of a standard external telephone modem. Internal cable modems are not yet available.
Cable access has a major problem.
The number of household that can access the Internet through their cable connection is limited by the technology of the cable provider. The study predicted that cable modem service would have nearly 200,000 customers by the end of the year, growing to 1.6 million by the year 2000 and to 3.2 million by early 2002. By August 1997, however, Kinetic Strategies estimated some 3.4 million households in North America could receive commercial two-way cable modem service. By August companies in the field had tallied 35,000 two-way cable modem subscribers, close to double the number in March 1997. Standard cable plants are designed to send information to the customer, not receive it.