WorldGate is just beginning to test the system. Historically in the cable industry, it's several years from initial testing to the deployment of the product. WorldGate's system will require the participation of the cable operators. They will have to become, in a sense, Internet service providers. And more importantly, according to Agee, they'll have to learn how to promote themselves as such.
Cable operators are typically terrible marketers.
The advantage of WorldGate's system is that it uses existing cable lines, and even existing cable signal decoders, to deliver Internet content to users' television screens. The WebTV box downloads information over telephone lines with a standard modem. With the WorldGate system, the processing happens on the cable operator's end, with a powerful UNIX-based server. The server converts the page into a simpler format which can be understood by a digital cable-decoder box. The result should be that the user gets the impression of surfing the Internet over a fast connection, while all the work is done by the cable operator's systems.