The problem with some of these technologies is that they are expensive. They all require what is known as "truck roll," where someone who works for the cable company or the phone company actually has to run a truck out to some location and break up the street so they can have access to a cable and make changes to the cable distribution system to be able to handle the two-way transmission.

I live in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. I got a cable modem installed in January 1998 by my local cable television company, Shaw Cable. The installation charge was waived, as I did not require the cable company to supply an Ethernet card. It only took a single truck roll to do the installation, as the cable contractor brought the Motorola CyberSurfer modem, and I had informed the company that I was not interested in a visit from their client software installer.

Interdiction will also be a very cost effective way to deliver video to neighborhoods with high chum rates and high penetration, such as apartment complexes. With interdiction, cable service can be turned on and off instantly and inexpensively. The higher the chum rate in a system, the quicker the payback on its investment, Necessary said. "Right now the cable industry, we believe, has about a 3% monthly chum rate. What that means is that [for every 100 subscribers] you've had three new connects and three disconnects. So you're actually running a 6% truck-roll rate."