Andrew Rydecki believes Taiwan is ready for an Internet boom. It has the money, it has the open-mindedness and it has the talent for companies to make a killing online. But there's one thing missing: broadband access.
He has a point. PC penetration rates may be climbing, but Internet access for the vast majority of users in Taiwan is painfully slow. If this place is supposed to become a wired society, it needs faster and better access to the Web.
It's supposedly in the pipeline, of course. Several cable companies have started offering Internet access over their fat pipes, and Chunghwa Telecom is soon to roll out its super-fast DSL (digital subscriber line) service. But speed's not everything, Rydecki believes, and it's also not what broadband is entirely about.
Alright, so an introduction is needed. Andrew Rydecki is the CEO of Advanced Digital Broadcasts (ADB), a Taiwan-based company that makes set-top boxes -- you know, those things that sit on top of the TV and are used to deliver 120-plus channels to your living room. And it's these boxes, he believes, that hold the key to the rise of broadband Internet services.
Why? "Simplicity and reliability will define success in the world of the Internet, just as it has done so in every other consumer-oriented service the world over," Rydecki says.
Specifically, Rydecki believes consumer-oriented e-commerce will not really take off, especially in Taiwan, until housewives and working mothers -- who do most of a family's shopping, let's face it, guys -- embrace the idea of shopping online. And at the moment, they're not.
It's easy to take Rydecki's position. Simplicity means being able to turn on the TV, pick up a remote control like the one you use to flip through channels, and get onto the Internet. Reliability means not being cut off by the ISP just when you've found what you're looking for.
Rydecki's company believes it has just the solution. Its set-top boxes are designed with a large hard drive and software that allows users to catalog "favorites" from the Web, creating something like a local shopping mall on the set-top box, which can then be browsed offline. Once an order needs to be placed, it is uploaded to the relevant company's Web site, saving the user costs in time and money spent online.
What's more, by using a familiar interface -- the TV -- the set-top box provides a much easier entry point to the Internet for people who are intimidated by the prospect of sitting down at a computer and performing a bunch of comparatively complicated keyboard commands.
"People need a point-and-click device," Rydecki says. "People want ease of use and ease of choice."
Don't scoff. Microsoft has its own Web TV service and America Online, the biggest of them all on the Web, has just announced its own version of a service provided via set-top boxes. It looks indeed like the way of the future.
"We're looking ten years ahead," Rydecki says matter-of-factly. "Broadband still needs three or four years to catch on."
So how is ADB going to ride the coming broadband wave? By doing it the Taiwan way: becoming a supplier of technology to broadband service operators. That means not competing with the big brand names. Basically, ADB makes the software, it contracts out the manufacturing of the hardware, and it presents the final package to a customer which then puts its label on it and sticks it in someone's home.
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