Mark Cuban says "The Internet is dead and boring". It is an attention grabbing headline but what he really means is that Internet bandwidth is not growing fast enough to support new innovative applications. The same could be said for cell phone bandwidth and services, Voice over IP (VoIP), video conferencing, etc. Mark's point is that the Internet's full potential will not be realized until network bandwidth grows on a path like processor speed did according to Moore's Law.

Mark and his partner Todd Wagner founded Broadcast.com back in the 90's, and in 1999 sold it to Yahoo for $5.7 Billion. The idea was to redistribute radio and TV programming over the Internet. The concept was great, and it actually worked. But, the belief at the time was that bandwidth would continue to double every year or so enabling all sorts of innovation. It didn't.

Here is what Mark has to say about Internet bandwidth; "Few people's actual throughput to their homes have increased more than 5mbs in the past 5 years, and few people's throughput (if you don't understand the difference between throughput and the marketed downstream speeds your read from your ISP, you should) to their homes will increase more than 10mbs in the next 5 years. That's not enough to define a platform that allows really smart people to come up with groundbreaking ideas."

Mark Cuban is right, and we see the same problem in the cell phone space. The carriers are dragging their feet, trying to control all the applications, and building "walled gardens" around their users. Just look at all the growth and innovation happening on the cell phone platform in Europe and Asia.

Video conferencing has been around for decades, but it really hasn't taken off in a big way due to bandwidth limitations. Voice over IP (VoIP) is the same story, although we are seeing more of it now that the carriers are involved. Video on Demand works well on cable TV but could open up huge markets on the Internet if there was more bandwidth available.

Cuban's latest venture is HDnet, a high definition TV network sold through cable TV carriers. Mark said in a recent interview; "We have a vertically integrated entertainment company. We make movies; we show them in Landmark theaters; we show them on HDNet; we release them through our own DVD company, Magnolia Home Entertainment, and distribute them through Magnolia Pictures."

Mark Cuban - the next Ted Turner? - Cuban owns the Dallas Mavericks NBA basketball team, is working on a new football venture, and is thinking about buying the Chicago Cubs baseball team. Sports teams create great entertainment content for his vertically integrated entertainment company. Ted Turner did the same thing in building TBS, CNN, TNT, while owning the Atlanta Braves baseball team and Atlanta Hawks basketball team.

Ted Turner bought Hanna/Barbera the Saturday morning cartoon producer for $550M. Ted said other potential buyers saw it only as a library of low budget cartoons that could only be used as re-runs in syndication. But Ted saw Hanna/Barbera as the base content for a new network he would build. He would call it The Cartoon Network and it would go on to make billions for Turner.

Entrepreneurs see things that others don't. At first experts will say it is the dumbest idea they ever heard. But the entrepreneur pushes ahead and makes it happen anyway. Then the experts say, that was simple and obvious...the entrepreneur was just lucky...in the right place at the right time. Entrepreneurs know what I am talking about. It happens all the time.