Supplying content for the Intercom broadband test in Newmarket, Ont. this fall will allow Citytv’s City Interactive division to participate in the future of networked communications as well as allowing tests of new applications for its own material.

Intercom is a four-year broadband technology test being conducted by a consortium of communications companies, including Bell, Apple and ibm, wherein test homes will be wired with fast (about 10 megabits per second) atm connections.

‘We see it as a viable place to test content that’s not possible or realistic on a general Internet platform,’ say City Interactive gm Josh Raphaelson.

City Interactive will bring test-specific applications as well as adaptations of existing material to the test.

City Interactive’s cd-rom division, which is the exclusive Canadian distributor of New York-based Voyager cd-rom titles, will offer Voyager titles on an online basis and will test the feasibility of offering participants high-speed access to titles off a server. City Interactive also plans to conduct marketing trials as to pricing such a service.

A customized Web site, likely the MediaTelevision site, will be developed for the test, utilizing increased video content which can be cumbersome with normal Internet connections.

Raphaelson says City Interactive will also look for ways to use Intercom participants in City programming. ‘It would give us some interesting Speakers Corner type material,’ says Raphaelson. ‘We may contact people on the Intercom system and ask them to give us video feedback, using cameras on their computers, which we could then download and use in some kind of programming. Potentially they could also provide us with a live feed from their computer into our server.’

Raphaelson says the company has also discussed the possibilities of providing music video material on demand.

Raphaelson says alliances like the one formed for Intercom are an effective way to explore technology not widely available now. ‘We look at Intercom as a way of getting involved in a number of things we know are coming,’ he says. TI