HBO Go a High Speed Access "Enhanced Service?"

Broadband Internet service providers always are looking for ways to enhance their services and add value, to avoid a "commodity" approach. Could HBO GO, a streaming service sold by HBO, be such an example of a value-added feature?

It wouldn't be easy, as HBO's important cable, telco and satellite video distributors would not necessarily take kindly to HBO essentially making an end run around them. 

HBO's "HBO GO" online streaming service presently is available only to subscribers to video entertainment services who also buy HBO. 

But HBO continues to talk about the possibility it could be sold, perhaps as a feature of a high-speed access service, to customers who buy voice or broadband access from a  partner, but do not buy a video service. 

It would be a delicate balancing act, and it remains unclear whether the business model actually would work, HBO executives are careful to point out. 

HBO now is talking about an incremental fee of $10 to $15 on top of the customer's high speed access fee, for example. 

By extension, where ISPs have sold security services as an add-on to their access services, perhaps one day streaming video will be another type of add-on feature.