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Emphasizing the developing nature of broadband networks in the United States, speakers at the May 21 Broadband Breakfast Club event said that the recent achievement of ultra-high speed broadband networks has been a critical factor seeding transformative developments for organizations, individuals and communities. These developments, panelists said, were simply not possible before with slower speed networks. Yet panelists at the event, “Becoming a Gigabit Nation: What Have We Learned About Ultra-High Speed Broadband?” also agreed that speed is not actually the most important factor in the maturing of these networks. Successful deployment of such networks requires concerted efforts and continual upgrades involving community leadership, assessment of consumer needs and desires, infrastructure development, application development and successful assessment of usage patterns. All of these factors affect the success of such gigabit and high-speed networks, panelists said. In other words, high-speed networks need to be developed in concert with proposed applications, which are in turn developed in the context of their communities or customer base. Click headline to read more and watch the highlight or the complete program--
News about Google Glass is everywhere these days, and so are its critics. Some charge it only with fashion crimes. Others worry about invasion of privacy: when out on a date with a Glass wearer, you won’t know if they are recording you — or Googling “seduction tips,” for that matter. Nonetheless, most agree that a smartphone-linked display and camera placed in the corner of your vision is intriguing and potentially revolutionary — and like us, they want to try it. But Glass may inadvertently disrupt a crucial cognitive capacity, with potentially dangerous consequences. In an impromptu TED talk and interview in March, Sergey Brin, one of Google’s founders, described a motivation for the new product. “We questioned whether you should be walking around looking down” at a smartphone, he said. Instead, the company’s designers asked, “Can we make something that frees your hands” and “frees your eyes”? Google isn’t the only company selling a technology that makes it easier to use your phone while you do other things. Last month Chevrolet released a commercial touting “eyes-free and hands-free integration” with the iPhone’s Siri interface, showing a woman checking her text messages using voice commands while she drives in circles. To their credit, Google’s designers have recognized the distraction caused by grabbing someone’s attention with a sudden visual change. Mr. Brin explained that Glass doesn’t flash an alert in its users’ visual field when a new text message arrives. Instead, it plays a sound and requires them to look up to activate the display. The “eyes-free” goal addresses an obvious limitation of the human brain: we can’t look away from where we’re heading for more than a few seconds without losing our bearings. And time spent looking at a cellphone is time spent oblivious to the world, as shown in the viral videos of distracted phone users who stumble into shopping-mall fountains. Click headline to read more--
Assuming you haven't been under a rock, there's a decent chance that you've seen astronaut Chris Hadfield's rendition of David Bowie's Space Oddity (with the lyrics conveniently changed to skip the whole dying in space part). The video was released just before Hadfield returned to earth, and completely fit with Hadfield's time on the International Space Station, where he became the world's first serious social media expert from space -- tweeting, Tumbling and YouTubing up a storm. But... filming a cover song and releasing it via YouTube from space had some people wondering: can you untangle the copyright issues here? Thankfully, Glenn Fleishman dug in over at the Economist (which, lamely, still refuses to name their writers, but now provides the "initials" of bloggers, so you can parse out who's who), and explained what a fine mess it is.
The punchline here is that it doesn't really matter, because after a bunch of back and forth negotiations, they got all the permissions they needed directly from David Bowie. But, assuming others start going up into space (yay, private space tourism), this issue is going to be raised sooner or later. Glenn points out that it's kind of messy, because different countries have very different compulsory licensing laws for cover songs, and there are no compulsories for sync licenses, which are needed to put the song to a video. There was also the issue of the International Space Station having different sections "owned" by different countries, and the official agreement says that it matters where creation happens -- so if the video had been done in all different parts of the space station, it potentially could have been a mess (though, it looks like it was all filmed in parts owned by NASA).
While there's no issue with this specific case, Glenn alerts us to a paper from a few years ago that lays out how copyright in space is about to get complicated: Click headline to read more--
On our cross Canada tour we are taking some extra time to travel through southwestern Ontario. This region is a major economic hub for country, and where all of Canada’s four designated “smart cities” are located. An emerging paradigm in economic development and urban planning is the idea of a “smart city”. As we advocate for ICT investment, what we are really advocating for is a platform to build strong, more sustainable Canadian municipalities, or “smarter” cities. According to Cisco Systems Inc., smart communities “are those which have – whether through crisis or foresight – come to understand the enormous challenges of the Broadband Economy, and have taken conscious steps to create an economy capable of prospering in it.” To date, four Canadian cities have been deemed “smart”: Stratford, Toronto, Waterloo and Windsor. Amazingly, the Canadian smart cities are clustered in southwestern Ontario, where theSouthwest Economic Alliance is working on an intelligent region economic development plan. The main idea behind building smart cities is to accommodate the needs of future citizens. As populations and urbanization increase, cities must deliver more services with less resources. The idea behind smart cities is that information technology becomes an important enabler for a more sustainable approach to designing, building and operating cities to serve its residents. As we’re advocating, broadband becomes the centre of the efficient, sustainable, and smart city. Not just for big cities or well-known technology hubs: every community can become more sustainable and efficient with adequate broadband. Stratford is a classic example. A rural municipality disconnected from major highways, known as a quaint town with exceptional theatre and restaurants, Stratford has become a globally recognized community by investing in broadband. This investment has enabled civic leaders to better coordinate city services and support local economic development with the growth of their digital economy. Click headline to read more--
Allowing Japanese company SoftBank to buy Sprint could expose critical communications networks to hackers, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) warned in a letter to federal regulators on Friday. He worried that the deal could help the Chinese government spy on the private communications of U.S. companies and people. “I have real concerns that this deal, if approved, could make American industry and government agencies far more susceptible to cyberattacks from China and the People’s Liberation Army, already the number one source of electronic espionage against American interest,” Schumer wrote. “We must proceed with extreme caution before allowing something as vital as our communications and internet infrastructure from falling into the hands of a foreign company with reported ties to China.” He noted that Sprint and its affiliate Clearwire own access to broad swaths of the nation's airwaves and have contracts with many government agencies. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) raised similar concerns in a letter on Thursday. Dish Network, which is also trying to buy Sprint, has been sounding alarm about the alleged risk of SoftBank and has been urging regulators to ensure that a U.S. company owns Sprint's networks. Click headline to read more--
Federal investigators have begun probing whether Google is using its increasingly potent position in the online advertising market to undermine competition, an issue officials have monitored since its acquisition of digital ad company DoubleClick in 2008, said people familiar with the inquiry. The probe — in an exploratory phase, according to these accounts — comes just months after the Federal Trade Commission closed an unrelated investigation of allegations that Google was using its power in the lucrative search business in ways that violated antitrust law. It remains unclear whether the FTC has concluded that Google violated any law, and some preliminary inquiries end with no action against companies. But this newest phase of federal scrutiny for Google underscores how regulators worldwide are perhaps the most important potential checks on the growth of an ambitious, highly profitable company as it seeks to consolidate its position in existing markets and move into several new ones. Google spokeswoman Niki Fenwick declined to comment, as did Federal Trade Commission spokesman Peter Kaplan. Click headline to read more--
Marietje Schaake, a member of the European Parliament often credited as one of the most tech savvy (and, yes, a regular Techdirt reader) has penned an excellent article, In defense of digital freedom. It's well worth a read, even if it covers many things that regular readers of the site will be familiar with. The key point it makes, however, is that we shouldn't be frightened by all the "cyberwar" FUD out there, which is designed to get us to give up our ideals on internet freedom. It discusses how much hype there is around "cyber" everything, nearly all of it trying to scare people. She admits that there are real threats, but those driving the discussion seem to have little interest in parsing them out from the hype and bluster. She notes that, in this rush for new laws, we seem to ignore that existing infrastructure can actually handle most of the actual problems. Click headline to read more--
The Harper government's recent bid to give police more information about Internet users would have unlocked numerous revealing personal details — from web-surfing habits to names of friends, says a new study by the federal privacy watchdog. The online surveillance bill was effectively a digital key to determining someone's leanings, the people they know and where they travel, says the office of Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart. "What's more, each of these pieces of information can be used to uncover further information about an individual," concludes the study. "As information technologies become more and more common in our lives, and the more they become an extension of our very selves, the more sensitive and revealing subscriber identification information becomes." The Conservative government abandoned the legislation in February following a public outcry. The bill would have allowed police, intelligence agents and competition bureau officers access to Internet subscriber information — including name, address, telephone number, email address and Internet Protocol (IP) address — without a warrant. Currently, the release of such data held by Internet service providers is voluntary. Opponents of the bill said allowing authorities access to Internet subscriber information without a court-approved warrant would be a worrisome erosion of privacy because even that limited data can help paint a candid picture. The federal government, on the other hand, likened the information in question to a listing in a public phone book. Click headline to read more--
ndependent broadband provider Canby Telcom, based in Canby, Oregon, is set to launch a channel on the Roku OTT set-top-box, which features a package of live local broadcast channels and video-on-demand from its own local content channel CTV5. The move illustrates the emerging trend of broadband TV, where broadband carriers look to leverage the convergence of OTT video and broadband into a video offer of their own. Canby will take eight existing broadcast channel feeds in MPEG-2 and adapt them to multi-bitrate Apple HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) using Elemental video processing systems. The local broadcast channel line-up, which will include NBC, CBS, FOX and others will then be delivered to an authenticated channel on the Roku platform for subscribers to watch their local channels.
This channel is not delivered over-the-top across the open Internet; rather, it’s delivered through Canby’s managed local broadband access network. Canby intends to start offering the service to their existing 5000 broadband customers in June, but also intends to offer the service to their 5000 wholesale Internet subscribers, who come through Canby affiliated ISPs in the Portland, Oregon DMA.
Canby is an existing IPTV operator and looks at the Roku offer as a complement to their existing triple play bundle, extending the reach of their video capabilities to include this new broadband TV approach. “Our new EZVideo channel on Roku allows us to provide an affordable, premium-quality video service targeted to customers who are looking to augment their current digital television service with an OTT solution,” said Keith Galitz, president of Canby Telcom in an Elemental press release. Click headline to read more--
Cable overbuilder WideOpenWest said it lost 14,100 video, 10,200 phone and 1,900 high-speed Internet subscribers in the first quarter. The Englewood, Colo.-based company said late Wednesday that the subscriber losses "were driven primarily by increased disconnects of past-due customer accounts" that occurred after it converted to a new billing platform in the fourth quarter. It now counts 690,500 pay TV, 706,800 high-speed data and 432,600 phone customers. WOW, which acquired Knology for $1.5 billion in April 2012, said it generated $296.4 million in revenue in the first quarter, a decrease from $298.1 million in pro forma revenue reported for first quarter of 2012. Its net loss widened to $35.1 million compared to a pro forma net loss of $33.9 million last year. The company's subscriber losses are noteworthy, considering it was ranked by Consumer Reports in March as the top triple-play provider in the United States. It also tied Verizon's (NYSE: VZ) FiOS Internet as the No. 1 high-speed Internet service and was ranked as the second-best phone provider. Click headline to read more--
Last week in GN Docket 13-5 the FCC issued an update that asked additional questions about its planned transition of the historic TDM telephone network to all-IP network. This docket asked for comments on several topics like having a trial for transitioning the TDM telephone network to all-IP, for having a trial to go to enhanced 911 and for making sure that a switch to IP would not adversely affect the nationwide telephone databases. But the docket also asks for comments on whether the FCC should grant telephone companies the right to substitute wireless phones for wireline phones and abandon their copper network. The docket mentioned two companies that wanted to do this. For example, Verizon said they intend to put wireless on Fire Island off New York City as they rebuild it from the devastation of hurricane Sandy. But AT&T has told the FCC that they are going to request permission to replace “millions of current wireline customers, mostly in rural areas, with a wireless-only product”. Let me explain what this means. There are now traditional-looking telephone sets that include a cellular receiver. To replace a wireline phone, the telephone company would cut the copper wires, and in place of your existing phones they would put one of these cellular handsets. They would not be making every family member get a cell phone and there would still be a telephone in the house that works on the cellular network. This make good sense to me for Fire Island. It is mostly a summer resort and there are not many residents there in the winter. It’s a relatively small place and with one or two cell phone towers the whole island could have very good coverage. And if the cell phone tower is upgraded to 4G there would be pretty decent Internet speeds available, certainly much faster than DSL. One would have to also believe that the vast majority of visitors to the island bring along a cell phone when they visit and that there is not a giant demand for fixed phones any longer. It is AT&T’s intentions, though, that bother me a lot. AT&T wants to go into the rural areas it serves and cut the copper and instead put in these same cellular-based phones. This is an entirely different situation than Fire Island. Click headline to read more--
Market research from Ubiquiti Networks sees a strong, perceived link between mobile WiFi Internet access and productivity: while 48% of respondents in a recent survey graded WiFi availability and performance in their hometown a ‘B’, 70% said their productivity suffers when WiFi isn’t readily accessible in the workplace. Fifty-two percent of respondents to Ubiquiti’s latest “State of WiFi Report” said that work-essential apps often can’t be used due to poor WiFi availability or reliability in the workplace. Seventy-one percent agreed that they would use more demanding applications, such as video and chat, if higher performance WiFi was more widely available. Forty-four percent of the 84% who reported WiFi was available at work gave their employers a ‘B’ grade for its general availability and performance. “WiFi has become a must-have capability for mobile workers—it’s impacting revenue and worker productivity for businesses of all types and sizes,” Ubiquiti’s chief marketing officer David Hsieh commented in a press release. “Increasingly powerful mobile device capabilities mean user needs are outpacing existing networks in terms of accessibility, dependability and performance.” Key takeaways of the report include: Click headline to read more--
While we realize that the intricacies of IP law (and its often-attendant ridiculousness) can be rather difficult for the average, uninterested person to parse, it's really not asking too much to expect large international news agencies to make an effort to get the terminology right.
As you recall, Kim Dotcom recently announced he holds a patent for two-factor authentication, which he then waved in the direction of other internet titans like Twitter and Google, promising not to sue in exchange for contributions to his legal defense fund.
Here's how AFP (Agence France-Presse), the third-largest news agency in the world (and one of the oldest) titled its coverage of the Dotcom/patent story: Kim Dotcom might sue Twitter, Google and Facebook over copyright infringement.
Congratulations, AFP. The headline sounds like Facebook itself wrote it, using machine learning to gather IP-related flotsam from the feeds of millions of teenagers, each one bragging about trademarking their copyright on some catchy phrase they misheard on Twitter ("Be careful talking when you have a mouthful of glass") and regurgitating its findings in 40-pt font across the top of Raw Story's piped-in news selection.
The story reiterates the "copyright" claim in the opening paragraph. Click headline to read more--
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Who will own the brains of smart cities--citizens or corporations? At stake is an impending massive trove of data, not to mention issues of privacy, services, and inclusion. The battle may be fought in the streets between bands of Jane Jacobs-inspired hacktivists pushing for self-serve governance and a latter-day Robert Moses carving out monopolies for IBM or Cisco instead of the Triborough Bridge Authority. Without a delicate balance between the scale of big companies and the DIY spirit of “gov 2.0” champions, the urban poor could be the biggest losers. Achieving that balance falls to smarter cities’ mayors, who must keep the tech heavyweights in check and “frame an agenda of openness, transparency and inclusivness.” Those are some of the conclusions of “The Future of Cities, Information, and Inclusion,” a 10-year forecast commissioned by the Rockefeller Foundation and published this morning by the Institute for the Future. “Without this catalyst for cooperation,” the authors conclude, “we may repeat the devastating urban conflicts of the 20th century that pitted central planners like Robert Moses against community activists like Jane Jacobs.” Befitting the Foundation’s focus on the world’s poorest and what it calls “smart globalization,” the report’s emphasis is on smartening up cities in the developing world--cities that lack both data about their swelling populations and the tools needed to make sense of it. The roster of expert contributors comprises a who’s who of ubiquitous computing and gov 2.0 types, including MIT Senseable City Lab director Carlo Ratti, Everyware author Adam Greenfield, the Santa Fe Institute’s Nathan Eagle, Intel Labs Director Genevieve Bell, Microsoft Research’s Jonathan Donner, and San Francisco CIO Chris Vein. Together, they highlight five “technologies that matter” for cities in 2020: mobile broadband; smart personal devices, whether they’re dirt-cheap phones or tablets; government-sponsored cloud computing (modeled on the U.K.’s national “G-cloud” initiative); open-source public databases to promote grassroots innovation, and “public interfaces.” Instead of Internet cafés, imagine an outdoor LED screen and hacked Kinect box allowing literally anyone to access the Net using only gestures. The report’s centerpiece is a map depicting how these technologies might be applied across 13 scenarios, from something as simple as on-demand census counting (to track the influx of urban immigration) to crowdsourced public services (best exemplified in the U.S. by SeeClickFix, the subject of a profile in the December/January issue of Fast Company) to high-resolution, real-time models of urban processes. None of these developments are unambiguously good, stresses Anthony Townsend, director of technology development at IFTF and the report’s lead author. Data-rich models might offer residents a chance to see how congestion pricing might effect the volume of traffic on their street, or they might be harnessed by technocrats in places like China or Singapore to further tighten their grip on how cities function. Crowdsourcing carries its own complications, adds Townsend. “It’s cooperation versus offloading: cities shoveling off service delivery onto citizen groups” in a social media successor to business improvement districts, “while in the developing world, you’re going to have governments that never provided services to begin with” leaving the crowd to fend for themselves in the name of empowerment. Click headline to read more-
The Illinois General Assembly overrode a veto to enact Senate Bill 9, getting the state’s Smart Grid program back on track. The law, which takes effect immediately, ensures ComEd can invest in a modern grid that will reduce power outages and give customers more choice and control over their energy use. ComEd’s modernization efforts are designed to reduce outages by 700,000 per year, saving customers an estimated $100 million in outage-related costs. Senate Bill 9 served to clarify existing language in the original Smart Grid law. The Illinois Commerce Commission participated in developing the bill’s language and retains its regulatory oversight over ComEd. “Thanks to the leadership demonstrated by the Illinois General Assembly, ComEd now can get the Smart Grid program back on track and work toward delivering on the full promise of this program to our customers,” said Anne Pramaggiore, president and CEO, ComEd. “We are starting immediately to accelerate smart meter installation and other work to improve reliability, provide new ways to save energy and money, and serve as a shot in the arm to our state’s economy.” With the law’s enactment, ComEd can begin installing smart meters to customers in the fourth quarter of 2013. The installations will continue through 2021. Smart meters provide real-time data to electricity users about how much power they’re using, giving customers more control over their energy use. Several businesses plan to open new facilities in Illinois to support the manufacture and installation of the meters, creating hundreds of additional jobs in our state. Already, three companies have set up new offices in Illinois to support the Smart Grid, and the program has created more than 2,700 full-time equivalent jobs.
Click headline to read more--
Given the byzantine corporate ownership structures of practically every item Americans purchase, it takes near encyclopedic knowledge to know which companies you are supporting when you buy, say, toilet paper. A new free app will help conscious consumers know whose pockets they are lining, and help them avoid supporting right-wing causes and truth-obscuring corporate conglomerates like Koch Industries and Monsanto. The free downloadable app scans everything in your shopping cart and traces the ownership all the way up to the parent company. Sometimes that trail will resemble a complicated family tree, since parent companies don't always want you to know who their offspring is. Just by way of example, Brawny paper towels, Angel Soft toilet paper and Dixie Cups are all products of Georgia-Pacific, a subsidiary of Koch Industries. The Brothers Koch also have gotten their corporate hands into the seemingly progressive yoga pants industry. But when you buy stretchy Lycra-containing pants for your downward dog, they are made by Invista, a textile company Koch bought. The idea for an app for more consicous-shopping first germinated at a Netroots Nation gathering, when Darcy Burner, the former Microsoft programmer, suggested some app developer work on it. A group calling itself Buycott was already at work on the challenge, ultimately making the app even more spophisticated than Burner envisioned. It took 16 months for freelance programmer Ivan Pardo, 26, of Los Angeles to develop the app that allows you to scan the barcode of any item in your shopping cart and find out who your purchase is enriching. But it goes beyond that, as Forbes.com's Clare O'Connor reports. Users of the app can "can join user-created campaigns to boycott business practices that violate your principles rather than single companies. One of these campaigns, Demand GMO Labeling, will scan your box of cereal and tell you if it was made by one of the 36 corporations that donated more than $150,000 to oppose the mandatory labeling of genetically modified food." Monsanto, of course, comes to mind, but it has plenty of company including: Coca-Cola, Nestle, Kraft and Unilever. On a more positive note, Buycott has campaigns to support companies that support progressive causes, like Absolut and Starbucks, both of which have supported marriage equality. The app is free and downloadable to the Android or iPhone. Click headline to read more--
Unless, like me, you are looking at the release dates for the next generation of gaming consoles the way a starving hyena watches an approaching gazelle that's been eating nothing but butter for weeks, perhaps you're not up on all the information coming about regarding Microsoft's next console. Actually, as I'll discuss in a moment, even if you are paying constant attention, you probably still don't know a whole lot for sure. See, after months and months of speculation on possible features of the next Xbox, Microsoft stupidly decided to not firmly address any of that speculation at the release event for the Xbox One. The most troublesome in terms of bad press have been rumors about online connection requirements and how used games would be handled. I say press, but perhaps I should rather say non-mainstream press, because it's really been the smaller blogs and citizen journalists that have produced a roundly negative buzz for the Xbox One.
You would think that in a negative and uncertain climate that's been brewing for the past several months, Microsoft would use the official release press event as a way to clear all of this up. Good answers or bad answers, it's important that the public and the press have a firm understanding on what to expect out of the console. Aren't we constantly told that uncertainty is four letter word in economics and business? That's why it's so curious that Microsoft appears to have provided very little in the way of answers and what answers it has chosen to supply have been both contradictory and confusing.
So, let's take the two issues in order. First up is rumors about online requirements. Click headline to read more--
In an unusual move before a trial, a federal judge expressed a tentative view that the U.S. Justice Department will be able to show evidence that Apple Inc engaged in a conspiracy with publishers to increase e-book prices. U.S. District Judge Denise Cote, who is set to oversee a trial on June 3, gave her view during a pretrial hearing on Thursday. While she stressed that the view was not final and that she had read only some of the evidence so far, her comments could add to pressure on Apple to settle the lawsuit, in which the Justice Department accuses the company and five publishers of conspiring to fix e-book prices. "I believe that the government will be able to show at trial direct evidence that Apple knowingly participated in and facilitated a conspiracy to raise prices of e-books, and that the circumstantial evidence in this case, including the terms of the agreements, will confirm that," Cote said. Orin Snyder, a lawyer for Apple, said in a statement, "We strongly disagree with the court's preliminary statements about the case today." The Justice Department declined to comment. Click headline to read more--
U.S. Senator Charles Schumer has reintroduced the Mobile Device Theft Deterrence Act, which would make it a federal crime to tamper with the unique identification number (IMEI) of a wireless device. The following statement may be attributed to Tim McKone, AT&T Executive Vice President of Federal Relations: “AT&T applauds Senator Schumer for reintroducing legislation to help deter the theft of wireless communications devices. The Mobile Device Theft Deterrence Act is a critical component in helping law enforcement and wireless carriers address the growing issue of stolen devices. Last year, we launched a website to help educate our customers on how to protect their wireless devices, and we created a stolen phone database which prevents devices reported stolen by our customers from working on our network. We thank the Senator for his tireless efforts in this area and we look forward to working with him and his colleagues as this legislation moves forward.”
nTelos and Dish Network plan to use LTE to support the fixed wireless broadband offering they are planning to launch in nTelos’s wireless territory, a Dish spokesman confirmed in an email to Telecompetitor today. The companies announced their plans in a press release issued this morning, noting that the service will provide high-speed Internet access to customers of both companies, including those in underserved rural communities. The spokesman said Dish’s role would include installing rooftop antennas to support the offering. “We think that approach will deliver a significant improvement to the customer experience in terms of throughput and speeds,” he said. He declined to reveal the expected data rate of the new service. If nTelos and Dish co-market one anothers’ services as companies typically do with this kind of agreement, it could be a way for both companies to compete with the emerging partnership between Verizon Wireless and the cable industry. Potentially Dish could sell other nTelos wireless services and nTelos could sell Dish’s paid TV offering. nTelos previously had a landline business but that part of the company was split off to create Lumos Networks a year or two ago. nTelos already offers LTE service so it would appear that this offering could be launched fairly soon, particularly considering that the idea of using LTE for fixed broadband service is not a new one. Some small wireless network operators already offer this sort of option. In addition, Verizon offers HomeFusion, an offering quite similar to what nTelos and Dish seem to be planning, in that it uses LTE augmented with an antenna to provide fixed wireless broadband service. Click headline to read more--
Every few weeks, some tech writer holds up a media analyst report allegedly showing, once and for all, that the cable guys have finally lost, and the cord-cutters have finally won. One week, that report might come. It will really be something. This is not that week. Let's start with news that might appear to be the death throes of cable. Cable companies' TV subscribers collapsed by more than 1.5 million in the last year, according to Leichtman Research Group. (The Big Two, Comcast and Time Warner Cable, have declined by more than 900,000, alone.) In fact, the trend has been underway for a while. Cable TV customers peaked in the late 1990s and have since fallen to early Clinton-era levels. But the cable companies aren't exclusively in the business of selling TV. They're really in the business of communications infrastructure, which is TV, phone, and Internet. The Internet business in particular has done very well for them. Since cable video subs peaked in the late 1990s, the industry has added 45 million high-speed Internet customers. Click headline to read more and view charts--
DirecTV is contemplating embedding an antenna into their set top boxes in order to offer live over the air broadcasts, thereby circumventing retransmission fees. Speaking at the JP Morgan Technology, Media and Telecom conference in Boston, DirecTV chief financial officer Patrick Doyle stated they didn't have a timeline on the project, but that it makes financial sense due to the soaring price of retrans fees and the landscape shift that's occurring courtesy of Aereo. He also stated that whenever it does get deployed, it would only be initially made available to new customers. "We’ll probably test in some markets an over-the-air integrated tuner set-up and make sure the customer experience is there," insists Doyle.
DirecTV and Time Warner Cable Inc., two of the largest U.S. pay-TV services with 32 million total subscribers, complain they have no control over the changes and are wary the networks will demand more money for unproven shows. The companies agreed to carry specific content, their executives said. Now they’re saddled with programming they didn’t order, and unsure they can pass on future fee increases to customers. “You bargain for a specific service that you were pitched to meet the needs of consumers,” Dan York, head of programming for El Segundo, California-based DirecTV, said in an interview. “If that doesn’t work, it doesn’t mean the content provider has a unilateral right to turn it into something else or even call it something else.” News Corp.’s decision to change its Nascar-focused Speed into the all-sports Fox Sports 1 starting Aug. 17 marks an effort to turn a channel with low ratings into one that rivals Walt Disney Co.’s ESPN. ESPN, the most-watched sports network, reaches about 100 million homes, collects $5.54 a month per subscriber and had 2012 revenue of $7.83 billion, according to research firm SNL Kagan. Fox’s Speed network is in 86 million households and charges 31 cents a month, SNL Kagan said. Click headline to read more--
TechHive, together with testing partner OpenSignal, visited 20 U.S. cities throughout March and April to measure the real-life speeds of wireless networks across the country.
We found that LTE speeds are getting faster, that AT&T has the fastest LTE speeds right now, that Sprint's and Verizon's respective 3G services are stuck in low gear, and that the differences between the speeds of the carrier's various services are considerable.
This infographic should help you get a handle on our most prominent findings.
Click headline to view the full infographic--
Students, staff and researchers at college campuses throughout the nation, and participating institutions through regional, national and global research and education partner networks will benefit from a faster and more secure connection, thanks to a new peering arrangement between Microsoft Corp. and Internet2, the nation’s premier research and education network. This new agreement enables improved access to infrastructure and application services that support virtual learning environments and large-scale data intensive research projects, through the use of Microsoft’s high performance computing clusters, collaboration tools, and disaster recovery services. Campuses around the world will have enhanced access to two Internet2 NET+ offerings from Microsoft – Windows Azure and Microsoft Office 365 Education. These services will enable unmetered access to both the high-performance computing and the communications infrastructure to aid collaboration. This peering service is part of ongoing collaborative efforts between Microsoft and the Internet2 community to bring other enhanced services to researchers, educators, and students that leverage the Internet2 Network. “Microsoft and Internet2 have agreed to establish direct peering to leverage the nation’s fastest research and education network in bringing the power and diversity of Microsoft cloud services to the entire education and research community,” said Shelton Waggener, senior vice president, Internet2. “We are very excited to work collaboratively with Internet2 and the Regional Education Networks to help schools quickly build, deploy, and manage cloud applications so they can benefit from big data insights. Windows Azure’s global and scalable cloud infrastructure enables education institutions to meet their research goals and serve their students’ needs on an open and flexible cloud platform,” said Margo Day, vice president, Microsoft US Education. Click headline to read more--
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