All BlogsWednesday, November 7, 2007
The User Bill of Rights is something that’s needed by everyone involved in combining data and voice (and with increasing frequency video and presence) on IP networks to deliver the benefits of unified communications, including the end customer who is... [read more]
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
My wife is calling me on my Motorola cellphone, but I can’t hear it ringing. That’s because the phone, for reasons known only to itself, has decided to set itself to silent ringing. I had set the phone on “Vibe and Ring.” But my... [read more]
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Back in the bad old days, there was a phone company un-affectionately dubbed by some as “USWorst,” with customer disservice derided as “Mountain Bull” – but that was before the CEO from a lot of those bad old days was convicted... [read more]
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Decision makers in all sizes of companies are considering using professional services between 2008 and 2010 to help them adopt the right Voice over IP (VoIP) and convergence assets. This increased interest in professional services is most likely the result of... [read more]
Sunday, September 9, 2007
There’s nothing like a nice lightning storm to destroy what must have been tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of modems and other electronic goodies around the neighborhood where I live, a situation that, of course, creates an instant... [read more]
Thursday, August 30, 2007
This is one of the most predictable times of the year here in Washington. Most of the decision-makers are gone, the staffs are trying to catch up on the various piles of work that have accumulated over the past few months while still leaving early and taking... [read more]
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
I’m about to risk the life of my computers by plugging their Ethernet ports into the electric power outlets in my house. Let me explain. I’ve been writing about broadband over powerline (BPL) extensively for almost three years now. In general, my... [read more]
Thursday, August 2, 2007
Somebody is not online. Actually, lots of somebodies are not online. And therein lays the failure so far of PC-based instant messaging (IM) and VoIP to supplant traditional time division multiplex (TDM) plain old telephone service (POTS). To be more... [read more]
Monday, July 30, 2007
So here’s a challenge: How do you market a “new” product that has been around for more than a hundred years and that almost every household in the United States already has? It’s just as difficult as creating the next must-see TV... [read more]
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
It didn’t take more than a matter of hours for the flow of offers from various “pure play” VoIP providers to start, following the untimely death of “pure play” VoIP provider SunRocket, as everyone in the business started... [read more]
Friday, June 29, 2007
Yes, if I walk out in the driveway (I only live about 35 minutes outside of Washington, D.C.) and hold my phone high in the air, I may be able to get one or two bars, but that’s it. Get close to the house, and it’s gone. Same is true for most of... [read more]
Thursday, June 7, 2007
A good friend of mine is just about ready to enter the dream retirement after 30 years with a major car manufacturer, building a sizable 401(k) and putting both daughters through college. And he still hasn’t hit 55 (and that’s SO galling)... [read more]
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Boy oh boy, they don’t make electronics the way they used to. To hell with Moore’s Law (I used to know Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, by the way, very slightly). Forget about all the “advances” of the last quarter-century. What... [read more]
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
Gosh, I’m all Joost up – I just watched my first, fully commercial (not beta) IPTV shows delivered over the Internet. Joost (pronounced “juiced”) is the brainchild of the same techno whizzes that gave us Skype – which I in... [read more]
Thursday, April 19, 2007
The hot-diggity-dog buzzword right now is "convergence," particularly of VoIP and conventional wireless telephony. Well, we ain’t really there yet but, for the past couple of weeks, I’ve been having fun testing one of the raft of... [read more]
Thursday, April 12, 2007
I still find it amazing how easily some folks knuckle under to terrorism and hate – like the DSL Forum, for instance. Or perhaps it’s just a case of uncaring ignorance. I just got a press release from the Forum trumpeting “DSL Forum... [read more]
Friday, March 30, 2007
The Federal Corporation Commission took a shocking step when they decided to actually gather information about a topic before they make a rule saying how they are going to regulate it. They approved an inquiry exploring how companies that provide high-speed... [read more]
Thursday, March 15, 2007
By: By Stuart Zipper
The latest figures show that just about every type of broadband backhaul known to man is now booming, with only one exception – free space optics (FSO). How sad. After years of struggling, the technology, which consists of a pair of... [read more]
Thursday, March 8, 2007
I have a feeling it may be weeks before the industry discovers whether it has survived the new earlier March 11 date for daylight savings time or whether the Congress and the president have foisted on us a "Daylight Savings Crime." ... [read more]
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Boy, it’s a good thing we’re not fighting a war with terrorists in our own territory right now. Like in Washington, D.C,. where, if memory serves me, on 9/11 a plane flew into the Pentagon and another was to be aimed at the White House. And... [read more]
Thursday, February 15, 2007
The FCC is now catching on to what everyone in this business already knows: the country needs a national broadband plan. To be fair, FCC insiders have been well-aware of this for several years now, though the in-house experts have not received much guidance... [read more]
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
My partner sent me a recent article from The New York Times, "Want an iPhone? Beware the iHandcuffs," written by Randall Stross. The essence of the article is that Apple (Computer) Corporation has behaved insensitively and arrogantly in its design... [read more]
Monday, February 5, 2007
The Internet, it seems, is making it harder these days for folks to get a fair trial – and not simply because of the instant transmission of news. To explain, I just finished a couple of days of fulfilling my obligation as a U.S. citizen to serve... [read more]
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
A reader wrote this morning with a question about the role of communications technology in our global competitiveness: “I have a question for you concerning the future of broadband in the U.S. With Verizon and AT&T rolling out FiOS and u-verse... [read more]
Friday, January 26, 2007
Wow. I would have never thought of using sex to sell wireless broadband subscriptions. But that’s exactly what Moscow’s Golden Telecom is doing. To explain - I was writing a story about Golden Telecom’s new municipal Wi-Fi network... [read more]
Monday, January 22, 2007
Well, well … it looks like the FCC, in cahoots with both the nation’s telcos and cablecos, doesn’t want the hoi poloi (that’s us guys, the great unwashed public) to know where broadband really is available. The Center for... [read more]
Tuesday, January 9, 2007
So here I sit in Sin City – Las Vegas – covering the massive Computer Electronics Show and guess what – no Internet and no GSM cellular service in one of the two massive press rooms set up for the show. No bars, if you will. Actually... [read more]
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
By: Stuart Zipper
With a heavy heart, I’m posting this item from 35,000 feet up in the sky, cruising at 700 miles per hour somewhere over the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, on one of the last flights in the world that will feature broadband access, at least for the... [read more]
Tuesday, November 7, 2006
The votes are in and, right now, broadband still is losing. Just for fun, I made an attempt to follow the election results using nothing but IPTV - video delivered over my broadband connection to the public Internet, not an IPTV service feed that replaces... [read more]
Thursday, October 19, 2006
I’m not sure if it's Cingular or Motorola that messed this one up, but a few months ago my cellphone started getting billed a few pennies every now and then for data transfers in the dead of the night. Cingular can’t figure out why, but... [read more]
Monday, September 25, 2006
A couple of weeks ago, I got pitched by 'net neutrality” advocates who had put together an idiot presentation that included the plea to “keep our Internet free.” My connection to the Internet isn’t free … it costs... [read more]
Monday, September 11, 2006
Qwest tends to get bashed more than the other RHCs in my blogs for the simple reason that I live in a Qwest service area. So to be fair, this time I’m going to report that Qwest did, in fact, respond quickly to a call for help I placed about my DSL... [read more]
Monday, August 28, 2006
Gee, I wonder which model Nokia phone it was that this past weekend’s winner of the Mobile Phone Throwing World Championship was hefting. Maybe it’s the same one I recently traded in for some Motorola hardware. No matter. The cellular phone... [read more]
Wednesday, August 9, 2006
By: Stuart Zipper
Somebody in Sprint has a lot of guts, the skill of a gambler or perhaps it's just a death wish: Sprint just made big headlines by choosing what's being called 'mobile WiMAX' for its 4G network.The problem is that so-called mobile WiMAX doesn't exist yet... [read more]
Friday, July 28, 2006
Oh my, in my enthusiasm for writing about the broadband industry I almost forgot our heritage. But a press release from CML Microcircuts, announcing new semiconductors to support dial-up, that made its way to my inbox recently reminded me of something ... [read more]
Monday, July 24, 2006
I''m impressed. I got a WiMAX story pushed my way by a company that told the truth about what WiMAX is. Wow. Finally. None of the stuff about WiMAX being a technology or a standard or anything like that. The story came from Aperto, telling... [read more]
Thursday, July 20, 2006
A few weeks ago I received a press release from the Recording Industry Association of America that said it would classify top-selling "Master Ringtones," defined as " tones that use actual music and vocals from artists' work,"... [read more]
Thursday, July 13, 2006
By: Stuart Zipper
So the great news in the high tech community so far this week is that venerable venture capitalist house New Enterprise Associates (NEA) has put together a new fund with $2.5 billion to invest – its largest ever. That’s a lot of cash for startups... [read more]
Thursday, July 6, 2006
By: Stuart Zipper
AT&T started rolling out its Microsoft TV-based IPTV just as last month ended - hardly a surprise to our readers, who had been forewarned by weeks - though the consumer press and much of the make-believe trade press covered it as a "gee whiz ma"... [read more]
Friday, June 30, 2006
Got another phishing e-Mail, this one a bit more clever than most. It was the supposed “confirmation” of my purchase of a Sony camera, with payment via my PayPal account. The dead giveaway was that it was addressed to my business e-Mail account... [read more]
Friday, June 23, 2006
I think I’ve discovered the worst phone system in America, . It’s owned by Frontier Airlines. And the worst flight reporting system on the web. It's used by Frontier Airlines.Let me explain … my daughter was flying home from New York... [read more]
Thursday, June 22, 2006
II was writing about the pontential acqusition of Hong Kong's PCCW and suddenly realized just how globalized things have really become. If I have it right the story is about a Texas venture capital... [read more]
Friday, June 16, 2006
Confirming one of the worst kept secrets in the history of the industry eBay has launched its use of Skype technology to let e-Bay bidders contact sellers with their questions and comments. Was it worth $1.9 billion to buy the technology to do that... [read more]
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Sources say that BT's rethought some of the architecture of its much-vaunted 21CN next generation network, and decided it should have opted for carrier class Ethernet in the last... [read more]
Wednesday, June 7, 2006
Once again I have been blindsided by the siren lure of a hotel promising "high speed" broadband. This time I'm in Chicago, covering Globalcomm, and staying at Club Quarters, a business-oriented hotel whose lures include allegedly free... [read more]
Thursday, June 1, 2006
I'm looking at a press release from Aperto Networks with the headline "BeotelNET Deploys Aperto Networks WiMAX Equipment." Only one little problem - what BeotelNET bought isn't WiMAX. In the body of the release it admits that the Serbian carrier... [read more]
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
A week or so ago a friend of mine who uses Vonage sent me an e-Mail asking if he should buy into the Vonage IPO - he had received one of their SPIT messages offering him shares. I don't give stock advice, and indeed I avoid like the plague buying... [read more]
Friday, May 19, 2006
Oh boy is Nortel out beating the drums, following its latest good news -- that its first quarter results will *%/#, um, er ... lets say won't be what they'd like them to do be. But the future will be better, we are all promised. Nortel... [read more]
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
The news that eBay's Skype is going to let its North American users make free calls to PSTN telephones in the U.S. and Canada has the industry guessing - is Skype running scared? Or perhaps petrified, would be more the word for it. Skype had been... [read more]
Monday, May 15, 2006
Globalcomm, one of the two shows that emerged from the Supercomm divorce, is now only a couple of weeks away so of course I'm deluged with requests by companies to stop by the booth "for a few... [read more]
Friday, May 12, 2006
How clever. Vonage is offering its loyal customers - those with accounts between December 15 of last year and February 1 - the right to buy into its planned IPO at the offering price. What a creative way to legally hype an IPO that the company has also... [read more]
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
I’ve been pondering the recent “news” that eBay’s trophy VoIP acquisition Skype now has 100 million registered users (and I’m one of them). Then there’s the... [read more]
Monday, May 8, 2006
Things have been blissfully quiet around my house around dinner time for years now ever since the no-call list was instituted but, thanks to VoIP, it looks like that’s starting to change. I just got off the phone with someone who tried to pitch a... [read more]
Thursday, May 4, 2006
I finally broke down and bought myself a fancy new Motorola cell phone (no, it wasn’t a Razr) from Cingular with Bluetooth built in. Got me a dongle. Installed the software … and nothing would work right. Why didn’t I expect this... [read more]
Tuesday, May 2, 2006
I just wrote yet another big IPTV story, and I remain jealous as all get out … because I live in Denver, a Qwest service area, and IPTV here is as much of a dream as in Zambia, Namibia, you name it. The 1.5 Mb/s ADSL service I get sounded good... [read more]
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Just got a call from the folks at Spanish broadband over powerline (BPL) chip company DS2. They read my story about their battle with American BPL chip house Intellon. No argument about what I wrote – the fact is, I gave DS2 a near exclusive story to... [read more]
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
OK, they won. Can we go home now? The “net neutrality” enthusiasts are proclaiming a major victory regarding the imposition of rules that will allegedly protect the Internet from feared destruction caused by rapacious ISPs. The victory came in the... [read more]
Wednesday, January 3, 2007
The AT&T/BellSouth merger represents changing times. One can regard it as a triumph of palliative reform by extracting service, price and employment concessions, and guarantees from AT&T. One can admire it as masterful brinksmanship for AT&T and... [read more]
Friday, December 29, 2006
By: TPR's Frank Barbetta
The nearly stalled AT&T/BellSouth merger late today received a unanimous Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approval - about 24 hours after the companies apparently caved into Democratic pressure and anti-consolidation critics in order to secure the... [read more]
Sunday, December 3, 2006
By: TPR's Frank Barbetta
In a federal capital increasingly working off borrowed money and borrowed time, it’s difficult to imagine Washington, D.C.’s, spin makers resisting both the symbolic and real monetary value of lucrative spectrum auctions. The Federal... [read more]
Monday, October 30, 2006
By: TPR's Frank Barbetta
Last year at this time, the telecom community was tricked by the Federal Communications Commission, which finally treated SBC Communications and Verizon Communications to "mega mergers" with AT&T and MCI, respectively. It soon will be slightly... [read more]
Thursday, September 28, 2006
By: TPR's Frank Barbetta
Paranoia strikes deep. Like the gifted kid from the book-based movie "The Sixth Sense," the Hewlett-Packard effort to probe board director leaks to major news organizations about sensitive corporate developments and directions might make members of... [read more]
Thursday, September 7, 2006
By: TPR's Frank Barbetta
It’s always amazing to see how global regulatory regimes emulate each other and how their major constituents – like incumbent and competitive carriers – behave similarly from one country to the other. Like the Federal Communications... [read more]
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
By: TPR's Frank Barbetta
We hear almost half (nearly 47 percent) of all American food dollars are spent away from home; apparently the marketeers at Verizon Communications have heard this, too. A recent promotion campaign for its emerging FiOS network television services in... [read more]
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
By: TPR's Frank Barbetta
"There are too many small men of envy and ambition who try to disrupt the government of Rome," says Pontius Pilate in the movie Ben-Hur. Well, if you were to read many of the pro-network neutrality and anti-merger blogs, emails and web sites these... [read more]
Thursday, August 3, 2006
By: TPR's Frank Barbetta
We hear the federal government as well as telecom and information technology companies are more aggressively advocating that the medical community - especially doctors and clinics – make more use of online communications, including Internet email for... [read more]
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
By: TPR's Frank Barbetta
Verizon Communications appears to be having its up and downs in divesting Caribbean and Latin American telecom interests to Mexico’s America Movil SA in three separate deals valued at a total of more than $3.6 billion in cash. Sources, however, say the... [read more]
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
By: TPR's Frank Barbetta
Is it a new low, simply poor taste or merely harmless political humor? Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) has become the top whipping boy for pro-network neutrality advocates on the Web because of the estimated 10-minute speech he made to put down a net neutrality... [read more]
Thursday, July 6, 2006
By: TPR's Frank Barbetta
Verizon Communications workers installing the company’s Fios fiber optic network facilities reportedly have improved their accident and damage rates significantly since first starting the massive multi-billion buildout in mid 2004, but they are still... [read more]
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
By: TPR's Frank Barbetta
Reports are circulating around Capitol Hill than more than 200 amendments have already surfaced or been formally submitted on the revised substitute draft of the Senate’s sweeping Communications, Consumers' Choice, and Broadband... [read more]
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
By: TPR's Frank Barbetta
There’s a lot of lobby group and industry association pressure to make sure Congress supports advanced telecom services such as ”triple play” and broadband access to rural subscribers via universal service and other programs, but one of the... [read more]
Wednesday, June 7, 2006
By: TPR's Frank Barbetta
We’re waiting on a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to decide to what extent as well as whether the Federal Communications Commission can write new rules on unbundled network elements... [read more]
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
By: TPR's Frank Barbetta:
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation gave legislators and staffers over the holiday break a little more light reading to digest with a 16-page paper that proposes a "third way'" solution to the heated and increasingly polarized... [read more]
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
By: TPR's Frank Barbetta
The Cyber Security Industry Alliance (CSIA) says a poll it sponsored shows that public confidence is waning on the security of the nation's digital infrastructure, meaning the Internet. The nationwide survey of 1,150 adults conducted by Pineda... [read more]
Friday, May 19, 2006
By: TPR's Frank Barbetta
The industry is anxiously waiting for more details to emerge from the Federal Communications Commission on its mandate that all broadband/Voice over Internet (VoIP) service providers connected with the public switched telephone network (PSTN) comply with... [read more]
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
By: TPR's Frank Barbetta
Telecom technology, economy and policy gurus are getting together next week at the Columbia University Club of New York to discuss the currently hot topic of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) peering - network interconnection akin to current peer... [read more]
Friday, May 12, 2006
By: TPR's Frank Barbetta
So because of the fierce reaction to the National Security Agency (NSA) collecting millions of U.S. subscriber call data records, we may be treated to the spectacle of Senate and House hearings that haul in witnesses to testify from the telecom... [read more]
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
By: TPR's Frank Barbetta
New Yorkers are up in arms! Well that’s nothing new, you say, but some folks in the Big Apple are mad at the U.S. House of Representatives about the Communications, Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement (COPE) Act (H.R5252) introduced last month by... [read more]
Monday, May 8, 2006
By: TPR's Frank Barbetta
Just heard from yet another group that wants to fight regulation of the Internet and oppose network neutrality advocates on Capitol Hill. The Internet Freedom Coalition (IFC) claims to represent 24 “grassroots conservative organizations” with more... [read more]
Friday, May 5, 2006
By: TPR's Frank Barbetta
Activist groups and politicians keep attacking AOL and other online business plans that charge bulk e-mailers different fees for sending volume messages - after they are stamped as bona fide by a third party - but... [read more]
Wednesday, May 3, 2006
By: TPR's Frank Barbetta
The network neutrality brouhaha embraces lots of rhetoric about Internet rights, individual freedoms, the freedom to connect, free speech, freedom of information, etc. And if I’ve heard it... [read more]
Monday, May 1, 2006
By: TPR's Frank Barbetta
A public balancing act between law enforcement/national security interests, communications service provider trust and individual privacy rights has always been a tricky one, but the conflicts these days appear to be coming out of the network. Concerns about... [read more]
Thursday, December 14, 2006
As Microsoft warms up the massive merchandising and marketing machine once again to reap billions in profits from yet another try at Windows, there is little discussion of its implications for mobile. In fact, after playing with Vista now for a couple of... [read more]
Saturday, November 11, 2006
It sounded like an announcement designed to disrupt the PR flowing towards Sony’s launch of the PS3, but methinks Microsoft’s new deals with Hollywood have as much to do with mobile as they do with gaming. The giant of Redmond will start... [read more]
Friday, October 13, 2006
If there was one wireless device that set my head reeling a bit this week at the DigitalLife show, it was a phone/laptop combo from Acer. Shown fleetingly during the Microsoft presentation on its upcoming Vista operating system, the laptop has a wireless... [read more]
Thursday, September 28, 2006
You could see this one coming. The Wall Street Journal reports this morning that Disney decided to close the high-profile, low-performance MVNO and, with it, perhaps any shimmer left on the MVNO model. You will recall that Mobile ESPN was widely viewed and... [read more]
Friday, September 15, 2006
I really tried to find something interesting about this week's CTIA IT and Entertainment Show in Los Angeles, but perhaps the most telling aspect of the show was the lack of news. Beside the News Corp./Jamba deal, it was a world-class snoozer. I hopped from... [read more]
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
By: Steve Smith
Yesterday's announcement from the WiFi Alliance that it would certify "pre-N" 802.11n hardware starting in 2007 is just another sign of how badly the IEEE and the industry dropped then trounced on the WiFi ball. Both 802.11b and 802.11g filtered... [read more]
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
By: Steve Smith
Google acquires mobile search and facial recognition company Neven Vision today in a move that has some very intriguing implications. Google plays it cool in a company blog entry that refers to the benefits for photo searching. But Neven is eyeball-deep in... [read more]
Monday, July 31, 2006
By: Steve Smith
According to Next Generation, a reliable trade news site for the video game industry, the E3 games convention has been gutted of its main participants. Apparently deciding that the ROI on their multi-million dollar convention installations was worse... [read more]
Thursday, July 27, 2006
By: Steve Smith
The highest percentage of mobile phone users ever (59%) are contacting their carriers for support, says J.D. Power. This is a sure sign that the technology is ahead of the market. We are promising more from phones than the user can handle, and the... [read more]
Friday, July 21, 2006
Cingular's quarterlies show a 38-percent year-to-year growth in data ARPU last quarter, now at $5.77 per customer. Is that very good news, especially when overall ARPU was down to $48.84, off 3.3 percent? Cingular says data usage increases offset declines... [read more]
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Phone-based navigation systems still leave something to be desired, and the first generation of products are so unwieldy they may undermine the category. As I will outline in an upcoming review... [read more]
Thursday, July 13, 2006
The long promised interoperability between MSN and Yahoo Messenger goes into international trials this week. The long range wireless implications of this merging of portal interests involve the two brands taking on the IM kingpin AOL eventually in the mobile... [read more]
Monday, July 10, 2006
By: Steve Smith
The guys over at Action Engine who developed the MSNBC.com healdine and alert application tell me that the early results on their ad-supported model are very encouraging. Apparently users are receptive to the idea of major brands going completely off-portal... [read more]
Wednesday, July 5, 2006
Prepping for an article on the mobile Web for WBF, I spent the last few days running donw the batteries on some of the 3G test phones we have here in the lab, seeing how general Web browsing has improved on phones lately. I am happy to report that on a snappy... [read more]
Friday, June 16, 2006
By: Steve Smith
You know an industry is maturing when the lawsuits start flying. Telephia is suing rival mobile measurement firm M:Metrics for patent infirngment. The issue seems to revolve around two patents and M:Metrics SmartPhone metering panel. Apparently M:Metrics... [read more]
Monday, June 12, 2006
The World Soccer Championship could be a watershed or a Waterloo for mobile TV as European carriers place a big bet on live mobi-casts of the games over fledgline networks. But will the end user experience match the hype? Some networks are not ready to handle... [read more]
Thursday, June 8, 2006
By: Steve Smith
M-Advertising seemed poised to get very serious at yesterday's MMA Forum in New York. With over 400 attendees stuffing the hall (double last year's attendance), the show attracted the CEO of Carat as a keynote and had major brands like P&G, MTV, Lifetime... [read more]
Monday, June 5, 2006
Content sales may be leveling off at one of the biggest data providers in the category, so it is time at long last to work on user experience. At Qualcomm's BREW conference this week, Verizon VP and... [read more]
Monday, May 22, 2006
After years of hype and hope, it is so fitting that the two major MVNOs launched in the last few months seem to be ramping up oh so slowly. Told you so! ESPN Mobile numbers were lower than Disney head Robert Iger had hoped they would be, according to the... [read more]
Wednesday, May 3, 2006
For traditional media companies, the realistic revenue possibilities of wireless distribution remain a mystery. This week, CBS CEO Les Moonves titillated everyone by admitting $3 million in income from CBS’s share of VCast... [read more]
Friday, April 28, 2006
Can you read me now? I’m not so sure. In researching an upcoming WBF feature on off-portal delivery, I've been testing the Web-based delivery systems that are supposed to send my phone SMS messages and WAP links to the promised content. The failure rate is... [read more]
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
User-generated content is the next big thing. Every time you talk to a broadcaster or anyone who plays in the content arena, it’s now part of the conversation. It is a dark shadow that stalks them, and it is viewed as both an opportunity and a threat... [read more]
Thursday, October 5, 2006
The combination of consumer demand and interest in new services coupled with new technologies, regulatory encouragement and increased competition between service providers means that more business models and services are being explored and trialed now by more... [read more]
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Coming back from IBC, one of Europe’s major broadcasting shows, two products stand out for me as being stellar. One is OpenTV’s zoomable Electronic Program Guide, which brings a new dimension to TV guides. It intends to solve the age-old conundrum... [read more]
Friday, September 1, 2006
Did the World Cup meet expectations in terms of creating a surge in demand for high-definition TV (HDTV)? It may be too early to tell but, after the event, Philips noted that the market in HD had moved in a positive direction. The World Cup was hotly... [read more]
Thursday, August 17, 2006
By: Mark Holmes
So Tiscali is buying Video Networks. This is an interesting move. There is no doubt Video Networks struggled to gain IPTV subscribers during the last couple of years, but I wonder how Tiscali will fare, considering it will now be competing... [read more]
Tuesday, August 8, 2006
Who would have foreseen this a few years ago: Eastern European pay-TV markets looking to direct to home (DTH) to boost customer numbers? Just like cable operators! In... [read more]
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
By: Mark Holmes
Speaking as a consumer, I take Sky TV services, and I use ntl for broadband and telephony. Sky’s new broadband offer looks particularly compelling to me and should mean I can save at least a significant chunk of my overall communications bill. I... [read more]
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
By: Mark Holmes
Free broadband seems to be all the rage in the U.K. Wherever you look, there seems to be some kind of ‘unbelievable’ broadband offer. Carphone Warehouse set this particularly ball rolling but others are following suit. France Telecom –... [read more]
Monday, June 26, 2006
Triple plays and convergence are coming to the mass market fast now, and BSkyB is in a powerful position because it owns the content as well as great marketing and customer service. I think customers move to a telephone and/or broadband provider for price... [read more]
Friday, June 23, 2006
By: Mark Holmes
Consolidation in the communications/media space has taken some surprising turns in the U.K over the last few months. BSkyB has acquired Easynet to become a triple-play provider, and it will also look to launch IPTV services alongside its DTH offering. ntl has... [read more]
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
By: Mark Holmes
While I was watching TV last night, I glanced up at an ad from wireless operator ‘3’ advertising mobile television. It occurred to me this was one of the first times mobile television has been actively advertised as a... [read more]
Friday, June 2, 2006
By: Mark Holmes
The considerable presence of Deutsche Telekom (DT) seemed to dominate the ANGA trade show in a wet and windy Cologne, Germany this week. Where as Georg Kofler, the enigmatic CEO of Premiere, was undoubtedly the star of the show last year, this year... [read more]
Friday, May 26, 2006
Is interactive advertising as good as they say? The recent Interactive TV Advertising show in Europe was the usual showcase of industry execs extolling the virtues of interactive television as a medium for... [read more]
Thursday, May 18, 2006
By: Mark Holmes
Microsoft and television: two words that should provoke some kind of debate. While Microsoft has been impressive in terms of winning IPTV contracts with some of the world’s... [read more]
Thursday, May 11, 2006
By: Mark Holmes
The great thing about this job is it can take you so many places in one day. Yesterday, I started the day talking about satellite television in Australia. Then... [read more]
Tuesday, May 9, 2006
By: Mark Holmes
It seems somewhat ironic that one of the European Commission’s reasons for breaking BSkyB’s monopoly in owning all the rights to screen English Premier League in football was to give customers more choice on where to watch Premier... [read more]
Tuesday, May 2, 2006
So, BSkyB has gone 3-0 up in the battle for U.K. soccer rights. Hand on heart, did it really come as any surprise that BSkyB has emphatically secured the first three of six packages auctioned? The answer is ‘no.’ I’m also willing to bet that... [read more]
Monday, April 24, 2006
Arguably, the biggest sports event of the year, the football World Cup, is only about a month away, and it could signal the birth of HDTV in Europe. As a big soccer fan and as someone who analyzes and writes about digital TV, not only do I expect England to... [read more]
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