Carriers
Poll: Will Metered Broadband Make You Switch Your ISP?
While not so uncommon overseas, bandwidth caps and metered broadband are coming to the US market place. Time Warner is the first major cable company to announce its metered broadband strategy & prices for a small Texas market, in what can be described as draconian.
We have written about Bend Broadband of Oregon resorting to such tricks. Comcast, recently proposed bandwidth caps as well. What it means: get ready to pay more and get less for broadband. Will this spur into action, and switch ISPs or look for alternatives. Take our poll and share your opinion.
Comcast to Test Bandwidth Caps?
Comcast is reportedly considering monthly caps on bandwidth usage and may charge customers who go over these limits. DSLreports writes that users would get to use up to 250 GB per month and be charged $15 for every 10 GB over the limit. When contacted for comment a Comcast spokesperson told DSLreports:
“Comcast is currently evaluating this service and pricing model to ensure we deliver a great online experience to our customers. We have not made any changes to our current service offerings and have no new announcement to make at this time.”
Comcast has said it will start targeting bandwidth hogs, and this could be the way they do it. If you’re wondering if you’d have to pay extra, Silicon Alley Insider did some quick math and here are a few highlights of what 250 GB represents:
Is 2008 the Year of VOD?
For all of you too lazy to drive to the video store or too impatient to wait for your DVDs in the mail, 2008 is shaping up to be a banner year for you. The video-on-demand (VOD) space is heating up, which means you have one less reason to pry yourself off the couch.
The Wall Street Journal writes that as the cost of distributing films theatrically keeps rising, movies being bought up at festivals like Tribeca are actually going to VOD platforms. For example, Mark “online video gloom and doom” Cuban’s HDNet acquired the rights to the dark comedy Finding Amanda, starring Matthew Broderick, but will release it on VOD before putting it in theaters. At last year’s Cannes, IFC picked up seven films to fill its VOD pipeline. Lots of indie movies get small theatrical releases, and in fact most of the movies acquired from Tribeca last year went straight to DVD or cable. But the economics of widespread theatrical distribution don’t hold up any longer.
And VOD isn’t just important for the art house set, either. Big names have also jumped into the on-demand pool lately.
Time Warner Defies Subscriber Expectations
The big news coming out of Time Warner this morning was that the company is finally selling off its cable division, the second largest in the country (our pal Stacey at GigaOM says its the beginning of Time Warner’s death by 1,000 cuts). But the other, not-quite-as-big-but-still-big news from the earnings call was that Time Warner cable added 55,000 basic subscriptions during the quarter.
Analysts had predicted Time Warner would lose anywhere between 21,000 to 32,000 customers as cable companies wage a multifronted war against satellite, aggressive telcos and even a souring U.S. economy. Adding 55,000 isn’t huge, especially compared to the hundreds of thousands of video customers Verizon and AT&T are racking up, but at least Time Warner isn’t losing ground… yet.
Comcast reports tomorrow, which should further clarify the state of cable.
Telcos’ TV Slowly But Surely Doing Better
Thanks to some generous support of their pal, FCC Commish Kevin Martin, and others at the state level, the big bets made by AT&T and Verizon on video — in the form of U-verse and FiOS, respectively — are slowly beginning to pay off. Last week, AT&T reported that it added 148,000 new U-verse subscribers in the first quarter, taking its total to 379,000. Ma Bell hopes to have a million subscribers for its U-verse service by end of 2008.
Today Verizon says it added 263,000 new FiOS subscribers in the first quarter of 2008 for a total of 1.2 million FiOS TV customers. Funnily enough, their presence is causing all sorts of problems for traditional TV providers, the cable and satellite guys. This is resulting in negative advertising campaigns, that while full of hyperbole, are amusing nevertheless.
Vid-Biz: Comcast, Veeple, YouTube
Comcast Doesn’t Admit to BitTorrent Blocking; in the wake of the Comcast/BitTorrent agreement, the cable company takes exception to statements made by the FCC chairman regarding its so-called network management practices. (Multichannel News)
Veeple Joins the Clickable Video Fray; company uses Flash to recognize and embed links and ads through an interactive overlay. (VentureBeat)
Google Comes Under Fire for Lack of Content Filters; MPs in the U.K. lambasted YouTube for not employing a single person to proactively monitor content after a video of a gang rape was posted to the site. (Guardian)
Hardly Anyone is Watching CNBC Plus; the business channel’s premium web streaming service has pulled in 15,000 paying subscribers — since late 2006. (paidContent)
Major League Baseball Calls Up Inlet Technologies; company’s Spinnaker technology to power the MLB.TV live broadcasting service. (Broadcasting & Cable)
Rogers Taps Rentrak; Canada’s largest cable operator signs up for VOD measurement service. (The Hollywood Reporter)
DirecTV VOD Already Available; Now with Screenshots
Though the DirecTV VOD service doesn’t officially launch until the second quarter, it’s been available for beta testing for some time already. As we’ve written before, because of satellite’s one-way-only transmission, DirecTV will be using a combination of pre-selected movies beamed directly to set-top box hard drives and downloading them through a viewer’s existing broadband connection (to learn how to set it up, visit the DirecTV on Demand page).
So how is it working so far?
Relax, Let Verizon Do the Cable Canceling
Verizon knows that breaking up with your cable operator can be tough, so the company has asked the FCC for permission to do it for you. The FiOS TV provider is petitioning the commission to make switching your TV service similar to switching phone companies. Presumably this is because you are too lazy and weak when faced with the siren song of customer service reps, who will tempt you to stay with your existing cable by offering you four new HBO channels PLUS six months of Encore.
Instead, leave it to the cold-blooded Verizon reps, who, with Anton Chigurh-like ruthlessness, will cut that cord. Naturally, once you’re rid of that scourge, you’ll run to Verizon’s warm fiber-optic embrace. Om doesn’t buy Verizon’s arguments for such a move, and reminds you of the company’s past sins.
My only question: Will Verizon also come to my house, detach and return my cable box?
NTV Live Keynote: Ralph de la Vega, AT&T
“I think IPTV is the new TV,” Ralph de la Vega opened his keynote by saying. AT&T wants to connect people to everything in their lives — music, business, entertainment — and do it on the go, de la Vega explained. With countless iPhones visible in the crowd, the audience was interested in what the group president of Regional Telecommunications and Entertainment had to say.
De la Vega stressed that the new AT&T, with its current capacity, is really a very young company, only 10 months old from its merger with Cingular and Bell South. And they are growing. According to de la Vega, AT&T currently has 120 million customers in the U.S. — 65 million wireless, 63 million wired, 14 million broadband, and 2 million television. They are growing their IPTV business by 10,000 customers per week through its AT&T U-Verse. He estimates that there will be 38 million IPTV customers by 2018. Read more of this story
FCC Analog Signal Ruling Doesn’t Impact IPTV
With the federally mandated end to analog broadcast television due to go into effect in 2009, an FCC panel has voted unanimously to require cable companies to continue broadcasting local stations as an analog signal until 2012. According to FCC estimates, 40 million American homes have televisions that don’t support digital signals, and while they are making plans to subsidize the purchase of digital-to-analog converter boxes, FCC chairman Kevin Martin expressed the government’s primary concern:
If the cable companies had their way, you, your mother and father, or your next-door neighbor could go to sleep one night after watching their favorite channel and wake up the next morning to a dark fuzzy screen.
While I’d suggest that would be the greatest thing to happen to the intellectual life of Americans since the First Amendment, politicians are justifiably concerned that so many constituents might find themselves unable to watch the latest campaign advertisements. The ruling leaves the cable companies two choices — either set aside bandwidth for up to five analog channels, or buy every legacy subscriber a converter box. But there’s one class of video content providers that won’t be affected: IPTV services.
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