Qualcomm’s MediaFLO mobile television network hasn’t met the chipmaker’s expectations, according to COO Len Lauer, who spoke with me at the Mobilize 09 event last week in San Francisco. He said of Qualcomm’s FLO network for broadcasting mobile television, “We’re not where we need to be. We’re not meeting our expectations.”

He blamed the lack of success so far on the few  FLO-enabled devices available and the long wait for a nationwide network. While he was optimistic that FLO would be on more devices and noted that as of the DTV transition, Qualcomm had a nationwide network, he was also quick to portray the FLO network as more than a television delivery network. Yes, boys and girls, it’s a platform.

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Oh, Canada: Your health care is universal, your forests are green, and your creative industries are against BitTorrent throttling. The Canadian Film & Television Production Association (CFTPA) and two other trade groups representing filmmakers and TV producers testified in support of net neutrality in front of the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) this week. The CRTC has been conducting hearings to look into Bell, Rogers and other Canadian ISPs throttling their subscribers’ BitTorrent traffic.

Bell’s BitTorrent throttling is very similar to what Comcast tried in the U.S. until it got forced by the FCC to stop interfering with torrent transmissions. However, the reactions from entertainment industry representatives were very different on this side of the border. The MPAA and NBC Universal came out in support of Comcast, making clear that they viewed BitTorrent throttling as the first step towards a world in which ISPs are proactively policing their networks against copyright infringement.

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Cablevision, the Bethpage, N.Y.-based cable operator, says it will only sell digital video services and say “sayonara” to analog television, so to speak. Existing analog cable customers will get analog simulcasts on television sets connected directly to Cablevision’s receivers. More than 91 percent of Cablevision’s 3.1 million television customers today receive digital service, and approximately 5 percent of the company’s cable television customers today receive analog expanded basic service. With the looming switch away from analog television over the airwaves, it looks like the bell is tolling for analog TV. Get ready for a future in which news anchors will be able to show their blemishes even more!

Akamai, Limelight, Level 3 and more than a dozen other startups should be worried about Amazon’s move into the content deliver business. Amazon Web Services’ latest offering will cause price pressure in an already commoditized business. In an email to its customers today, Amazon said that the service will be available later this year and will utilize the company’s points of presence in North America, Europe and Asia. This is good news for online video startups that are looking for CDN services but are on a budget. The company will charge its customers on usage instead of the long-term contracts current players foist on their clients. In addition, the company will publish its prices on the web and, most importantly, it is going to be inexpensive. You can read our full news analysis on GigaOM.

The first time Paul Scanlan, co-founder of MobiTV, showed me his service at a friend’s barbeque in Sausalito, it was nothing but a herky-jerky video transmission of CNN on a Sprint handset. I had just moved back to San Francisco, and this was before the current investment cycle had started. To be honest, I didn’t give it much of a chance, and wondered who would want this service. Oops!

Five years later, the Emeryville, Calif-based company that got going in 1999 has grown tremendously. Today it announced that its mobile television service now reaches four million subscribers, though it is not clear how many pay for the service. MobiTV seems to defy the conventional wisdom about mobile video.

I decided to look at MobiTV’s subscriber growth over the years to measure the trajectory thus far. I also added the number of months it takes them to add another million users, and from that yardstick, it seems like the growth has started to slow down a little.

• April 2006: 1 million subscribers
• February 2007: 2 million subscribers (10 months)
• October 2007: 3 million subscribers (8 months)
• August 2008: 4 million subscribers (10 months)

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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 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:

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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.

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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.

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.