Under increasing pressure from both industry and the press, the FCC relented today and postponed its deadline for forcing VoIP providers to begin disconnection efforts related to its e911 ruling. The FCC had required VoIP providers to notify its customers of certain aspects of e911 service, and to notify them by August 28.
The FCC initially postponed this deadline until September 28. Customers not notified were to be cut off from all VoIP services except calling out to 911. Increasingly desperate VoIP providers, facing the prospect of disconnecting customers, pleaded with the Commission to extend even that deadline.
The FCC has now extended the deadline until October 31, provided the VoIP provider delivers a status report by October 25. However, providers that have notified at least 90% of customers (the FCC says there are 53 of these) are considered to have satisfied their requirements.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 3:18 PM | Print | Comments (0)
Business Week’s Heather Green reports on BitTorrent’s “grab at respectability,” including raising $8.75 million in venture funding from Menlo Park-based Doll Capital Management.
The idea? Gather movies, music, games, and software from Hollywood studios and indie producers alike and distribute them to consumers. BitTorrent would generate revenue either by selling ads within the content or charging a fee for the files…That’s a pretty dramatic turn for a technology that up to now has been so closely associated with illegal file sharing.
Now, with the VC money, BitTorrent plans to build out a marketplace aimed at attracting the huge audience of BitTorrent users, which the company estimates at around 45 million people.
BitTorrent says it’s in talks with major players, though it won’t say which ones…A big part of winning over holders of copyrighted work will be addressing concerns over illegal file sharing, much of which is done through so-called BitTorrent superhubs, independent sites that distribute both legal and illegal content. [COO Ashwin] Navin says BitTorrent is working with the superhubs to reach licensing agreements on copyrighted works. BitTorrent will include any copyright protection technology that rights holders want to use.Posted by Mitch Shapiro at 2:31 PM | Print | Comments (0)
Mark Evans is a Canadian journalist par excellence, but has a scoop of sorts today that takes place in the U.S. Evans notes that a new Wi-Fi hot-spot in New York City’s Bryant Park is powered by…Google.
As big as life, the sign in Bryant Park clearly denotes Google as the sponsor of the hot-spot. More evidence to fan the growing intrigue surrounding Google’s wireless broadband plans.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 1:26 PM | Print | Comments (0)
Courtesy of Larry Lessig, an intriguing paper presented at an academic conference at the National Center for Technology and Law at George Mason University’s Law school. Researcher and Stanford University Law Fellow Barbara van Schewick studied the economic costs and benefits of network neutrality regulations and concluded that the benefits outweigh the costs.
Following what appears to be a non-biased, straightforward and expert (but be forewarned: extremely scholarly) examination of the upsides and downsides of imposing new neutrality regulations on broadband providers, van Schewick concluded that network providers do have the incentive to discriminate against independent providers and this threat reduces the amount of innovation produced by independent providers. While regulation reduces the innovation of network providers, that loss doesn’t outweigh the loss of innovation that would occur without net neutrality.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 12:48 PM | Print | Comments (0)A column in the Guardian takes a look at two extremes of the emerging Internet TV market— youth-centric Mania TV and the U.K.’s BBC, whose first online broadcast offering consisted of Beethoven symphonies.
Regarding the economics of Mania TV:
All this has to be paid for, of course, but a good proportion of the shows are generated by users. And advertisers seeking to attract the elusive youth audience are starting to pop up on the site. Recent ads include several from big corporates such as Vodafone and upmarket clothing label Abercrombie & Fitch…In the future, Mania may charge for downloads, or up advertising rates as its audience grows. Crucially, its cost-base is low, so there is little need to.
As to the BBC’s efforts to develop a viable model for online distribution:
When the BBC placed Beethoven symphonies on-line, it was a huge success, but many of the 1.4 million people taking advantage of the offer were American, and the BBC’s internet sites are also used extensively in other countries. It costs licence money to stream content online, although the price is falling all the time, and negotiations over contract rights are delicate.
The corporation is working on technology that allows it to determine users’ country of origin, and it is likely to announce a change in policy before the end of the year. The logic is simple enough: why should British licence-fee payers pay for foreign nationals to download British TV and radio programmes?
The BBC won’t comment on the plans, but it is understood that, initially at least, it will seek to block access to its websites from overseas. Until recently, that was difficult, because there was a risk that, in doing so, some domestic users would be accidentally barred. Those problems have been ironed out, and charging a small fee has not been ruled out in the longer term.Posted by Mitch Shapiro at 12:43 PM | Print | Comments (0)
MuniWireless founder Esme Vos has just published a report called “2005 Municipal Wireless State of the Market Report,” which she researched and wrote in collaboration with Microcast Corporation. Vos will be presenting the study’s findings this week at a 9/28-9/29 conference in San Francisco. Among it findings:
U.S. cities, towns and counties will spend nearly $700 million over the next three years to build municipal-owned wireless broadband networks. Moreover, the U.S. market will enjoy a compound annual growth rate of 134 percent between 2004 and 2007 and will exceed $400 million by 2007 as more municipalities, including larger cities like San Francisco and Portland, embark on wireless initiatives…More than 60% of total 2005 municipal wireless network spending is being done by large cities, a figure expected to hold fairly constant in the next two years.
The top application for current municipal wireless networks is public safety (police, fire, emergency services). Just over half of U.S. municipalities that have deployed municipal wireless have done so for public safety.
In its last issue, MuniWireless reported that Portland has issued an RFP for a citywide wireless network.
Posted by Mitch Shapiro at 12:03 PM | Print | Comments (0)
Verizon has landed its first New York state cable franchise. The Massapequa Park Village (Long Island, which is Cablevision territory) Board of Trustees Monday night voted to award video franchise to Verizon for its Verizon FiOS TV service, which will be delivered over the company’s fiber-to-the-premise network.
The new franchise comes on the heels of Verizon’s launch of FiOS TV in Keller, TX last week. The NY Public Service Commission still has to approve the franchise. Verizon already has franchises to offer video service in California, Virginia, Florida and Texas.
Update: Verizon also landed a franchise for the lucrative Fairfax County, VA market last night.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 11:58 AM | Print | Comments (0)
The World Intellectual Property Organisation is currently contemplating the Broadcasting and Webcasting Treaty, which extends the rights of over-the-air broadcasters to bar the retransmission of content they assemble, even when they don’t hold the copyrights to that content. The extension comes in two forms.
First, an earlier treaty (which the U.S. did not sign) gave broadcasters 20 years’ of exclusive rights to programs or music they assembled in their program line-ups, even if the programming were, for example, in the public domain. The new treaty would extend this right by an additional 30 years.
Secondly, the treaty is contemplating the extension of these exclusive rights to webcasting, and apparently the U.S. is backing it. The EFF is up in arms over this concept, and intellectual property experts have generally condemned it. (See this piece from the Financial Times courtesy of Groklaw.)
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:29 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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