A lot has been written today about Sprint Nextel’s joint venture with Comcast, Time Warner, Cox and Advanced/Newhouse, but I thought I’d follow up with more details from today’s press conference. First, everybody involved in the deal is proud of what they see more as a great technological step forward rather than simply an unusual alliance between a wireless company and the cable industry.
“This is the next frontier in our industry,” Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said. “We’re not just adding a plain old cell phone to cable services. It’s the ability to tie the two platforms together,” Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt said. “What’s going on today is a baby step for what might be coming in the future,” outgoing Cox Cable CEO Jim Robbins said.
“This is indeed a convergence of great magnitude, both technically and practically,” Advanced/Newhouse CEO Bob Miron said. “Clearly this more than about stapling wireless onto the triple-play,” Sprint CEO Gary Foresee added. “You will see the ability for the device [the cable-branded broadband phone] to remote program the DVR, integrate voice mail and email, content from the cable TV platform integrated on the device.”
Secondly, the partners all seem to have worked out their slices of the pie in advance, with some clear demarcations among the various players. Blurred customer ownership lines and fights over revenue share can easily doom a complicated venture such as this.
“Each cable company has its own direct relationship with Sprint,” Roberts explained. “We’re not attempting to have one company in the middle that we each own a piece of, where there is a tension.” Moreover, the content offered by each company will vary from location to location, although the goal is to have a “national” cable-wireless broadband service, and some of the other top operators are encouraged to join in. “Cablevision, Mediacom and Charter are certainly welcome to join,” Foresee said.
What’s a little fuzzy is how Sprint plans to market this service, which will function over a device that will work off Powervision, Sprint’s broadband EV-DO network, alongside some other content initiatives it has, including those with mobile content provider Mobi and other programmers, such as Nascar.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:38 PM | Print | Comments (0)Courtesy of Dave Weinberger, a fascinating account of Andrew Rasiej’s failed bid for New York City Public Advocate, written by his campaign director, Micah Sifry. Tech-friendly Rasiej ran an unconventional campaign, relying heavily on the Internet and the tech community’s ability to help get the word out. Rasiej also promoted the idea of city-sponsored Wi-Fi as a key goal, to the point that it seemed as if all Rasiej wanted to do in public office is work on municipal Wi-Fi efforts.
What’s fascinating about Sifry’s account is its honesty and its in-depth look at the Internet as a political campaign tool. But, even more fascinating is Sifry’s naivete, not unexpected in an idealistic campaign such as Rasiej’s was.
For some odd reason, Sifry thought that Rasiej could count on the volunteer work of an enthusiastic techie work force.
I chalk up our difficulty in mobilizing techies to several factors: 1) the number-two office in NYC is just not of great interest to techies, no matter how innovative the campaign tactics or message; 2) techies are predominantly political independents, or libertarians, and thus hard to mobilize in a Democratic primary context; 3) techies are focused on work, making money, and, for all their complaining about politics, a relatively immature political grouping (compared, to say, Old Media moguls in Hollywood).
Hello….that’s right and anybody who has hung out with tech types for even a few hours could have told Sifry all this at the get-go. Moreover, anybody who has hired a few techies already knows how difficult it is to get them to do something in a straighforward way EVEN WHEN YOU ARE PAYING THEM.
Another seemingly naive move by the campaign: embracing one topic, Wi-Fi, to symbolize everything else the campaign was about — openness, progress, technology, the future. The problem was that Rasiej seemed to offer only one idea for a relatively obscure New York City public office which nonetheless is responsible for the mass of issues any big city must handle. So, Rasiej seemed to be, bizarrely, campaigning solely on the idea of Wi-Fi, instead of, say, housing, or health care for pregnant mothers, or any of the other issues most people consider more pressing in a political context.
Because we needed to punch through with something, we embraced “Wi-Fi”as a symbol of everything we were trying to achieve, issuing a detailed plan to “Wi-Fi NY,” launching an online petition drive and holding a major launch announcement on the steps of City Hall with about 100 supporters and Andrew making a big speech holding a wireless router in front of a podium made of old PC mainframes. The press was happy to label Andrew the “Wi-Fi Guy.” But with that came complaints that now we were a one-issue campaign, and worse that our “Wi-Fi NY” proposal ignored the digital divide and was mainly about making it easier for yuppies to check their e-mail while lounging in Central Park.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 12:43 PM | Print | Comments (0)
Taking a page from the RIAA’s litigation intimidation book, the MPAA has filed suit against a 67 year-old grandfather whose grandson downloaded four unauthorized films from the web. The MPAA filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against Fred Lawrence of Racine, WI seeking as much as $600,000 in damages for downloading four movies over the Internet file-sharing service iMesh, three of which the family already owned on DVD.
Hollywood filed suit after Lawrence, who had no knowledge of his 12 year-old grandson’s activities, couldn’t afford to pay the $4,000 settlement fee the MPAA sought.
“I can see where they wouldn’t want this to happen, but when you get up around $4,000 … I don’t have that kind of money,” Lawrence said. “I never was and never will be a wealthy person.”
If Lawrence couldn’t afford to pay the $4,000, I wonder how MPAA plans to collect its $600,000 if it wins the case. No matter. There are plenty more elderly people, not to mention widows and orphans, for Hollywood to sue.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 12:03 PM | Print | Comments (1)
After winning a legislative fight to gain state-wide franchising rights in Texas, SBC has been granted a franchise by the state PUC to offer video services in San Antonio and 20 nearby communities, just in time for the company’s promised limited market rollout of fiber-based Project Lightspeed video services. SBC said it would begin the video-over-VDSL service in San Antonio by year-end.
The state PUC, which now awards franchises in lieu of cumbersome city-by-city contract awards, has approved franchises for Guadalupe Valley Communications Systems LP, Grande Communications Networks Inc. and Verizon’s GTE Southwest Inc. doing business as Verizon Southwest.
The PUC is also scheduled to rule on more franchise applications today, including one from Pathway Comp-Tel Inc. and is slated to rule on another, from ETS Cablevision Inc., doing business as En-Touch Systems Inc., by Monday.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:09 AM | Print | Comments (1)
It’s finally official — Sprint-Nextel and four cable operators have teamed on a broadband wireless service that will give cable the ability to add mobile voice to its product mix and to deliver broadband content and applications to wireless phones. The new joint venture, which is mutually exclusive for three years (although the venture expects more cable operators to sign up) and has a 20-year term, will be backed by $200 million in funding, $100 million from Sprint and $100 million from the four cable companies - Comcast, Time Warner, Cox and Advanced/Newhouse collectively.
On top of enabling cable operators to offer “quadruple play” packages of video, high-speed data, landline and mobile voice serivces, the joint venture will develop new mobile devices to connect the cable cusgtomers to Sprint’s EV-DO network and integrate products from each company. The converged services envisioned include the ability to interface between email, home and mobile voicemail, DVRs and photo programs. (A demo of the prototype advanced services is at http://64.207.132.216/).
The demo shows a Sprint “TV Phone” that enables the viewing of video programs, including sports and news clips, as well as programs recorded on the customer’s PVR. It also features the ability to set PVR recording, retrieve email and check voice mail. The companies plan to develop even more advanced wireless services that can be delivered using Sprint’s broadband spectrum (2.5 GHz).
The companies are hosting a press conference at New York’s Hotel Plaza Athenee today at 1:00 to offer more details.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:11 AM | Print | Comments (1)
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