The city of Washington, DC is jumping on the muni-Wi-Fi bandwagon and is gearing up to seek bids on an exclusive eight-year franchise, according to this article by Arshad Mohammed in the Washington Post. In a departure from how other cities have sought out bidders for their muni-broadband projects, DC, which has a large percentage of low-income residents, is giving great weight to the need for free Wi-Fi in less affluent parts of town, even if that means wealthier parts of DC might not get served by the winner.
“The essential evaluation factor will be: The more digital divide clients that you propose to serve within the first three years … the higher your ranking will be in the selection process,” D.C. Deputy Chief Technology Officer Peter Roy, who is writing the District’s request for proposals, said in an interview
Mayor Anthony Williams claims that this approach doesn’t harm the higher income parts of town because “there is sufficient market incentive” to serve those areas, motivation that doesn’t drive network providers to the low-income areas. The District plan, which hasn’t yet been put into RFP format, calls for free service to low-income areas at speeds of 500 kbps/150 kbps.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 6:36 PM | Print | Comments (0)
The National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) held an extraordinary conference call today to discuss the upcoming House telecom reform bill, which, apparently, is an unbelievable victory for the phone companies and a disaster for the cable industry. According to NCTA CEO Kyle McSlarrow, not only does the House bill grant phone companies national franchises with no build-out requirements, it also
— places uniform price controls on cable operators in areas where phone companies compete with cable. This price control is lifted at the point when the telco competitor achieves 15% penetration of some measure of the market. McSlarrow is unclear about how that 15% is measured, whether homes passed by the operator or homes in the franchise area, etc. The purpose of this provision is presumably to prevent cable operators from slashing their service rates to undercut phone company competition.
— imposes net neutrality obligations on broadband providers. This is a surprise given that the consensus was that a draft House bill would contain no net neutrality regulations. Just what the net neutrality provisions contain is unclear to McSlarrow.
— raises the franchise fee to 6% for the telcos who obtain national video franchises. The biggest hurdle to a national franchise has been the cities’ fear that they might lose the 5% of video revenues they currently receive from cable operators in exchange for the local franchises. To mollify the cities, presumably, the amount has been raised to 6% for the phone companies.
Cable is clearly distraught over this turn of events. “This is a huge step backwards and essentially you have the government picking winners and losers,” McSlarrow said. Phone companies get to cream-skim the best sections of franchise areas and yet cable operators have to labor under existing franchise obligations until those phone companies get 15% of the market. Worse, cable companies can’t even compete on price in the cherry-picked areas.
“They [the telcos] just want it to be the right 15% of the market…and holding cable operators down where they can’t even compete is a reversal of the 1996 Act,” McSlarrow said. “Uniform pricing is big government price control and the effect of it would be to shield the Bell companies from competition.”
On net neutrality, McSlarrow repeated the industry’s stance: absent signs of a problem, no legal solution is needed. “Our belief is that the government shouldn’t regulate the Internet in the absence of market failure.”
Moreover, given the fuzziness of what constitutes behavior banned by proposed net neutrality regulations, these kinds of provisions will only get mired in litigation, McSlarrow said. “The danger of putting regulatory authority in the hands of anyone when no one even has the same definitions of what net neutrality is…means you’re going to have a massive amount of litigation.”
If the House bill does contain provisions along the lines outlined by McSlarrow, and he admits that the situation is still in flux although he claims to have discussed the bill’s provisions with the relevant leaders, the cable industry is getting its pants pulled down by the telcos in a quite unprecedented manner. (Disclosure: I spent many years as the head of research at NCTA.)
In other words, this is a major, major lobbying victory for the phone companies, a feat that is all the more impressive given that it has been pulled off against the backdrop of the AT&T-BellSouth merger announcement. The “sweetheart deal” for the telcos, as McSlarrow conceded it is, has placed cable in such a bad position that during the call, McSlarrow appealed to the House leadership for help.
“To some extent I’m making an appeal to them” with the quickly scheduled press briefing held by NCTA.
All in all, an incredible turn of events.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 5:38 PM | Print | Comments (0)
I guess Cynthia and I are on the same wavelength today. Earlier today I was reading a bunch of articles and blog posts about Microsoft’s new UMPC/Origami device and found myself thinking “mobile video.” Then I went to the IPD site and found Cynthia’s post about Movielink’s deal with Microsoft, which I hadn’t seen mentioned in any of the other stuff I’d been reading.
At a recent conference, Jim Ramo, Movielink’s CEO said roughly a third of his company’s movie downloads are to laptops, but also suggested that “the jury is still out” as to whether cell phones, iPods and other mobile devices will emerge as an attractive platform for distributing movies. He also acknowledged that Movielink is still “missing the younger demographic” that are relatively heavy users of both mobile devices and piracy-based download services.
Several articles and blog posts I read suggested that the UMPC will be an attractive product for students. Assuming this is the case, its UMPC deal with Microsoft could help Movielink address the two issues Ramo raised. The device’s 7-inch screen seems reasonably well suited for watching video, and some models also include a fold-out stand to make it even more convenient. And, by becoming “the premier brand and provider of video content for the UMPC Program Launcher,” Movielink should have at least a somewhat better chance of convincing users that paying the company $1.99-$4.99 per movie is a better choice then using free but illegal (and presumably less user-friendly) download services.
The UMPC news also reminded me of the recent Senate Commerce Committee testimony by Craig Mundie, which I discussed yesterday. Mundie was encouraging Congress to make unused broadcast spectrum (aka “white space”) available for unlicensed use and applauding Committee chairman Ted Stevens and others for introducing bills toward that end.
A next-generation WiFi platform using relatively plentiful broadcast “white space” spectrum would, as Mundie noted, have much better propagation characteristics than today’s WiFi spectrum. In addition, as he points, out:
Deployment of unlicensed devices is fast; it’s efficient…It…gets the FCC out of the job of picking technology or service provider favorites. Instead, it lets the market decide — or lets the community, or even individuals, do it for themselves. That means innovation is faster, and competition — not the Commission — pushes companies to innovate and deploy new services [and]…the capital investment comes when it is needed and is fueled by individuals and businesses, not by larger network operators. And because buying blocks of spectrum at auction is not required, the cost of entry for these services is lowered. Thus, the cost of providing these services is extremely low relative to the substantial benefits that can accrue as the result of broadband Internet access.
Though Microsoft is aggresively pursuing business with the dominant telco, cable and licensed mobile service providers, I suspect it would be happy if low-cost networks built on white-space spectrum transferred some end-user dollars now going to these network providers to purchases of UMPC devices and their future generations, which will be faster, cheaper, lighter and with longer battery life and more features—especially if they’re linked to a low-cost ubiquitous wireless network.
The introduction of the UMPC follows shortly after the successful launch of Apple’s video iPod, and a rash of deals for web- and mobile-delivered video. As I said in yesterday’s post about Mundie’s testimony, it would be great to see big players from Silicon Valley and the consumer electronics industry join together to push Congress to pass one of the pending White Space bills, and then compete like crazy to create new generations of devices that could conveniently deliver all sorts of valuable services on these ubiquitous low-cost networks.
As I said an earlier post, I’m beginning to wonder “if Congress could resolve the battle over the Internet’s future by choosing not to impose net neutrality requirements on incumbent broadband providers, while opening up broadcast spectrum to unlicensed use…[based on] new and more “open” access models reasonably well aligned with the goals of municipal broadband advocates” and net neutrality proponents.
Posted by Mitch Shapiro at 2:54 PM | Print | Comments (1)After a protracted period of teasing, Microsoft finally unveiled today its “Origami” tablet PC, which is officially called the Ultra-Mobile PC (UMPC). The reviews range from very good to just so-so, but if the price is right (no definite pricing yet but MSFT says $599 to $999), I definitely want one.
This device is capable of running Windows applications and has a nice-sized screen and seems to fit in one man-sized hand. This also makes it perfect for portable video viewing, and at least one online video distributor, Movielink, has signed a pact with Microsoft to make its content available on the device.
Movielink will be the “premier brand and provider of video content for the UMPC Program Launcher.” Movielink is a studio-backed consortium that delivers films online for PC-based viewing for a per-viewing fee of $1.99 to $4.99.
The company has faced a lot of uncertainty over the past year, with the studios at one point ready to sell Movielink. Take-rates for Movielink films are supposedly very low due to the lack of blockbuster content and the inability of customers to watch the films on anything other than a PC, or a PC-connected TV.
Now, however, with the UMPC Movielink is freed from the stationary PC platform, its fortunes could change. In any event, the deal with Movielink signals that Microsoft surely has other video content-related deals in the works, which could position the Redmond, WA-based software giant as a rival for Apple’s hot iTunes video store.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 11:06 AM | Print | Comments (0)
The LA Times James Granelli has this piece today about Skype’s new effort to capture small business customers, called Skype for Business.
As part of the new program, Skype is introducing a lot of bells-and-whistles that would appeal to small business owners, including the ability to conference call with up to 500 people and translation of calls from English into other languages.
As part of its push into the business market, Skype also is unveiling today third-party products such as speaker phones, cordless Internet phones and electronic switching gear, as well as software programs to share documents and presentations over the computer during calls, to make conference calls with as many as 500 people and to translate calls in English into French, Spanish, Cantonese or Mandarin.
This move makes Skype look a lot like a more traditional VoIP provider, far from its roots as a renegade, free-to-use P2P Internet voice service. Still, it seems like a smart move for the eBay-owned company given the vast market in small business voice service and Skype’s need to start generating serious revenues.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:38 AM | Print | Comments (0)Despite the bombshell merger of AT&T and BellSouth, and against the backdrop of some legislators’ concerns, Telecom Act rewrite legislation isn’t slowing down at all. Drew Clark has this item that says the House Commerce Committee plans to mark up its telecom reform legislation next week.
That bill is now devoted to one topic: establishing a national video franchise for phone companies. According to Clark, the House bill doesn’t require phone companies to build out entire communities, a blow for the cable industry which has been lobbying heavily to impose a number of franchise requirements on phone companies, particularly build-out requirements.
Drew also has this piece in the National Journal’s Tech Daily regarding Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens’ (R-AK) vow to move telecom legislation before Easter. Stevens doesn’t agree with his committee co-chair Senator Daniel Inouye (D-HI) about the need to slow down legislative initiatives as a result of the AT&T-BellSouth merger.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:21 AM | Print | Comments (1)
In the hopes of producing scientific results that link violent video games with harm to minors, a group of Democractic Senators have pushed through the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions a measure that would fund a study by the CDC on “the role and impact of electronic media on children.” Spearheaded by Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT), Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), the bill called the Children and Media Research Act, calls for the Director of the CDC to establish an independent panel of experts to:
(1) review, synthesize, and report on research, theory, and applications in the social, behavioral, and biological sciences regarding the roles and impact of the use of and exposure to electronic media on youth in certain core areas of child and adolescent development; and
(2) establish research priorities regarding such issues.
The bill, which is also co-sponsored by Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA)and Sam Brownback (R-KS), further directs the Secretary of HHS to conduct pilot projects and fund additional research on the impact of electronic media on children and adolescents. Initial funding for the research was pegged at $90 million, but now the study’s budget will be determined during the appropriations process.
Although the research is designed to study the impact of all electronic media on children, the bill’s Democratic proponents have supported legislation that would ban the sale of “mature” or violent video games to minors.
Various state and local laws that also ban the sale of violent video games to minors have been struck down by the courts as violations of the First Amendment, with the courts ruling that the government has not proved a compelling interest in implementing such bans. Several courts have stated that there is not enough research regarding the harm to minors to justify abridging First Amendment rights. The research funded by this bill might help establish the government’s interest in curtailing the First Amendment rights of game makers.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:04 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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