In advance of tomorrow’s Senate hearings, the Washington Post has this editorial in today’s paper that basically comes out against net neutrality. The editorial makes a good bottom-line point regarding the negative acts that might occur absent net neutrality regulations: these woes-to-come are fundamentally speculative. Nothing bad has happened yet.
The weakest aspect of the neutrality case is that the dangers it alleges are speculative. It seems unlikely that broadband providers will degrade Web services that people want and far more likely that they will use non-neutrality to charge for upgrading services that depend on fast and reliable delivery, such as streaming high-definition video or relaying data from heart monitors. If this proves wrong, the government should step in. But it should not burden the Internet with preemptive regulation.
But, the editorial writers made a truly laughable gaffe by writing
The advocates of neutrality suggest, absurdly, that a non-neutral Internet would resemble cable TV: a medium through which only corporate content is delivered. This analogy misses the fact that the market for Internet connections, unlike that for cable television, is competitive: More than 60 percent of Zip codes in the United States are served by four or more broadband providers that compete to give consumers what they want — fast access to the full range of Web sites, including those of their kids’ soccer league, their cousins’ photos, MoveOn.org and the Christian Coalition.
The Post, which owns one of the top ten cable companies in the country, CableOne, can’t really believe the market for broadband services is competitive, can it? I think not. This line is straight out of the cable industry’s talking point papers that it circulates to members.
The other gaffe: relying on FCC data to say that more than 60% of zip codes are served by more than four broadband providers. Ha ha ha. That’s funny.
Number one, the FCC counts any broadband provider as serving an entire zip code if it only serves one home in that zip code, a fact that drives the Commission itself to warn that the data are not helpful for determining competition in the broadband sector.
Number two, as Tim Karr points out, the GAO has pooped on the FCC’s data and has determined that most consumers can choose from, at most, two broadband providers. That’s a duopoly, not competition.
Number three, even if broad zip code-level network provider data were appropriate, the data reported by the Commission is wrong more than it’s right, something that work-a-day communications attorneys say they deal with all the time.
Number four, who do you know, outside of, maybe, Manhattan, that actually can choose from among four broadband providers? Nobody, I suspect.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 5:18 PM | Print | Comments (0)
Gabe Rivera, founder of TechMeme (until recently TechMemeorandum, a name that some people found oddly difficult) held a meet-up in the DC market yesterday at a Rockville, MD restaurant called Urban Barbecue.
Ever since Robert Scoble (soon to be an ex-Microsoft employee, as everybody already knows) gave a big nod to the smart one-stop media and tech news site last fall, TechMeme has become the first place that Silicon Valley and the press check every day to find the latest news. I spent a decent amount of time talking to Gabe yesterday, as nice a person as you’d want to meet (see photo, courtesy of another meet-up attendee, Clarence Wooten, Jr., head of Collectivex.com).
More than that, however, he truly wants to push the blog/website intelligent aggregation envelope — his recurrent questions to the meet-up attendees were mostly about how to make TechMeme better. For such an unassuming person — he probably hates that I’m even doing this blog item — he’s built up an impressive stable of highly trafficked sites including not only TechMeme (which today ranks 19,316 on Alexa) but also his original site devoted to politics, Memeorandum (Alexa rank=11,982).
His latest ventures are a gossip aggregation site WeSmirch (71,155) and baseball fan destination Ballbug (161,340). Despite the mounds of traffic Gabe generates, he has yet to monetize any of his properties, although I’m sure he has had a lot of offers. One thing he said: he’s hunting for an innovative way to generate ad revenue across his sites, some means of selling sponsorships that is in keeping with the Internet “edge” his sites already occupy.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 1:54 PM | Print | Comments (0)
Now that the House has voted on its version of telecom reform legislation, the Senate is kicking into high gear. The Senate Commerce Committee plans to hold hearings tomorrow (webcast will be found here) on a revised version of S. 2686, the Communications, Consumer’s Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006.
The bill’s sponsor, Commerce Co-Chairman Ted Stevens (R-AK) has said he plans to schedule on vote on the legislation as early as June 20. With this fast a track, it’s possible that even with scant calendar days left on the Congressional agenda, a full bill could get passed this year.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:21 AM | Print | Comments (0)Continuing with the theme of TV broadcasters’ search for survival, the Wall Street Journal fronts today this article by Brooks Barnes on the rapid decline in the former cash-cows. Using Grand Rapids’ WOOD-TV as its centerpiece, the article delves into just how unprepared TV stations are for the rise in web-based video competition.
What’s interesting is that TV stations are turning to the web for survival, in essence becoming just one of millions of Internet businesses trying to capture audiences.
Ms. Kniowski [Diane Kniowski, President of WOOD-TV] is also experimenting with other revenue streams, including video Webcasts with nonskippable ads. She has tripled the number of video news segments on WOOD’s Web site, which help boost traffic, and has plans to sell sponsorships to local businesses. A local eye surgeon, for example, might sponsor the health section of the Web site and display video testimonials from patients.
“That’s something Google can’t offer them,” she says.
Among her other initiatives: podcasting news reports, and charging for the traffic and weather alerts that WOOD now offers for free on cellphones. Ms. Kniowski and her team are also working to “supersize” the station’s Web site, stocking it with everything from more breaking news coverage to archival footage of past sporting events “so people don’t get tired of coming back,” says Patti McGettigan, WOOD’s news director.
More interestingly, WOOD-TV is going after the revenues of the other major local media business that has been hard hit by the Internet: newspapers.
Ms. Kniowski is going after classified clients of the area’s dominant newspaper, the Grand Rapids Press, which is owned by Advance Publications Inc. “We’ve got to figure out how to take money away from them,” she says. With the emergence of low-cost digital video, she hopes the station’s Web site might someday sell video ads for something as mundane as pedigreed puppies.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:03 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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