(Boston, MA) A panel of four industry, analyst and academic representatives here at VON today evenly occupied opposite ends of the spectrum on the subject of net neutrality. The most strident of the speakers was analyst Scott Cleland, founder of the Precursor Group.
Cleland clearly brooks no opposition on the topic, a decidedly non-analytical approach to such a complex issue. He dissed the entire concept of network neutrality saying bluntly that under the current regulatory regime there is “no consumer harm” and that net neutrality advocates have tossed out “hypothetical and unsubstantiated allegations” to bolster their views.
He claimed that groups such as SaveTheInternet.org are just playing “politics” and that net neutrality advocates purposely exaggerate the risks of a two-tiered Internet. “There’s no better way to energize the bloggers than by creating a boogeyman,” Cleland said. Net neutrality advocates act as if “the earth will stop rotating on its axis unless we’ve got net neutrality regulations.”
On the polar opposite end of the spectrum was Cardoza Law School Professor Susan Crawford who also thinks net neutrality regulations aren’t needed — she just wants to see a structural separation between broadband providers and any content they transmit over their networks. In other words, broadband networks should be dumb pipes with no content involvement by the networks’ owners.
“Structural separation is necessary in this country. We should be able to call a transport provider just a transport provider,” Crawford said. “I’m driven to this by the absence of broadband competition in this country.”
Against the backdrop of these two fire-breathers, BellSouth’s VP of Regulatory Affairs Jonathan Banks seemed rather tame. He somehow conflated deregulation of DSL services with net neutrality, ending up at a place where the absence of network neutrality regulations is deregulatory. “Deregulation has led to an unmitigated set of good things,” such as lower DSL prices and stepped-up broadband take-rates.
The Internet is going to need innovative applications, and broadband providers therefore need to experiment. “In order to do that [achieve innovation] you may need to prioritize on traffic. You might need someone to share the cost of the broadband transmissions,” Banks said. “To the extent that network neutrality says you have to do everything the same, it’s going to put the kibosh on that kind of innovation.”
Skype’s Director of Government and Regulatory Affairs, Chris Libertelli, argued that innovation will be best served by net neutrality regulations. “The proposals from the companies like AT&T and Verizon that would fundamentally change the architecture of the Internet, would fundamentally change the way entrepreneurs develop new services.”
Skype itself wouldn’t exist under a tiered Internet model, he argued. Three years ago Skype’s founders got together in a bar in London to sketch out the Internet voice service. “They were able to succeed because consumers liked Skype. They didn’t have to go around the planet to cut deals with broadband providers.”
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:43 PM | Print | Comments (0)
(Boston, MA) Jeff Pulver’s Voice-on-the-Net conference expanded its scope this year to video-on-the-net. This new focus of the show got off to a bang this morning with two back-to-back panels. The basic message of both sets of speakers: video from everybody is available everywhere and we’d all better get used to it.
With no exception, the speakers across the first two panels hit home again and again that the video world is exploding, with an enormous number of video producers putting their wares on just about every conceivable platform.
“The idea is to turn every person..into their own personal broadcaster,” Pixpo President Ron Stevens said of his video self-publishing start-up. “You can take it anywhere in the world and hook it up to the Internet, hook it up to a television set and your service will be available,” said Chris Wagner, EVP of Sales and Marketing for place-shifting start-up NeuLion.
Rocketboom’s Andrew Baron put it the most succinctly: “There is nobody controlling anything any more.”
When asked how a traditional video distributor handles this massive supply of new competitors, Warren Schlichting, Vice President of New Business Strategies at Comcast said “Never, ever sleep.” Paraphrasing somebody else, Schlichting offered another option for how traditional video providers can cope with the crazy rise of net video. “I’m going to put my head down on the table and I want all of this and all of you to be gone.”
More seriously, Schlichting demonstrated a sense of healthy realism when he added “We need to get used to the media being available everywhere.”
In terms of what lies ahead, Thom Kozik, Director of Business Development at Yahoo!, said don’t even try to make any predictions given this volatile and rapidly growing trend. “The way video on the net is proliferating now I think we’d be foolish to try to predict where things will be five years from now.”
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 4:10 PM | Print | Comments (0)
(Boston, MA) A big, fat, juicy scoop landed at my feet here at VON — the nation’s top cable company, Comcast, plans to launch a video telephony service in 2007, which some people close to the company are calling a “Skype killer.”
The Philadelphia-based broadband leader is putting the finishing touches on its deals with one or more tech vendors to set up a service that will enable users to communicate in real-time via both voice and video. The service will be PC-based and free to Comcast’s broadband subscribers.
Moreover, Comcast plans to pitch the initiative to other cable companies, such as Time Warner, Cox, Cablevision and Charter, in an effort to create an industry-wide, interoperable service.
Comcast plans to give customers the option of storing their video calls on company servers. As time goes on and customer libraries grow, Comcast’s triple-play customers will be less and less likely to switch to a competitive providers and the cost to Comcast of storing the videos is negligible.
This push to create a web-based video telephony service will be a top priority for the operator in 2007, or so the word goes.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 1:31 PM | Print | Comments (1)Apple’s big announcement yesterday that it will introduce a PC-to-TV product was not a big surprise — rumors about the device, code-named iTV, had been circulating for days. What was surprising is 1. the unit is still in “beta” and 2. it won’t be available until Q1 07.
Apple is a savvy marketer and hasn’t (in my memory) made a splash with a product that consumers can’t buy for months to come. So, why preview a product that isn’t ready?
Om Malik has an interesting answer to this question as part of a controversial essay that argues how Apple is “the new Microsoft.”
The iTV streaming box announcement to me was a Gatesian moment. The device is still in “beta” and is not going to be available for another few months, perhaps longer. Add to this the harsh truth that Steve could only get Disney (like they have a choice) to commit to the iTunes Movie Store; what you see is a Microsoft type strategy of chilling the market with a yet unfinished product, and get everyone scared shitless. The Barons of Redmond used to do it so well, before their empire started resembling the Roman conquests.
The question is: who is Apple trying to scare? Microsoft itself, which has long desired a slice of the interactive TV world through its cable and telco set-top middleware software platforms? Cable operators? Movie studios? All of the above, and more, in all likelihood.
Whatever the case may be, Apple’s iTV unit is without a doubt setting off a lot of activity in Silicon Valley, Hollywood and throughout the TV industry. Efforts to bridge the TV and Internet platforms have been bubbling beneath the surface in all these sectors for years. Apple’s iTV will no doubt push these below-the-radio-screen projects to the surface sooner rather than later.
FYI - For those who weren’t at the event, a replay of Steve Jobs’ presentation is here. Thanks to Richard Greenfield for flagging this replay.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:29 AM | Print | Comments (0)NBC’s online video company, the National Broadband Company (which will have the acronym NBBC…not NBC) announced yesterday it will syndicate content to other web sites. NBBC will sell commercials that appear before the video plays and will split the revenue with the participating sites.
Unlike other sites that currently syndicate content on the web, or plan to jump into the syndication business, such as Yahoo!, Google or AOL, NBC plans to give itself the biggest split of revenue - 50%. Site owners (no personal blogs, although high-profile blogs may apply) keep 20% while the program producer gets 30%.
“We want to create new tools to allow NBC Universal to do what it has always done: to deliver quality entertainment experiences to as broad an audience as possible,” Mr. Falco [Randy Falco, President of the NBC Universal Television Group] said. “In short, we are going back into the broadcast business on the Internet.”
YouTube was the spur for the creation of NBBC and the impetus behind the syndication concept.
“When ‘Saturday Night Live’ had a great clip of Lazy Sunday, YouTube made a lot of money off it,” Randy Falco, the president of the NBC Universal television group, said at a news conference yesterday. “In the future, when we have a Lazy Sunday clip, NBBC will make a lot of money on it.”
Um, I’m not sure YouTube made any money off of “Lazy Sunday,” although it did rocket to national consciousness with the hit viral nature of the skit.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 6:55 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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