David Pogue has this item today that puts a little perspective around the recurrent hot rumor that Apple is about to come out with an iPhone. When asked when Apple will come out with a cell phone, Pogue answers: “Probably never.”
Part of his dismal assessment stems from the veto power that telcos have over phone design. Apple, he claims (and he’s probably right) would never give up its design prerogative to anybody.
I cannot imagine Apple giving veto power to ANYONE over its software design. It just ain’t gonna happen.
But, another thing fueling his deep skepticism is the fact that iPhone rumors have periodically run rampant since 2004. He points to what he calls a “Wonderful Museum of Bogus Apple Phone Rumors” published by the Tao of Mac filled with “photos” and “reports.”
For what it’s worth, I think Apple has designed an iPhone, the plans and prototypes for which are resident somewhere deep in Apple’s vaults. That’s what fueling all the rumors.
But, it’s one thing to design really cool computer and media products and it’s another thing to actually become a communications provider (far less cool, really), along the lines of Amp’d, for example, which is probably what Apple would have to do to sell its iPhone.
Because Pogue is right — it’s not likely that wireless carriers will bend to Apple’s design will and it’s a sure bet that Apple won’t concede to any carrier demands for modification. So Apple would have to become an MVNO, or mobile virtual network operator, just like Amp’d, leasing capacity from the existing carriers, yet another aspect of the whole thing that is probably too humbling for Apple.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 2:35 PM | Print | Comments (1)
Social networking giant MySpace is putting its vast, youth-oriented reach to good use: the News Corp.-owned service has launched a voter registration drive. Working with non-partisan group Declare Yourself, MySpace is running ads on its site to get its users (80% of whom are voting age, according to the company) to print out a voter registration form, fill it out and send it to local voter registration authorities.
In addition to setting up a special section of MySpace for this process, the service is also providing tools that promote the campaign, such as an “I Registered To Vote On MySpace” badge that members can post on their pages.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 1:29 PM | Print | Comments (0)Verizon today released more detailed data on its FiOS fiber-to-the-premises initiative (what Andrew Schmitt called opening the FiOS kimono) during a conference call (slides here, press release here and webcast here.) The biggest news is the number of video customers Verizon serves with its new plant, a statistic kept under wraps until now.
Verizon says that for Q3 06, it expects to report 100,000 video customers and by the end of the year, 175,000 FiOS TV customers, representing a penetration rate of 10% based on 1.8 million homes capable of receiving the service.
By 2010, Verizon projects it will serve three million to four million video subscribers, based on its estimates that around 15 million households will be video-ready by then. That’s a projected penetration rate of 20% to 25%. Verizon has currently landed 161 video franchises that cover 3.3 million homes and expects to have 300 video franchises by year-end that reach 6.1 million homes.
Around 80% of FiOS TV customers are triple-play buyers and churn is very low, 1.5% per month.
In terms of FiOS high-speed service, Verizon expects to serve 725,000 FiOS Internet customers by year-end, representing a penetration rate of 15% of the five million homes capable of buying the service, up from 375,000 FiOS Internet customers at the end of Q2 06 and an expected 500,000 customers at the end of Q3 06. Because of the rapid growth rate, Verizon is upping its 2010 projections — the company now expects it will achieve six to seven million FiOS Internet TV customers by then, representing penetration of 35% to 40%, compared to its earlier 2010 projection of 30%.
Despite the optimistic outlook, it’s going to take some time for FiOS to turn profitable, which is not much of a surprise to industry observers. FiOS overall will start generating positive operating income in 2009, although it will turn cash-positive in 2008.
Net capex for the effort is $18 billion, net of approximately $4.9 billion that Verizon estimates would otherwise be required to maintain traditional copper-wire technologies over the same period. That’s spending from 2004 to 2010.
Capex per home continues to decline. In August, average capital expenditures to pass a home were $873. By year-end, Verizon hopes to get this expense down to $850.
Customer connection expenses, which include set-top boxes, are still pretty steep. In August they were $933 per customer, down from $1,220 in January 2006, but higher than the year-end goal of $715. Verizon now expects connection costs to be around $880, dropping down to $650 by year-end 2010.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 11:01 AM | Print | Comments (0)
If any broadband provider ever hoped to mickey with customer access to popular Internet services, that hope has probably been extinguished by a brief technical glitch that barred some Comcast customers from accessing Google, and possibly YouTube. Jon Pettit at the Bostonist noted yesterday that field reports suggested that Comcast customers in Massachusetts could no longer access Google-related services, including Gmail, Google and Blogspot, and some users complained they couldn’t access YouTube.
While he wanted to blame Comcast, Pettit speculated that Google was the source of the problem because Comcast doesn’t provide technical support for open source Firefox. Later in the day, he got an email from Comcast explaining that it was experiencing an isolated, random server problem.
Search Engine Journal’s Loren Baker said that “Google is at the mercy of the ISP’s. Is this a preview of Net Neutrality?” AP even ran a couple of pieces on the outage, with the final report noting that network problems are common. The inability to access Google was even the top story on Digg for a while.
With this much attention paid to a relatively brief and minor technical glitch, sensitivities are obviously running high that broadband providers might start reordering the Internet in a way that disfavors some content or applications providers. I must admit that if I suddenly experienced problems gaining access to Google, I too might wonder, perhaps only in the back of my mind, if my broadband provider had something to do with that.
For this reason, namely because users are going to make a big, immediate stink, I would wager that broadband service providers aren’t likely to play around with the performance of popular services. If they had any plans to do so before yesterday, broadband providers have put those notions on the back burner today.
Update: Steve Bryant at eWeek has this superb analysis of the paranoia sparked by the Comcast-Google “thing.” Please read.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:31 AM | Print | Comments (2)
P2P tech provider Limewire is trying to turn the tables on the RIAA in the first post-Grokster lawsuit. The feisty start-up has filed some pretty big counterclaims in the lawsuit that the RIAA filed against it in early August, including allegations that the RIAA is violating the antitrust laws by conspiring to restrain trade in the online music business and by using the copyright laws not to defend its intellectual property but to kill competition. “Their goal is quite simple: to prevent the development of any technology—even the Internet— that is not designed and organized to control piracy,” the complaint reads.
In its suit, Limewire contends that the record companies
have engaged in these unfair business practices for the specific purpose of eliminating sources of decentralized peer-to-peer file sharing and acquiring a monopoly over digital distribution of commercially valuable copyrighted music and movie content.
In an intriguing claim, Limewire contends that the record companies have engaged in unfair business practices by requiring online music licensees to negotiate with only record company-controlled businesses, thereby keeping the price of music online artificially high. Moreover, Limewire is accusing the record companies of trying to extend their monopolies by forcing online music providers to work only with their affiliated filtering company, iMesh.
Limewire has developed its own filtering system, which weeds out unauthorized music, but the record companies have refused to provide the metadata needed to identify songs, a prerequisite for the filtering system to work. Limewire contends that the record companies have implemented a plan to force all P2P companies to deal with iMesh, or be sued.
Yet another interesting allegation is Limewire’s contention that the RIAA will issue only “dead-end” licenses, which permit downloading from only a server and not a peer, despite the fact that technology exists, or so Limewire claims, that can track downloading from both servers and peers.
Finally, Limewire believes and alleges that the RIAA issues contracts to ISPs that forbid those ISPs from doing business with P2P software companies, including Limewire.
Limewire is seeking damages under all the relevant Federal and State laws and seeks attorneys fees.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:20 AM | Print | Comments (0)
Ten Colorado cities have banded together to build a geographically huge Wi-Fi network. The communities, west of Denver and stretching from Lakewood to Boulder, plan to construct a privately built and operated Wi-Fi system that covers 220 square miles and around 600,000 people.
The group, Colorado Wireless Communities network, will issue an RFP November 1 and hopes to begin building in the third quarter of 2007. The service will not be free — the cities plan to charge around $20 to $30 per month for what strikes me as very slow broadband, one to two Mbps, far slower than the 6 Mbps service currently offered by Comcast.
But the group will offer discounts to low-income residents and the cities plan to leverage the network for their own municipal services, so it’s possible that the revenues from the Wi-Fi option are a secondary concern.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:05 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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