At least once per week, if not once per day, the press and the blogosphere go nuts over something that just bores the pants off of me. Today it's AOL's deal to buy Bebo, the third-ranked social networking service in the U.S., for $850 million cash.
Seriously, who cares? Not only is AOL an unbelievably doomed company (the latest evidence is the rumored layoff of half of AOL's sales staff), but it's also clear that parent company Time Warner wishes AOL would vanish off the face of the earth.
So, in all likelihood Bebo, which most people don't even know exists, will disappear into a morass of corporate paralysis and rudderless strategy, crater unto itself and nothing good will come of this acquisition. I love Om's take on the deal: "AOL is talking some gobbledygook about marrying AIM, ICQ with a real social network. Whatever!"
I stand corrected. Something good has already come out of this deal -- Bebo's VCs netted $140 million on the deal.
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is under increasing pressure from a bi-partisan group of Congressional leaders. An investigation into how Martin runs the FCC was announced earlier this year but took on new dimensions yesterday with a letter from a group of Democratic and Republican House leaders, a document that seems more in keeping with complex, high-stakes litigation than simple Congressional oversight.
Drafted on the letterhead of Rep. John Dingell (D-MI), head of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the letter asks for an exhaustive list of non-public documents regarding report, meeting and vote delays characteristic of Martin's FCC. It also asks for any limitations placed on FCC employees that bar discussion of agency business among themselves or with outsiders. Martin has reportedly demanded tight central control over documents, discussions and initiatives at the agency, which has sparked a lot of grumbling among Commission staff and spawned jokes about the KGB-like atmosphere at the FCC.
The letter also seeks information on personnel reassignments, audits of telecom carriers, supression or excision of material from reports, destruction of investigative materials and attempts to limit factual findings to hand-picked sources of data (e.g. Martin's sole reliance on a single source of data to support new regulatory obligations for the cable industry.) The investigators are also standing by to receive anonymous information and allegations from FCC staff and contractors.
Martin has two weeks to comply with the request.
Although regulatory agencies and the Congress are often at odds with each other, this is a remarkable request by legislators. It's clear from the tone of the missive that the investigators think they'll uncover the "waste, fraud and abuse" that they seek.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:45 AM | Print | Comments (0)The same question rears its head from time to time: will the glut of Internet video break the Internet, at least in the U.S. (particularly now that Disney CEO Bob Iger says that the computer, not the TV, will dominate video entertainment?) The exaflood of Internet usage is on its way, this New York Times piece reminds us yet again, but concludes that the traffic surge is more a "looming challenge than an impending catastrophe."
Still, this is a great springboard for noting that we've got three of the nation's top experts lined up at next week's Internet Video Policy Symposium to discuss this very matter. On a panel entitled "Video is a Bandwidth Hog: Should Broadband Policies Pursue More Capacity?" former FCC Chief Economist Gerry Faulhaber, networking pioneer and former FCC Chief Economist and iGrowth Global's Scott Wallsten will dig into the notion that perhaps we should make increased broadband capacity a national priority. We've also landed as our keynote luncheon speaker outgoing acting NTIA chief Meredith Attwell Baker, who'll lend some insight from the Administration's perspective on this issue.
One Cisco exec (Cisco was once a key member of a lobbying group that advocated making 100 Mbps connections a national policy goal) is quoted in the article that it's kind of embarassing to explain in Taiwan why his "premium" Internet connection is half as fast and costs more than the high-speed service in that country. With the amount of Internet video escalating on a daily basis, it's going to become increasingly embarassing to explain that typical U.S. broadband speeds hover around 3 Mbps, with a good chunk of the user base making do on far less than that.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 12:44 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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