November 5, 2008

Time Warner's Tale of Two Businesses

Media giant Time Warner issued its Q3 08 earnings report this morning (PDF) showing ongoing shrinkage and weakness in its AOL albatross unit but solid performance in its separately traded cable unit, which is soon to be split off almost... More...

October 29, 2008

Comcast's Weak Q3 08 Earnings Report

Top cable operator Comcast issued its Q3 08 earnings report this morning showing relatively healthy financial performance in the face of accelerating core video customer loss and slowing growth in digital telephony, high-speed data and digital video businesses. Total revenue... More...

October 27, 2008

Verizon's FiOS Service Bounces Back

When Verizon issued its Q2 08 earnings report, the statistics for the telco's fiber-to-the-home FiOS initiative were pretty discouraging. A slow-down seemed to have hit both FiOS broadband and TV service -- quarterly subscriber gains in both categories looked pretty... More...

October 22, 2008

Comcast Is Launching Its Wideband Modem Service

As Broadband Reports first revealed, Comcast is officially launching its next-generation, DOCSIS 3.0 wideband modem service in parts of New England, as well as areas of Philadelphia and New Jersey in addition to parts of Minneapolis/St. Paul, where the faster... More...

AT&T: Mobile, U-Verse Posted Strong Gains in Q3 08

Telecom giant AT&T issued its Q3 08 earnings report this morning show a surge in wireless subscribers thanks to its exclusive deal with Apple to sell the iconic iPhone. But those wireless gains ate into AT&T's net income as the... More...

October 15, 2008

Skype Continues its Slow and Steady Uptick

Online auction giant eBay issued its Q3 08 earnings results (PDF) today showing a 12% year-over-year rise in revenue to $2.12 billion and a net profit of $492 million, compared to a loss of $936 million during Q3 07, when... More...

October 6, 2008

Telecom Stocks Sink Along with Everything Else

There was a time when telecom providers were relatively insulated from the markets' fluctuations. AT&T, the old Ma Bell that is, was known as the proverbial "widows and orphans" stock because it was so dependably steady and returned predictable dividends.... More...

September 30, 2008

Usage Caps & Metered Prices: Idealism v. Reality

My old friend Om Malik sent me a note this morning highlighting a white paper on metered bandwidth pricing plans written by one of his old friends, researcher and analyst Muayyad Al-Chalabi. Om posted the paper on his site (you... More...

September 26, 2008

U.S. Copes with Broadband Statistics Void

(Washington, DC) Although most experts agree that broadband connectivity is essential for both economic development and national competitiveness, the U.S. lacks any reasonable set of statistics to measure what kind of broadband is available and where. Experts from the public... More...

September 18, 2008

TWC CEO: Broadband Will Be Consumption-Based

Time Warner Cable shook up the Internet world earlier this year when it started testing a "consumption-based" broadband service in Beaumont, TX. Although final results of that experiment have been postponed by Hurricane Ike, which hit Beaumont hard, TWC CEO... More...

September 17, 2008

Comcast CFO: We're a Resilient Business

(Taking a break from my obsession with Wall Street. Que sera, sera.) The media industry titans are all lined up to speak this week at Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference in New York and given the credit crisis, the mood is... More...

August 28, 2008

Here's the Skinny on Comcast's Bandwidth Caps

As I posted earlier, Comcast came out today with a monthly bandwidth cap limit beyond which broadband customers are considered to be consuming "excessive" bandwidth. The cap is 250 GB and it will become company-wide policy starting October 1. (That's... More...

Here Come the Broadband Caps...

Update at end of post. As usual, Karl Bode broke the news today that Comcast, the nation's top cable operator and the second largest broadband provider in the U.S., will implement a 250 GB broadband cap starting in October as... More...

August 8, 2008

Cable Captured 80% of Q2 08 New Broadband Subs.

The numbers are in and it's official: telco-delivered broadband growth nosedived during Q2 08. According to a tally of the top nine cable operators (Brighthouse Networks, Cable One, Cablevision, Charter, Comcast, Cox, Insight, Mediacom and Time Warner) and the top... More...

August 6, 2008

Despite Billions in Acquisitions, AOL Still Sinking

For at least six years now, most of Wall Street and the media world have known that AOL is a sinking ship, destined to go under from the weight of its dial-up heritage and corporate parent woes. What's always been... More...

Time Warner Cable Boosts Its Broadband Share

In keeping with the virtually universal theme this earnings season, Time Warner Cable issued its Q2 08 earnings results (PDF) this morning, showing continued robust growth in broadband, digital voice and digital service subscriptions, even as overall basic subscriber counts... More...

August 4, 2008

Insight Communications Struts Cable's Stuff

Small midwest cable operator Insight Communications issued selected Q2 08 financial and operating results (PDF) this morning and, in what is clearly becoming the surprising but so far consistent trend of this earning's season, posted strong subscriber growth across the... More...

Dish Network is Going Down - Loses Subs. in Q2

In the clearest sign to date that DBS multichannel video is a dying service, Dish Network issued its Q2 08 earnings report this morning showing its first-ever loss of subscribers. From Q1 08 to Q2 08, Dish lost 25,000 net... More...

July 31, 2008

Cablevision Asks: What Competition?

Long Island-based cable operator Cablevision System issued its Q2 08 earnings report this morning, showing stellar results virtually across the board. Cablevision reported a net gain of 6,000 basic subscribers and healthy growth in high-speed, telephony and, in particular, digital... More...

July 30, 2008

Comcast Posts Healthy Gains in Voice, HSD Subs.

The nation's top cable operator Comcast issued its Q2 08 earnings report this morning showing comparatively strong gains in high-speed data and voice subscribers even as basic customer loss accelerated. Weakness on the video front and tepid advertising revenue resulted,... More...

July 28, 2008

Verizon Stops Reporting Video Subscriber Counts

Verizon issued its Q2 08 earnings earning results this morning and although the company's wireless business helped propel Verizon to strong net income growth, its customer wireline business -- including video and broadband, heretofore growth stalwarts -- seems to be,... More...

July 23, 2008

AT&T's Consumer Wireline Business Tanked in Q208

Top telco AT&T issued its Q2 08 earnings report this morning showing revenue and net income growth thanks to its hot wireless business. But, in a sign that the recession is taking a stiff toll on consumers' budgets, AT&T's consumer... More...

July 17, 2008

Google's Revenue Growth Slow-Down Is Inevitable

Google issued its Q2 08 earnings report today showing a 35% year-over-year jump in net income to $1.25 billion and a 39% spike in revenue to $5.37 billion -- all good news for an ordinary company. But Google is a... More...

July 15, 2008

Google is Now Officially a Big Bad Company in DC

Contrary to what most people think, no one is more vulnerable in Washington politics than "big" companies, particularly companies that that have extensive dealings with the voting public and have roused the fear and envy of competitors by cornering a... More...

June 30, 2008

Google Discovers the Power of Vertical Integration

(Back again after an inadvertent blogging break...) In a move that may go down in the media history books, Google will become an original programming content syndicator come September when it distributes content produced by "Family Guy's" Seth MacFarlane using... More...

June 25, 2008

Cable CEOs & CTOs: Our Big Challenge is Change

(Philadelphia, PA) Cable CEOs and CTOs alike agree that the pace of technological progress is the biggest challenge facing the cable industry now and for the foreseeable future. Speaking at two consecutive general sessions at the Society of Cable Engineer's... More...

June 20, 2008

Lobbyists Battle on Blogs Over Impending FCC Ruling

A fun uber-lobbyist blog fight has broken out today regarding a rumored FCC ruling that would smack down Verizon over its practice of pitching special deals to landline customers slated to switch voice service to cable companies. Back story: Last... More...

June 19, 2008

Apple's $110 Mil./Year Movie Business

Underscoring its leadership role in the online distribution of music and entertainment, Apple announced this morning it has sold more than five billion songs via its iTunes store, up by more than a billion since January 2008 when Steve Jobs... More...

May 23, 2008

Why Wireless is Crucial to Cable's Competitive Future

Cable rebounded from a failed mobile voice joint venture with Sprint-Nextel to form a new alliance with...Sprint-Nextel, which will merge its wireless assets in a new WiMax venture with Clearwire. Comcast, Time Warner and Brighthouse Networks are going to give... More...

May 21, 2008

Time Warner Unveils Cable Separation Deal

Media giant Time Warner unveiled its plan for getting out of the cable business this morning through a complex transaction that will give the parent company $9.25 billion in cash from a special dividend that Time Warner Cable will pay... More...

May 17, 2008

U.S. Cable Telephony Growth Strong in Q1 08

As the cable industry heads into its big annual trade show this weekend in New Orleans, it has one major unqualified success to tout. U.S. cable operators added a collective 1.3 million net new voice customers during Q1 08, a... More...

May 13, 2008

Both Sprint and Clearwire Post Weak Q1 Reports

Fresh from last week's announcement that they will join hands (along with a group of top cable companies, Intel and Google) to form a new WiMax venture, Sprint-Nextel and Clearwire both issued their Q1 08 earnings results today. The news... More...

May 12, 2008

Charter Does Better in Q1 08, Slows Down Sub. Loss

Paul Allen-backed cable company Charter Communications issued its Q1 08 earnings report this morning and for once the news was, well, if not good, then not terrible either. The struggling operator posted decent financials, with revenues and cash flow rising... More...

May 8, 2008

Cablevision's Broadband Penetration Hits 50%

Cablevision Systems issued its Q1 08 earnings report this morning showing a solid return to basic cable subscriber gains and continued, albeit declining, growth in its digital, high-speed and telco customer counts. During the company's earnings call, the Long Island-based... More...

Earnings Update: News Corp., DirecTV Post Strong Results

Yesterday was chock full of interesting news and developments but the necessity of actually doing real work got in the way of my blogging. I'm a day late here but a couple of key earnings reports issued yesterday are worth... More...

May 6, 2008

Telco Video Subscriber Count Now 5.7 Million

Now that Qwest has weighed in with its Q1 08 earnings results, it's time to once again take a broader look at how well the incumbent telcos are doing in the video business. Based on our analysis, the top four... More...

May 2, 2008

Viacom's Doing Alright: Revs, Profits Strong in Q1 08

Viacom issued its Q1 08 earnings results this morning and the global entertainment giant showed healthy revenue and profit growth during the quarter, thanks almost entirely to its media networks division and despite weakness in its entertainment or film division.... More...

Is BPL Down for the Count? Yup, Probably.

When it comes to communications policy in the U.S., there are two major goals -- either regulate in the absence of competition or spur more competition in order to obviate the need for regulation. That's the main reason why the... More...

May 1, 2008

Comcast Posts Decent Q1 08 Numbers

So far, the seemingly recession-resistant cable (and phone) industries are living up to their reputations. The latest evidence: top cable operator Comcast issued its Q1 08 earnings results this morning showing continued healthy grow in new, high-margin add-on services even... More...

April 30, 2008

TW to Jettison Cable Unit, Which Did Well in Q1 08

Time Warner announced this morning that it will completely spin off its cable unit, a move that has been widely anticipated since CEO Jeff Bewkes took over the company at the beginning of the year. Combined with the decision to... More...

AOL Continues to Shrink: Ad Revenues Drop Sequentially

Despite hype generated by the release of Comscore data last week showing increased traffic to AOL sites, the troubled Time Warner unit continued to shrink away during Q1 08, according to trending schedules (PDF) released by Time Warner this morning... More...

April 28, 2008

Verizon FiOS TV Tops the Million Subscriber Mark

Verizon issued its Q1 08 earnings report this morning showing continued steep losses in local access lines but moderately healthy growth in broadband (although not DSL) and, to a lesser degree, wireless. The big news for Verizon is that its... More...

April 23, 2008

Apple's iPhone Magic: Shipments Drop But Revenue Jumps 57%

Apple Inc. issued its fiscal Q2 07 earnings results this afternoon, beating analysts estimates through continued strong iPod and Mac sales. Revenues soared 43% while net income jumped 36%. iPhone shipments dropped 35% from 2.3 million to 1.7 million sequentially,... More...

April 22, 2008

AT&T Uverse Penetration Reaches 4% of Capable Homes

AT&T issued its Q1 08 earnings results this morning, showing healthy growth in revenue, and very strong growth in profits, along with continued upward momentum in video subscriptions and respectable gains in broadband and wireless connections. However, one of the... More...

April 18, 2008

More Details on Google's Excellent Q1 08 Results

Despite fears that Google was falling off a cliff in the midst of the U.S. recession, the search giant issued its Q1 08 financial results yesterday showing a returned vigor that seemed to defy skeptics. Google posted a 30% rise... More...

April 16, 2008

Verizon Files to Provide FiOS TV Service in NYC

Verizon announced this morning that it has filed for a cable TV franchise in New York City, hoping to become the first single provider to offer multichannel video services throughout the city. Time Warner Cable and Cablevision currently offer TV... More...

April 10, 2008

Time Warner Ads May Not Be Deceptive But Verizon's Ad Might Be

Verizon is stirring up the competitive waters by attacking ads from rival broadband, video and voice provider Time Warner Cable. The telco filed suit against Time Warner yesterday in New York claiming that this ad falsely implies that Time Warner... More...

April 9, 2008

Internet Giants Huddle Around Yahoo! in Ridiculous Spectacle

Let's see...Microsoft, an aging though powerful tech and would-be Internet giant, offered to buy Yahoo, an aging and increasingly weak former Internet giant, in a $44.6 billion buyout bid. Yahoo refused to bite and now the offer has turned hostile.... More...

March 29, 2008

Are Trade Shows Dead or Dying?

Sad but not unexpected rumors are flying around that Pulver Media, the once-hugely successful company founded by VoIP pioneer Jeff Pulver, has been shut down. Pulver Media ran the formerly-hot trade show VON (disclosure: I ran two pre-conferences with VON... More...

March 14, 2008

Verizon to Use P4P to Aid P2P. Smart Move.

Verizon is set to announce today a bit of news that CNET's Marguerite Reardon covered almost two months ago: a plan to deploy technology that facilitates P2P applications.... More...

March 12, 2008

TW Cable CFO: We're Not Losing HSD Subs. to FiOS

Although Time Warner Cable could lose video subscribers to its telco-based rivals, it is holding its own on the high-speed Internet front, particularly when it comes to Verizon's fiber-based FiOS service, according to company CFO Robert Marcus. Speaking today at... More...

March 11, 2008

TW's Bewkes: Not Trying to Rid Ourselves of Cable

Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes spent a good deal of time discussing Time Warner Cable today during his talk at Bear Stearn's annual media conference. But he shed little light on the company's apparently disintegrating AOL business.... More...

March 10, 2008

Comcast, Google & Verizon on the Recession's Sting

Bear Stearns is hosting its annual media conference in Palm Beach this week and the top execs from all the media world, which now includes the Internet, are offering their insights into the year ahead. On one topic, the recession,... More...

March 5, 2008

Cable Telephony Tops the 13-Million Mark

I pointed out yesterday that the telcos keep losing a weirdly steady number of landline voice customers each quarter, around 2.3 to 2.6 million traditional customers lost each quarter. Around half of those defectors are now cable voice customers, and... More...

March 4, 2008

Top Telcos Lose a Steady 2.3 to 2.6 Million Lines/Qtr.

The top four incumbent telcos in the U.S., AT&T, Verizon, Qwest and Embarq, seem fated to lose around 2.3 to 2.6 million local access lines per quarter, a very consistent and curiously tight range. According to my analysis of the... More...

February 27, 2008

AT&T: Sample Cable Modem Speeds Average 400 kbps

AT&T Group President John Stankey said today that a 150-home test of cable modem service in one market found that cable modem download throughput rates averaged 300 kbps to 400 kbps, far below the 6 to 8 mbps advertised by... More...

February 26, 2008

What's Happening at Dish Network?

Even though its revenues and net income are on the rise, DBS provider Dish Network is on some kind of strange downturn, with subscriber growth plummeting every quarter. The company reported its Q4 07 earnings this morning showing a 12%... More...

February 25, 2008

NYT Discovers New Way to Track Box Office Revenues

Not to pick on creative thinkers, but the New York Times put up a really interesting chart over the weekend that purports to graphically depict the cyclical rise and fall of movie theater box office revenues. It's very beautiful, but... More...

February 22, 2008

Has Cable Seen the Worst of Telco Video Competition?

Cable operators have been on the run from multichannel video competitors since at least 2003. DBS providers then phone companies and then DBS and phone companies in partnership with each other have been eating into the cable industry's dominant market... More...

February 21, 2008

Is Rogers Ready to Roll Out Metered Broadband?

Earlier this week I got the word that two North American cable companies are planning to roll out metered broadband service. Unlike Time Warner, which says it is only testing the concept, these two broadband providers are supposedly gearing up... More...

February 14, 2008

Comcast Penetration Dips Below 50% Threshold

Top cable operator Comcast issued its Q4 07 earnings report this morning showing solid growth in revenues and operating cash flow but continued continued cooling in most new service categories and ongoing losses in basic cable subscribers. Indeed, for the... More...

February 11, 2008

How Yahoo! & Overpriced Home Sellers Are Alike

It's official: Yahoo! has formally rejected Microsoft's unsolicited buyout bid. Reports surfaced over the weekend that the ailing Internet giant would reject the stock and cash offer, which had been worth $44.6 billion when announced but has slipped by a... More...

February 6, 2008

Time Warner's New Strategy: Content Trumps Conduit

In his first call to discuss quarterly earnings results (PDF here), newly installed Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes hinted at a strategy to cut costs and shed capital-intensive assets that would make the media giant almost solely a pure content... More...

Time Warner Cable Claims It Has Turned the Corner

Time Warner Cable issued its Q4 07 earnings report this morning (PDF here) showing the usual continued healthy gains in revenue and cash flow alongside the usual continued loss in basic cable subscribers. Revenues for the nation's second largest cable... More...

February 4, 2008

Google Uses Oldest Trick in Book to Counter Microsoft

For a company that only recently came up to speed in Washington, Google is playing by the rules spelled out in the unofficial big company lobbying handbook. The search giant has launched a swift and seemingly all-out effort to thwart... More...

February 1, 2008

Microsoft Makes $44.6 Billion Bid for Yahoo! Yawn.

In the wee hours of the morning, software giant Microsoft announced a $44.6 billion unsolicited offer to buy ailing online giant Yahoo! The goal is to combine the assets of the two companies so that Internet advertising juggernaut Google faces... More...

January 28, 2008

Verizon FiOS TV Sub. Count Tops the Million Mark

Verizon issued its Q4 07 earnings release this morning showing a 5.5% rise in adjusted revenue and 3.9% growth in profits, with the telco's fiber-to-the-home FiOS and Verizon Wireless services the bright spots in the company's portfolio. Revenues grew to... More...

January 25, 2008

Round 2 in 700 MHz Auction Raises Tally to $2.7 Bil.

The much-watched auction of the 700 MHz wireless broadband spectrum is underway and in two days of bidding, the tally now stands at $2.7 billion. (RCR Wireless and Daily Wireless have the best coverage of anybody out there on the... More...

January 24, 2008

Wireless, Video Growth Push AT&T Ahead

After bumming out Wall Street last month with statements that economy-driven consumer disconnects were the on the rise, AT&T posted impressive results for Q4 07 in its earnings report this morning. Net income jumped by 41% year-over-year to $3.1 billion,... More...

January 23, 2008

Whitman Leaves Just as Skype Starts to Do Alright

That rarest of all species, a potent female CEO of a major company, and one who wielded power in the all-male bastion of Silicon Valley no less, is stepping down from her top dog role and it's kind of a... More...

January 22, 2008

Revenues and Profits Soar at Apple...For Now

Apple issued its fiscal Q1 08 earnings report this afternoon and the news was outstanding. But, the recession's storm clouds rained even on this high-performing star. In after-hours trading, Apple's stock was down 11%, sliding to around $137 per share... More...

January 18, 2008

Sprint Hits the Growth Skids...4,000 Jobs Cut

The weakest of the U.S. mobile carriers, Sprint-Nextel, reported Q4 07 wireless subscriber tallies this morning and annnounced that it will slash 4,000 internal positions and cut back on contracts in the face of what it expects will be continued... More...

January 14, 2008

Forbes Pits the People Against Comcast

Evan Hessel and Dorothy Pomerantz have this piece in the latest Forbes magazine entitled "The People Vs. Comcast." And it's none too flattering. The article basically accuses the nation's top cable company of all kinds of corporate greed and behind-the-scenes... More...

January 11, 2008

Ken Auletta on Google's Challenges in DC

Ken Auletta has a piece in this week's New Yorker that recaps how Google has come to attract attention in DC and how the search giant has stepped up its spending on lobbying. There's really nothing new here, particularly as... More...

January 8, 2008

Comcast is Now Fourth Biggest Home Phone Provider

Comcast is really pulling out all the stops at CES this year. On top of its big announcement regarding its Project Infinity, the top cable operator is also touting the fact that it's now the fourth biggest residential phone service... More...

January 6, 2008

Microsoft Capitalizes on Xbox's VOD Potential

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates kicked off the Consumer Electronics Show tonight for the last time, preceded by the customary funny lead-in video, which this year featured cameos of Jon Stewart, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore and Barack Obama (who, when... More...

December 17, 2007

Qwest To Expand 20 Mbps Option, Steer Clear of IPTV

Qwest Communications held a strategy update call (webcast here) this morning and revealed that it will expand its fiber-to-the-node initiative to boost the number of homes in its territory that are capable of buying higher speed broadband service. Although not... More...

Writers, Letterman are Bypassing Hollywood

Although it may seem that Hollywood has the upper-hand in the stalled contract talks with the Writers Guild, the writers have a lot more power than the studios think. The rise of the broadband Internet has given creative talent freedom... More...

December 10, 2007

A Tale of Two Industries -- Cable Sinks and Telco Rises

In the wake of last week's bad news for the U.S. cable industry, and given the surprising golden glow surrounding the incumbent phone industry, I started playing around with stock charts to see just how badly cable has fared on... More...

December 5, 2007

Comcast EVP: We'll Take Our Time With Wireless

In the wake of Comcast's downgraded financial guidance and the company's decision to sit out the 700 MHz spectrum auctions, Comcast's EVP and Co-CFO Michael Angelakis spoke at UBS Global Media and Communications Conference this morning (webcast here), shedding a... More...

December 4, 2007

AT&T's Deal to Buy EchoStar Must Be Dead, Dead

Last Friday I said that we'd know the answers to a few strategic questions once the official 700 Mhz auction intent to bid forms were filed at the FCC on Monday. One question, whether cable is going to pursue wireless... More...

Cable Enters New Era as Comcast Lowers Guidance

I thought it was really weird that Comcast hadn't -- until this afternoon -- issued a press release about its participation in the UBS Media Week confab tomorrow (very silly but I actually thought that this multibillion dollar corporation forget... More...

November 30, 2007

Here Comes the 700 MHz Auction...

December is usually a very slow month for business news, and news in general. Or at least that's the theory. But in the communications and tech world, this December will kick off a feast of press and blogger speculation about... More...

November 29, 2007

Apple to Unveil 3G iPhone

No sooner did I finish my post about Verizon's plan to launch 4G mobile service than I came across this report that AT&T will offer a 3G version of the iPhone next year. CEO Randall Stephenson spilled the beans at... More...

Verizon Wireless Announces 4G Trials for 2008

Two days after announcing its market-shifting plan to "open" its wireless network, Verizon Wireless announced this morning plans to launch a "4G" network using LTE or long term evolution technology. LTE is an all-IP based technology aimed at delivering true... More...

November 27, 2007

Holy Cow! Verizon Wireless Opens Its Network

Verizon Wireless leapfrogged ahead of the whole 700 MHz open access debate and changed forever the mobile communications industry in the U.S. by announcing this morning that it will allow customers to use any application and any device on its... More...

November 20, 2007

Hill Republicans Take FCC Chief to Woodshed

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is in trouble with Congressional Republicans for his plan to leverage a little-known statutory provision to impose regulations on the cable industry. Earlier today, 23 members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee sent a letter... More...

Verizon Ups the Ante Again on Upload Speeds

While Comcast struggles with the aftermath of its P2P uploading delay debacle, Verizon keeps boosting the upload speeds of its FiOS broadband service. Not only has the telco fully rolled out its earlier 15/15 Mbps FiOS service to sixteen states,... More...

November 19, 2007

What Bandwidth Apocalypse? Verizon Tests 100 Gbps

AT&T-backed Internet Innovation Alliance has sponsored a study by Nemertes Research which concludes that unless broadband providers invest $55 billion in their networks, the Internet might slow to a crawl by 2010. Of course, shrewd observers see this research for... More...

FCC Chief Handpicks Bad Data to Justify Cable Regs

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has long had it in for the cable industry, for unknown, baffling reasons. But earlier this month Republican Martin raised the stakes in his war with cable by proposing a new set of ownership regulations that... More...

November 15, 2007

Is Cable Telephony Growth Tapped Out?

Now that the Q3 07 earnings season is almost over, I'm sifting through the data looking for trends. One thing that pops out, which is surprisingly to me (and I suspect suprising to both cable operators and phone companies), is... More...

November 13, 2007

The WSJ's Death Knell for Premium Content Providers

It's all but official -- the Wall Street Journal will tear down its pay wall, according to new owner Rupert Murdoch. This development will hammer a nail into the coffins of online publishers (with a few notable exceptions) who still... More...

November 8, 2007

Cable is Really on the Run as Sub. Counts Slip

A firm trend is emerging from this past week's spate of cable company earnings reports. The cable industry is on the run from competition. Yesterday, Time Warner Cable posted less-than-stellar results, showing continued loss of core video customers. That news... More...

November 7, 2007

Time Warner Cable Falls to 50% Penetration Level

As a longtime cable industry watcher, I'm amazed that U.S. cable operators are slipping perilously close to becoming the minority multichannel video provider. Although we're not there yet, the signposts are leading that way. Case in point: Time Warner Cable,... More...

Amazingly, AOL Still Has 10 Million Dial-Up Subs.

Time Warner issued its Q3 07 earnings release today (PDF here) and AOL still looks like a stinker for the media conglomerate. Despite the tremendous effort that Time Warner made to turn AOL into an Internet ad giant, the online... More...

November 1, 2007

Telcos Are Going Gangbusters on Video

With all the excitement that web-delivered video generates, the vast majority of people still watch plain old multichannel TV. And the most interesting development in the plain-old-TV-service world is that the phone companies are doing a remarkable job at giving... More...

October 26, 2007

The Mercury News as Object Lesson

Business Week has this great in-depth piece about how a once-hot newspaper, The San Jose Mercury News, has fallen low due to the massive disruptions created by the Internet. That's a familiar story by now, but The Merc may be... More...

October 25, 2007

Comcast Failed to Reach 'Altitude' in Q3 07 as Subs. Slip

Comcast issued its Q3 07 earnings report (full report here) today and it looks like the nation's top cable operator hit some kind of a growth plateau. Although revenues and cash flow grew by respectable amounts, subscriber growth across the... More...

October 23, 2007

Verizon Rolls Out 20/20 Mbps Symmetrical Service

As some people guessed yesterday, Verizon's "big" announcement today is that it is rolling out a 20 Mbps symmetrical FiOS high-speed service. This means the connection offers 20 Mbps rates in both the upload and download directions, perfect for video... More...

AT&T Gains Steam on the Video Front

AT&T issued its Q3 07 earnings report this morning and the news was good, relatively speaking. The nation's number one telco posted undeniable revenue growth, not always a given for incumbent telcos these days. AT&T's revenues rose by 3% year-over-year... More...

October 22, 2007

Apple Soars on Strong iPod, Mac, iPhone Sales

Apple keeps shining brighter. The Cupertino, CA-based computing, electronics and entertainment giant issued its fiscal Q4 07 earnings report today and the news was stellar across the board. Revenues jumped 29% year-over-year and 15% sequentially to $6.2 billion, while net... More...

October 8, 2007

It's True -- Forsee is Out at Sprint-Nextel

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Sprint-Nextel was on the hunt for a new CEO and USA Today's Leslie Cauley reported this morning that an imminent announcement would confirm that Sprint's ambitious CEO Gary Forsee would be stepping... More...

October 1, 2007

Bart Says Wall Street Journal is Better Than Ever

My good and kind friend Gary Arlen dropped me a line last night to let me know that the opening chalkboard gag in "The Simpsons" was Bart Simpson writing "The Wall Street Journal is Better Than Ever." A very, very... More...

September 25, 2007

EchoStar to Buy Sling. What About SlingCatcher?

The big news while you were sleeping is that DBS provider EchoStar is buying place-shifting pioneer Sling Media in a deal valued at $380 million, cash and stock. The deal seems to be a good one all the way around... More...

September 19, 2007

Verizon's Seidenberg: Everything's Hunky-Dory

A relaxed and seemingly confident Ivan Seidenberg, Chairman and CEO of Verizon, gave an upbeat talk about his company today at Goldman Sachs' Communacopia investor event. Whether it's the state of the economy, the impact of the iPhone on Verizon... More...

AT&T Exec: Content Buys Should Reflect All Platforms

AT&T now offers multichannel video service via its U-verse platform, but video content suppliers should take into account that the telco also offers other ways of watching video, Group President-Regional Telecommunications & Entertainment Ralph de la Vega said today at... More...

September 18, 2007

Brian Roberts: 200 Mbps Modem Launches in 2008

I didn't have a chance to catch Comcast CEO Brian Roberts' talk at the Merrill Lynch Media and Entertainment conference yesterday, but based on press reports, he told the attendees that Comcast plans to roll out a DOCSIS 3.0 modem,... More...

September 17, 2007

Paetec Buys McLeod in Bid to Shake Up Giants

Competitive local exchange carrier Paetec is poised to given the two dominant U.S. telcos, AT&T and Verizon, a run for their money. The Fairport, NY-based business-oriented telecom provider announced this morning it is buying former CLEC superstar McLeod USA for... More...

September 12, 2007

AT&T's New Bundle -- No Home Line Required

In an interesting experiment, AT&T is offering customers in seven cities a bundle of services that don't require the customer to buy landline home phone service. For $60/month, consumers can purchase wireless voice service and high-speed Internet access. The wireless... More...

August 28, 2007

EarthLink Almost Triples Sub. Loss Estimates

The rumors that I reported yesterday are, in fact, true. EarthLink made it official this morning that the company is laying off hundreds of employees (900) and is restructuring for a smaller future. In addition to the staff cuts, EarthLink... More...

August 27, 2007

EarthLink Readies Big Layoffs, Reorg Announcement?

A rumor is running the circuit today that ISP EarthLink will announce tomorrow a major reorganization and a slew of layoffs, a not-surprising move given the deteriorating state of the once-hot company’s finances. Indeed, when EarthLink announced its Q2 07... More...

Broadband Price Wars Redux: Verizon's Price-for-Life

As part of a comprehensive analysis of the recent slow-down in broadband growth, which I conducted earlier this month, I concluded that the recent drop in new high-speed subscriber additions would spark price reductions in cable modem and telco-based broadband... More...

August 23, 2007

Newspapers Serve Up Old "News" Nowadays

Slate’s Jack Shafer has this piece about how print newspapers are now relegated to serving up “already chewed news” given that many, if not most, newspaper readers digest the “news” online many hours, if not days, before it appears in... More...

The U.S. is Stupid When it Comes to Cell Phones

USA Today’s Leslie Cauley has this piece today about a telecom policy debate that so far has been pretty inside-baseball: U.S. carrier control over locked and closed cell phones. The iPhone, among its many accomplishments, has provided the perfect excuse... More...

August 15, 2007

Broadband Growth is Decelerating

Over at Emerging Media Dynamics (my consulting firm), we’ve just completed an analysis of broadband growth trends and have confirmed what many folks have lately suspected. Broadband growth is, in fact, slowing down, at least in the U.S., a logical... More...

DirecTV to Partner with Current on BPL

Now that municipal Wi-Fi networks have been discredited as viable technologies for mounting a third broadband pipeline into the home, all we’re left with in the short-term is an even more difficult technology, broadband-over-power-lines (BPL). And according to this report... More...

August 9, 2007

DirecTV is Doing Surprisingly Alright

DBS is a competitively difficult medium for multichannel video services because the satellite providers can’t offer companion bundled high-speed and voice services the way rival telco and cable operators can. But you wouldn’t guess that DBS is handicapped based on... More...

August 8, 2007

Cablevision Starts to Wilt Under Verizon's Heat

Verizon is gunning for the lucrative NYC-Long Island market that has been Cablevision Systems’ to win or lose. Based on the cable operator’s Q2 07 earnings report issued this morning, the once-unshakeable operator, who tops the industry’s charts in almost... More...

August 2, 2007

Top Telcos Accelerated Video Gains During Q2 07

Well, a lot of things are slowing down for the phone companies — line losses continue apace, high-speed growth has cooled — but they’re still making headway in the video business. During Q2 07, the top three incumbent telcos added... More...

August 1, 2007

TWC's Growth in Basic, High-Speed Services Slows

By now it’s an official trend: cable operators have hit a growth wall in subscriber gains. Time Warner Cable joins Comcast in experiencing basic video subscriber losses and a slowdown in high-speed Internet subscriber growth during Q2 07, according to... More...

AOL is a Big Stinker for Time Warner

Last quarter, Time Warner touted AOL’s ad growth and the press swallowed the spin uncritically, parroting the company’s falsely positive PR on the ailing unit. I seemingly stood alone in contradicting the rosy take on AOL, noting that all the... More...

July 30, 2007

Solid Earnings from Verizon, But Hold On.....

Giant telco Verizon issued its Q2 07 earnings report this morning and the news is seemingly all good. Revenues rose 6.4% year-over-year to $23.3 billion, while net income advanced 4.5% to $1.68 billion. Verizon Wireless was the big engine driving... More...

July 26, 2007

Signs of a Slowdown at Comcast

Top cable operator Comcast issued its Q2 07 earnings report this morning and the news was decidedly mixed. Although Comcast, like most leading cable companies, posted healthy revenue and cash flow growth and reported strong gains in telephony, it also... More...

July 25, 2007

Apple Tries to Cool Overheated Expectations

With all the lunacy surrounding Apple’s iPhone, it wouldn’t be surprising if the company tried to ratchet back expectations to some level that more approximates optimistic reality. And that’s exactly what Apple did with its fiscal Q3 07 earnings release... More...

July 24, 2007

The iPhone Came None Too Soon for AT&T

AT&T issued its Q2 07 earnings report this morning and the news wasn’t that great. (Ignore most of what you read in the business press about AT&T’s earnings — the giant telco consistently puts out, and the press merely repeats,... More...

July 23, 2007

Reprehensible Tent-Folding at SunRocket, Amp'd

Two items today attest to what I hope is not a trend in today’s tech-based service world. The first is Matt Richtel’s article in the New York Times about the human cost of SunRocket’s sudden shut-down. When I initially read... More...

July 18, 2007

Yahoo! Revenues Rise, Profits Dip, Usage Flattens

Troubled Yahoo! made a lot of promises to investors during its first earnings call following the ouster of CEO Terry Semel. New CEO and company co-founder Jerry Yang vowed to turn around the company’s lackluster performance. And lackluster it was... More...

July 12, 2007

Old Media versus the Internet -- It's All Just Media

It’s that time of year again — the media moguls are meeting in Sun Valley, Idaho for Herb Allen’s annual powerfest. Old moguls Murdoch, Parsons, Bewkes, Diller, Bloomberg, Weinstein and Whitman are there along with former moguls Semel and Freston... More...

July 10, 2007

FCC's Martin Promises Open Broadband Wireless

USA Today’s Leslie Cauley has this page one article on the upcoming broadband wireless auction rules and FCC Chairman Kevin Martin’s apparent promise to make way for an “open” broadband network. Under Martin’s proposal, to be circulated in the agency... More...

AP Story Stirs Bizarre Controversy on Copper v. Fiber

AP’s Deborah Yao has created quite a stir with this piece about how Verizon removes its old-fashioned twisted-copper pair drop wires when it installs fiber-based FiOS service in a customer’s home. Yao cites the case of Long Island resident Henry... More...

July 2, 2007

Apple Can Say Hello to $275 Million in New Revenue

(Light blogging during this July 4th week…or at least I hope it’s light blogging.) Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster thinks that Apple sold 500,000 of its shiny new money-making iPhones this past weekend. I have no way of knowing if this... More...

June 26, 2007

Mossberg: iPhone is a Breakthrough, Sets New Bar

Well, Apple and Fake Steve Jobs (along with the real Steve Jobs, obviously) can breathe a little easier now that the sultan of consumer tech reporters, the WSJ’s Walt Mossberg, has weighed in on the iPhone and found the hotly... More...

iPhone Rate Plan, Activation are Enviously Simple

I have an embarassing confession to make. I pay a huge amount of money to Verizon Wireless every month and I’m not exactly sure what I’m paying for or even how to read my bill. I know I’m not alone,... More...

June 20, 2007

FiOS Broadband Hits the Million Customer Milestone

Verizon’s fiber-to-the-prem high-speed Internet service has hit a key milestone: one million customers. The Rich and Marjorie Bayer family of Massapequa, New York have been officially embraced as the one-millionth Verizon FiOS broadband customer and the telco is making quite... More...

June 19, 2007

AT&T Smartly Stakes Everything on Mobility

AT&T’s new CEO Randall Stephenson took to the stage in Chicago this morning to give the opening keynote address at the phone industry’s biggest confab, NXTcomm. Stephenson reiterated AT&T’s new operating philosophy, namely that mobility now drives the communications industry.... More...

May 31, 2007

Gates-Jobs, McCartney-Lennon: Time Heals Wounds

In some sort of Murphy’s Law of Blogging, every time I travel, which makes blogging (not to mention simple Internet access) very difficult, many, many interesting things happen. Of course the biggest interesting thing this week is the reunion of... More...

May 30, 2007

Comcast CEO: If Bypass Happens, So Be It

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts reiterated this morning his stance that if the Internet becomes a video distribution medium that bypasses cable’s traditional role as content aggregator, the cable industry will be just fine. Speaking at a Sanford C. Bernstein conference,... More...

May 29, 2007

There's No Such Thing as Too Much Bandwidth

Business Week’s Arik Hesseldahl has this piece about just how much bandwidth consumers need, an evergreen question bandied about by broadband providers and technology observers alike. To me this has always been a relatively silly question — consumers want, and... More...

FTC, Not DOJ, to Investigate Google-DoubleClick

Google’s $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick is in the midst of the Hart-Scott-Rodino antitrust review process and according to this piece in the New York Times, the FTC and not the DOJ has taken the reins on this one. By... More...

May 22, 2007

Verizon's Unveils FiOS TV Interactive Media Guide

OK, I had no desire to write two posts in one day that laud Verizon’s FiOS service, but I just got an advanced word of Verizon’s new FiOS TV Interactive Media Guide (an online demo is here) and it’s very... More...

PC World's 100 Best Products - FiOS Ranks 4th

The very hard-working John Czwartacki (known to most as simply “CZ”), who runs Verizon’s PoliBlog, alerted me to PC World’s list of the 100 Best Products of 2007. CZ did this because Verizon’s FiOS high-speed Internet service ranked 4th on... More...

May 21, 2007

Analyst: Murdoch Ready to Ditch Dow Jones Bid

Richard Greenfield from Pali Capital sent out a research note this morning saying that News Corp. is preparing to “walk away” from its bid for Dow Jones unless it hears something from the Bancroft family, which controls the financial news... More...

May 20, 2007

Why Can't Newspapers Get With the Program?

In a radical step for a newspaper, radical even in these dire days for the newspaper business, the San Francisco Chronicle announced that it is slashing 25% of its newsroom staff. Boom. One-quarter of the staff will be gone by... More...

May 18, 2007

Malone Wants to Make Movies the Rational Way

Business Week has this short piece about the rise of new Hollywood studios and how one notoriously tight-fisted, non-gambling media titan, Liberty Media’s John Malone, has decided to jump into the notoriously risky movie making game. Malone has bankrolled former... More...

May 16, 2007

AT&T: 60% of iPhoners To Come From Other Carriers

AT&T’s CFO Rick Lindner wrapped-up Morgan Stanley’s Annual Communications Conference today and revealed a couple of interesting internal tidbits. Although some rumors are afoot that the highly anticipated Apple iPhone launch will be delayed past its scheduled late-June time frame,... More...

May 10, 2007

Don't Get Excited About Wideband Modems Yet

I got to Las Vegas’ McCarran airport this morning with plenty of time to do a little bit of blogging after the NCTA show. But, as is too painfully often the case, the very bad public Wi-Fi connection at McCarran... More...

May 7, 2007

Cable Telephony Hits 10% Penetration Milestone

Now that all the Q1 07 earnings reports have been issued, it’s time once again to take a look at the U.S. cable industry’s success rate in capturing telephony subscribers with their still-relatively new digital voice services. According to our... More...

May 4, 2007

Microsoft and Yahoo! Talking Merger?

The New York Post had a big scoop this morning — Microsoft is “intensifying” its pursuit of a Yahoo! acquisition. The price tag could reach a purported $50 billion, a big bite to swallow even for the Redmond software giant.... More...

May 3, 2007

Cablevision's New Service Growth Slows

Cablevision Systems, which yesterday announced a plan by the founding Dolan family to take the company private, issued its Q3 earnings report today showing continued but slower growth in its already highly penetrated new video, high-speed and voice services. The... More...

May 2, 2007

Contrary View on AOL -- Key Stats Trending Down

OK, Time Warner released its Q1 07 earnings report this morning and, once again, the lede on so many press reports is that AOL’s turn-around strategy is a success. (Check out this Forbes piece with the headline “AOL Strategy Boosts... More...

TW Cable is Doing Swell, "Local-Only" Voice Planned

Despite absorbing some neglected and outmoded Adelphia cable systems and on the heels of its stock spin-off from parent company Time Warner, Time Warner Cable continued to post healthy gains in overall and new service subscribers during Q1 07 according... More...

Cablevision's Going Private - Dolans Bid $10.6 Bil.

One of the best-run and most successful cable companies in the country is going private after a two-year effort by the founding family to buy the company. (The Deal Blog has a great recap of the efforts by the Dolan... More...

May 1, 2007

Holy Cow! News Corp. Lobs Hostile Bid for Dow Jones

In a move that seems unreal, News Corp. is engaging in a hostile takeover for Dow Jones, the prestigious publishing empire that encompasses respected print and online news and financial research outlets. News Corp. has made an unsolicited offer of... More...

April 30, 2007

Verizon FiOS TV Hits 11% Penetration

The nation’s number two telco, Verizon Communications, issued its Q1 07 earnings report this morning showing mild growth in revenue and an 8% drop in profits but continued strong gains in high-speed Internet service, IPTV video service and wireless telephony.... More...

April 26, 2007

Comcast Adds Nearly 1 Mil. Phone, Data Subs.

(Take a one-day business trip and so much happens…back tomorrow with more on the FCC meeting, Microsoft’s earnings and the death of Jack Valenti.) Top cable operator Comcast issued its Q1 07 earnings report this morning showing steady growth in... More...

April 25, 2007

Apple's Profit Skyrockets as Board Backs Jobs

Apple, like so many of its high-tech peers these days, is golden. Just months away from releasing its market-changing iPhone, the Cupertino, CA-based tech and media company keeps printing money and profits from its market-changing iPod and highly praised Mac... More...

Google is Top Site, Top Brand

In news that’s not really surprising, Google has overtaken Microsoft as the top most-visited site, according to the latest comScore rankings. Google had 528 million unique visitors in March, up 5% over February’s visitors — Microsoft had 527 million visitors... More...

April 24, 2007

AT&T U-verse TV Penetration is About 3%

Telco giant AT&T issued its Q1 07 earnings report this morning showing relatively flat revenues, healthy growth in profits and a mixed performance for its high-growth broadband and wireless products. Revenues for the telco stayed relatively flat at $28.97 billion... More...

April 17, 2007

Yahoo! Still Not Back on Track

Yahoo! issued its Q1 07 earnings report today and the news wasn’t good. After a wobbly 2006, Yahoo! had promised to turn things around in 2007 with a new improved ad system called Panama. Based on Q1 07 results, the... More...

March 11, 2007

The Coffee House as New Business Incubator

Dan Fost at the San Francisco Chronicle has this sign-of-the-times piece about the rise of the coffee house as a central locus for entrepreneurial workers. San Francisco, of course, is the epicenter of this trend, which has rippled throughout the... More...

February 26, 2007

Telco Video Customer Count Reaches 2.7 Million

As I discussed in an article over at IP Media Monitor,  the incumbent telcos have an uphill battle in finding a way to offer multichannel video services that can compete with their biggest rivals — the incumbent cable operators.  Verizon... More...

February 20, 2007

XM, Sirius Want to Merge. Will the Feds Let Them?

Satellite radio rivals Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio announced yesterday the two companies plan to merge in a deal that would create a combined enterprise worth an estimated $13 billion. Stressing that the combination is a merger of... More...

February 13, 2007

Time Warner Cable is Suddenly a Public Company

In a suprising move, Time Warner Cable announced this morning that it has become a public company as a result of Adelphia’s Chapter 11 plan becoming effective today. The surprise comes not because Time Warner hasn’t always planned to spin... More...

February 1, 2007

Comcast Posts "Best Year Ever"

Comcast issued its Q4 06 earnings report this morning and, once again, due to its triple-play powerhouse line-up of services, the nation’s top operator posted spectacular results. The financial and growth performance was so strong that Comcast is offering a... More...

January 29, 2007

Verizon to Put Mobile Service in Bundles

Verizon will kick off tomorrow (January 30) bundled wireless service, which will be incorporated into the company’s existing line-up of voice, video and data services. Speaking during the company’s Q4 06 earnings call, President and COO Denny Strigl said “tomorrow... More...

Verizon's President: We're Glad We Rejected iPhone

As the whole world knows, thanks to Leslie Cauley at USA Today, Verizon Wireless turned down a deal with Apple to be the exclusive carrier for the iPhone, a move widely considered to be short-sighted now. But Apple wanted too... More...

January 25, 2007

AT&T's Whitacre: U-verse is Still "Plan A"

Fresh from its acquisition of BellSouth, and the consolidation of its ownership in Cingular, AT&T issued its Q4 06 earnings report this morning showing strong financial results. For AT&T alone, prior to its acquisition of BellSouth and the remaining share... More...

January 17, 2007

iPod Sales, Profits Soar at Near-Perfect Apple

I have been waiting for Apple to screw up — get lazy, lessen its obsession with quality, watch its lunch get eaten by competitors or something that will fundamentally signal that the Cupertino-based company has begun its inevitable decline. Judging... More...

January 15, 2007

Cheap and Naked DSL on Its Way

This is old news already, but USA Today’s Leslie Cauley has this item today about the upcoming offers of cheap and naked DSL services from AT&T. Starting within six months, AT&T will offer lower speed (768 kbps) DSL service priced... More...

January 10, 2007

Comcast's Roberts: No Lust for Cell Phone in Bundle

Brian Roberts, CEO of the nation’s top cable company Comcast, thinks the triple-play bundle of landline voice-video-data services will boost Comcast’s bottom-line in 2007 even more than it did in 2006. But, adding a cell phone option to the potent... More...

January 9, 2007

Information Overload - CES, MacWorld, Citigroup

Just a general note of frustration about the overabundance of high-profile events occurring simultaneously. Not only is CES, the four-day, 150,000-attendee tech and entertainment blow-out fest, taking place today, but also MacWorld kicks into gear with several big announcements (iTV,... More...

January 8, 2007

Yahoo! Ramps Up Wireless Hopes with Go Mobile 2.0

Yahoo! unveiled today at CES a revamped version of its Go Mobile initiative that the lagging Internet giant hopes will give it renewed steam as it grapples for growth. The new service is “truly the Internet in your pocket,” Marco... More...

January 2, 2007

AT&T: One Big Honking Telecom Company

I was updating my statistics on AT&T now that it has finally closed its merger with BellSouth. We all just accept that the new AT&T is a big company, and the merger’s opponents have, at times, painted the telco as... More...

AT&T: Wireless is Key

AT&T has spilled some of its post-BellSouth merger strategic beans to the Wall Street Journal’s Amol Sharma and Almar Latour (article behind firewall here) and the watchword at the new telecom behemoth is wireless. On the heels of closing its... More...

December 6, 2006

Is Yahoo! Too Mature to Turn Things Around?

The big news today is the shake-up of online giant Yahoo!. The company announced yesterday a reorganization that has pushed out COO Dan Rosenzweig along with Lloyd Braun, the controversial head of Yahoo! media group, while giving greater responsiblity to... More...

November 29, 2006

Verizon, Comcast to Go Head-to-Head in DC Market

Two of the top communications companies in the U.S. are about to provide a case study for future economists on the nature of facilities-based video competition. After suing Montgomery County, MD for onerous franchise conditions, Verizon finally got its cable... More...

November 28, 2006

AT&T Launches U-verse High-Def Service

In the grand scheme of things, it’s not news if a multichannel video provider offers high-definition channels. But, AT&T has staked a lot of its future on the delivery of multichannel video over souped-up DSL lines, which, to date, haven’t... More...

November 26, 2006

Can Digital Entrepreneurs Last at Media Giants?

The New York Times’ Richard Siklos has this piece today about the seeming trend among traditional media companies to dump their digital visionaries. Jonathan Miller’s out at Time Warner, Ross Levinsohn has left the building at News Corp. and Larry... More...

November 19, 2006

Memo to Top Yahoo! Execs: Don't Eat Peanut Butter

The blog crowd has descended upon a leaked internal memo by a Yahoo! SVP, Brad Garlinghouse, now known as “The Peanut Butter Manifesto.” In it, Garlinghouse boldly lays out what he calls “my plan” to overhaul Yahoo! because the company... More...

November 18, 2006

Broadband Speeds Do Matter

Matt Richtel and Ken Belson have this longish piece in today’s New York Times about the importance of broadband speed throughput to phone and cable company marketing efforts. Both rival broadband providers emphasize the speeds of their broadband options in... More...

November 16, 2006

Time Warner v. Valleywag: Good v. Bad Ouster

I’m struck today by the contrast between two corporate ousters and how one signifies class and the other signifies crass. The first: as the whole world knows by now, AOL’s CEO Jon Miller was pushed out by Time Warner’s top... More...

The End of Murdoch's Dance with Malone?

Two of the smartest and toughest negotiating moguls in the media world are about to part ways, according to Business Week’s Steven Rosenbush. Liberty Media Chairman John Malone and News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch have been entwined for years through... More...

November 14, 2006

Comcast, Time Warner to Launch Mobile Service

USA Today’s Leslie Cauley has this piece of news: Comcast and Time Warner will launch wireless voice service in conjunction with Sprint later this month. Comcast will launch service in Boston and Portland and Time Warner will kick it off... More...

November 8, 2006

Growth Slow-Down at Otherwise Solid Cablevision?

The cable industry has been on quite a tear for the past four or five years, building out and launching digital TV, high-speed data and, most recently, VoIP services. It’s not surprising, then, that the torrid growth in cable’s new... More...

November 6, 2006

Top Telcos Have More Than Two Million Video Subs.

We all know that cable operators are winning at the triple-play game — that’s because it’s far easier for cable operators to offer phone service than it is for phone companies to offer video service. AT&T and Verizon are both... More...

November 2, 2006

VoIP Slow-Down at Time Warner Cable?

When Time Warner issued its Q3 06 earnings report yesterday, the operational data on Time Warner Cable were difficult to decipher. The nation’s number two cable operator just acquired a bunch of cable systems from Adelphia and has made other... More...

November 1, 2006

AOL's Q3 06 Performance Not Really That Great

Time Warner issued its Q3 06 earnings report this morning and based on the glowing press reports, you’d think AOL is in the midst of a great turn-around as the online service abandons its premium subscriber approach in favor of... More...

October 31, 2006

Dead Trees Die Even Faster

As if anybody needed proof that the newspaper industry is in trouble, the Audit Bureau of Circulation released yesterday statistics that show a plunge in newspaper circulation. Average daily circulation for 770 newspapers was lower in the six-month ended September... More...

October 30, 2006

Verizon's Broadband is Still Booming, Thanks to FiOS

Verizon issued its Q3 06 earnings report this morning, with the incumbent telco posting pretty decent growth in net income — the same as its peers AT&T and BellSouth. Thanks to wireless and broadband growth, Verizon’s revenues ticked up during... More...

October 29, 2006

Are Hot Web Sites Like Hit TV Shows?

The Washington Post’s Yuki Noguchi has this article today about how teens may be turning away from MySpace, raising the prospect that hot Internet properties are like fads that fade. She talked to DC-area teens who have moved on from... More...

October 26, 2006

Comcast's Most Excellent Q3 06 Momentum

Comcast issued its Q3 06 earnings release this morning and the results were nothing short of stellar. Across the board Comcast posted very healthy gains — revenues, cash flow and subscriber counts of all kinds. Most interestingly of all, despite... More...

October 24, 2006

BellSouth Second Telco to Post Slowing DSL Growth

Incumbent telco BellSouth, slated to merge with AT&T before the end of the year, posted its Q3 06 earnings report this morning showing all the customary phone company trends, except for one: slowing DSL growth. Revenues for the company were... More...

October 23, 2006

AT&T: U-Verse Had 10% Penetration in June

AT&T issued its Q3 06 earnings report this morning, showing continued slippage in revenues but robust growth in net income due to continued cost-cutting at the incumbent telephone giant. Revenues dropped 5% year-over-year and 1% sequentially to $15.638 billion, while... More...

Report: Miller Finds Sale of AOL "Interesting"

The UK’s Telegraph has this astonishing article in which AOL CEO Jonathan Miller reveals that Time Warner is probably kicking around the idea of selling its still-ailing online service AOL. In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, Jonathan Miller, chief... More...

October 19, 2006

NBC Cuts Costs: End of Broadcast TV as We Know It

The Wall Street Journal’s Brook Barnes has this excellent Page One scoop on NBC Universal’s decision to slash costs. The broadcast TV network plans to cut $750 million out of its budget by the end of 2007, largely by eliminating... More...

October 18, 2006

Despite Fears, Apple's Earnings Shine

Computing and portable media giant Apple Computer Inc. issued its fiscal Q4 06 earnings report today, defying skeptics, who feared a slow-down in iPod sales would crimp Apple’s style, by showing strong revenue and profit growth. Sales jumped 31.5% year-over-year... More...

October 17, 2006

Yahoo!'s Revenue Growth Sputters, Profits Drop

Yahoo! issued its Q3 06 earnings today and the numbers weren’t pretty, but the Internet giant had already warned everybody this might be the case. Yahoo Selected Financial Data (000s) Q305 Q405 Q106 Q206 Q306 Revenues  $ 1,329,929  $   1,501,000... More...

October 16, 2006

Is Cablevision's Dolan a FiOS Subscriber?

Bernstein Research had an interesting photo (click on thumbnail) in its weekend Media Blast newsletter. Analyst Jeff Halpern said that a fan had sent in a photo of an active Verizon FiOS connection point above Chuck Dolan’s home mailbox... More...

October 15, 2006

AT&T Promises Universal Broadband by YE 2007

The FCC has put out for public comment the proposed conditions that AT&T has agreed to meet if the Commission acts quickly in approving its merger with BellSouth. The telco’s proposal to meet certain requirements came as a last-ditch effort... More...

October 11, 2006

Yahoo's Identity Problem in a Google-YouTube World

The New York Times’ Saul Hansell has this piece today (with a great headline…”Yahoo Feels Breath on Neck”) about Yahoo!’s fall from the comfortable Internet perch it enjoyed as recently as a year ago. Yahoo! lost out to Google in... More...

October 3, 2006

Ad Age's Media Family Trees for 2005

Ad Age has published its annual revenue report for the top 100 media companies and, no surprise, finds that Internet and cable were the growth engines powering a 6.6% increase in 2005 U.S. media revenue, which totaled $268.48 billion. The... More...

October 2, 2006

FiOS High-Speed Could Reach One Mil. Subs. in Q2 07

Verizon last week divulged more detailed statistics on its FiOS fiber-to-the-premises network rebuild, focusing in particular on how well the telco is faring with its video-over-fiber FiOS TV service. I deconstructed some of the key pieces of data — Verizon... More...

September 27, 2006

Pogue on iPhone Rumors: Don't Hold Your Breath

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... More...

Verizon Spills the Beans on FiOS

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... More...

September 24, 2006

Bandwidth Getting Cheaper on a Per Mbps Basis

Courtesy of Om, LightReading’s Phil Harvey has this cool piece showing how the price of his high-speed service from Charter has fallen 80% in three years. Harvey presents a fascinating table that underscores a key point about high-speed Internet access:... More...

September 21, 2006

Comcast's Roberts Calls for Voice Competition Policies

(Washington, DC) Comcast CEO Brian Roberts spoke to a packed room today at a Progress and Freedom Foundation lunch here calling for new policies that open up the voice market to greater competition from cable. In particular, Comcast and the... More...

September 20, 2006

Comcast's Burke: Blocking Video Would Be "Stupidest" Thing

Comcast President Steve Burke doesn’t see his business or the broader media world in black-and-white terms. During a discussion today at Goldman Sachs’ Communacopia conference, Burke offered a remarkably balanced and realistic assessment of both the dangers and opportunities on... More...

AT&T's Stephenson: U-Verse is Everything We Had Hoped

AT&T COO Randall Stephenson spoke at Goldman Sachs’ Communacopia Conference today and had an upbeat message to deliver regarding the telco’s highly watched U-Verse/Project Lightspeed IPTV efforts. “It’s doing everything we had hoped,” he said. “I think we can scale... More...

September 18, 2006

More on Murdoch and Malone

The negotiations between Liberty Media’s John Malone and News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch continue to attract attention. Murdoch’s attempt to foist DirecTV off on interloper Malone gets some play today in this piece by the New York Times’ Saul Hansell. Murdoch... More...

September 17, 2006

A Word on the Turd Bird

Due to intense business travel toward the end of last week, I missed out on the latest bit of media world deal-making gossip: Rupert Murdoch is offering to sell News Corp.’s controlling stake in DBS provider DirecTV to fellow mogul... More...

September 15, 2006

Leonsis Stepping Down From Top Spot at AOL

In a sign that AOL is getting lean, if not mean, longtime exec and brash entrepreneur Ted Leonsis is stepping down from his role as President of AOL’s audience business, according to this piece in today’s New York Times. Although... More...

September 12, 2006

Crowded Tuesday for Tech, Media Worlds

There are times when the real world — i.e. the physical world outside my computer and phone — is a real drag and today I’m particularly irked about having to shut down my laptop and turn off my cell phone.... More...

August 30, 2006

Comcast: The Well Hasn't Worked With Us

My post this morning about Comcast’s spam filtering policies prompted a call from Comcast’s Jeanne Russo, who heads the company’s PR for online and phone services. My post was spurred by an article in The Mercury News, which dealt with... More...

The Rumble of a Apple-Google Alliance

Yesterday’s announcement that Google CEO Eric Schmidt will join Apple’s board of directors is sparking all kinds of theories about what this alliance of giants means. The Wall Street Journal’s Nick Wingfield and Kevin Delaney have this piece today that... More...

Comcast's Aggressive Spam Filters

Elise Ackerman at The Mercury News has this piece today about how Comcast has been blocking email from The Well as spam and how unresponsive the nation’s leading broadband provider has been in resolving the problem. That’s funny, because my... More...

August 28, 2006

Who Needs "Stars" to Make Money?

In a bit of synchronicity, two articles this morning underscore the idea that media and entertainment companies don’t need big ticket stars or celebrities to make money. The first is an AP report from the Edinburgh International TV Festival, where... More...

August 26, 2006

Customer Service is Key in Battle of the Bundles

The New York Times’ Ken Belson has this piece today about the growing rivalry between phone companies and cable operators. The article focuses mostly on one nice and often overlooked benefit of competition: improved customer service. It’s gratifying to switch... More...

August 25, 2006

FCC to Look into Telcos' Surcharges

Verizon and BellSouth caught some flak in the press for retaining surcharges on customers’ DSL bills that formerly went into the FCC-managed Universal Service Fund. Now the two telcos have caught the attention of the federal government. The FCC is... More...

Will DirecTV and EchoStar Opt for ATC?

On the heels of EchoStar’s and DirecTV’s abandonment of broadband wireless spectrum bids, the question remains: what will the two DBS players do to rectify their inability to offer voice and high-speed data services? Business Week’s Olga Kharif has this... More...

August 24, 2006

Battle of the Bundles in Long Island

USA Today’s David Lieberman has this piece today on the rivalry between Verizon and Cablevision in the cable operator’s home territory of Long Island. He doesn’t provide a lot of new information but does offer insight into what true competition... More...

August 21, 2006

Cable Inches Its Way Back to Growth

If DBS is dying, cable has found tentative new life.  After years of competitive battering by satellite competition, the U.S. cable industry is showing signs that it’s once again on the upswing in terms of core video, or basic, customers.  During... More...

Is DBS Dying?

Last week was not a good one for the U.S. DBS industry.  Faced with competitive, spiraling bids, DirecTV and EchoStar abandoned their joint bid for broadband wireless spectrum in the FCC’s AWS auction.  Getting a hold of those licenses would... More...

August 17, 2006

Will Cable Have to Spend Big to Compete with Verizon?

The Wall Street Journal’s Peter Grant got a hold of a leaked CableLabs report and the result is a page one article that no doubt has cable chieftains sputtering with rage this morning. The industry’s R&D arm prepared a paper... More...

August 16, 2006

Cable to FCC: Don't Force Us to Sell Stupid Set-Tops

The National Cable & Telecommunications Association today asked the FCC for a waiver of a requirement to physically separate out set-top box security technology from the main device, a mandate slated to go into effect on July 1, 2007. The... More...

August 14, 2006

Cable's Ahead in the Triple Play Race

The earnings reports are in and the triple-play tally is leaning in cable’s favor.  According to my analysis (more details at IP Media Monitor - free registration), cable operators ended the quarter with more than six million telephony customers, adding... More...

August 6, 2006

Technology Pushes Media Titans Around

The New York Times’ Richard Siklos has this article today about how big media companies are turning to corporate strategies that were once unthinkable. AOL, News Corp. and Disney have all made “bold” moves that Siklos says are new tactics... More...

August 3, 2006

Free AOL Meets with Lots of Skepticism

AOL’s new strategy to give away its services at no cost met with tons of skepticism in the press and blogosphere. This CNN/Money piece has the headline “Free AOL: Too Little, Too Late?” Other headlines: “AOL giveaway doesn’t guarantee success,”... More...

August 2, 2006

Time Warner: No Reason for Anyone To Leave AOL Now

The worst kept secret in the business world is now official. Time Warner announced this morning the “reshaping” of AOL’s access business, which calls for giving away AOL’s software, email and other products at no charge to broadband users. During... More...

Cable's Still the Star at Time Warner

As the business world awaits more detail on Time Warner’s plan to offer AOL’s services for free (call at 11 — more info. to follow), Time Warner issued its Q2 06 earnings report this morning showing strong profitability and continued... More...

August 1, 2006

Comcast, Cox, Time Warner to Start Mobile Voice Tests

The Hollywood Reporter’s Andrew Wallenstein has this extended, excellent piece on the cable-telco battle of the bundles. Buried in the article, however, is something new to me: Comcast, Time Warner and Cox will start this month testing the sale of... More...

Verizon Reveals More Detail About FiOS

Incumbent telco Verizon released its Q2 06 earnings report this morning showing accelerated switched access line losses, strong broadband and wireless growth and middling year-over-year revenue and net income changes. And for the first time ever, Verizon offered some data... More...

July 31, 2006

Wireless Auction Key to DBS Survival

The Denver Post’s Kimberly Johnson has this trenchant piece today on how the FCC’s August 9 broadband wireless auctions are crucial to the future of DBS providers DirecTV and EchoStar. As I mentioned yesterday, the two companies have put up... More...

July 27, 2006

Comcast Shines on VoIP Growth

Philadelphia-based cable operator Comcast is riding high — the company is about to absorb a whole bunch of underperforming systems from Adelphia and its Q2 06 earnings results, released this morning, attest to the company’s ongoing financial strength. Overall (including... More...

July 25, 2006

AT&T: U-Verse Penetration at 10% of Homes

AT&T issued its Q2 06 earnings release this morning showing a big jump in net income even as overall pro forma revenues declined. (Note: AT&T in its earnings report stresses year-over-year comparisons that don’t normalize for the merger of SBC... More...

July 24, 2006

BellSouth Profits Rise as Line Losses Accelerate

Incumbent telco BellSouth issued its Q2 06 earnings today showing strong profit growth on very weak revenue increases. Net income was $887 million, or $.49/share, compared to $795 million, or $.43/share, during the year-ago quarter. Excluding one-time charges, net income... More...

July 18, 2006

Early St. Cloud Muni Stats Scary for Incumbents?

Though very preliminary, some penetration and survey results for the muni-wireless project in St. Cloud, FL, support the notion that muni broadband could have major disruptive impacts on the broadband duopoly. In early March, the 15-square mile city, working with... More...

July 16, 2006

Money Men at Sun Valley

The New York Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin was at Herb Allen’s storied Sun Valley media mogul retreat last week (he has great photos on his blog) and has this piece about how the mix of attendees this year has shifted... More...

July 10, 2006

AOL's Strategy: Perpetual Darkness Before the Dawn

For those of us who have been watching AOL sink deeper and deeper into non-sensical gambits to right its listing ship, today’s New York Times piece by Saul Hansell is just more evidence of the chronic flailing characteristic of the... More...

July 9, 2006

Entertainment Producers Increasingly Count on the Web

The New York Times today has two pieces, which, while seemingly separate, coalesce into a single message: the entertainment industry, be it television producers or Broadway impresarios, rely on the web for communicating to, and building up, their audiences. The... More...

July 6, 2006

AOL to Throw in Towel on Subscription Service?

The Wall Street Journal’s Matthew Karnitschnig reports this morning something that has been inevitable for years: AOL is contemplating the end of its subscription service. (Reuters write-up of WSJ piece here.) AOL CEO Jonathan Miller reportedly presented a plan to... More...

More Verizon Build-Out Mishaps

Verizon has a lot of guts — the company keeps pumping billions into its next-generation fiber-to-the-premises project despite Wall Street’s ongoing skepticism about whether the initiative, called FiOS, will be profitable. And the massive construction effort, which has resulted in... More...

July 3, 2006

Must-Read: The Randomness of Hollywood Hits

For those people with some extra time to kill this extended holiday weekend, don’t miss this fascinating article in today’s LA Times by former screenplay writer and current Caltech math professor Leonard Mlodinow. It’s a thoughtful, well-reasoned and, um, scientifically... More...

July 1, 2006

What If End-Users Owned Their Access Pipe?

A 6/29 post by PBS tech columnist Robert Cringely is entitled “If we build it they will come: It’s time to own our own last mile.” It’s apparently based on conversations he’s had with Bob Frankston, who years ago wrote... More...

June 28, 2006

Murdoch, MySpace & Media 2.0

I’d recommend this long piece in Wired by Spencer Reiss, on Rupert Murdoch’s plan to “transform a free social network into a colossal marketing machine.” Without the old network certainties, who or what will perform the essential function of a... More...

June 25, 2006

The National Entertainment State

For those who missed it, The Nation’s most recent past issue (dated July 3) focused on the state of the media. Along with a series of articles (more below), The Nation updated its chart on The National Entertainment State. This... More...

June 24, 2006

No One is Making Money Off the Web? Just Wait.

In today’s (Sunday’s) New York Times, Richard Siklos has this good round-up of traditional media companies that are making headway in establishing web-based businesses. He cites News Corp. (especially News Corp.), Disney, Time Warner, Viacom, the Washington Post Company, Dow... More...

June 22, 2006

Nielsen: Nearly 75% of Users Rely on Broadband

Nielsen/NetRatings released its May 2006 Internet usage stats yesterday with the not surprising, but still impressive, finding that nearly three-quarters of U.S. residential Internet users connect to the web via broadband. As of May 2006, 72% of home users rely... More...

June 19, 2006

Narad Aims for Cable to Deliver 100 Mbps to Consumers

As consumer bandwidth demands escalate, broadband providers keep upping the ante with faster and faster services — Verizon’s FiOS 15 Mbps/2 Mbps service and Comcast’s equally blazing FiOS-killer are just the latest examples. Now, along comes Westford, MA-based cable TV... More...

June 16, 2006

Verizon Combines Policy, Business Goals in Pubcaster Pact

Verizon has cut a deal with PBS that has the happy side-effect of killing two birds with one stone, gaining both business and political advantages in one fell swoop. The top telco and emerging multichannel video distributor has a pact... More...

June 14, 2006

AT&T Exec: 6 Mbps is Plenty Good Enough

AT&T’s SVP of Investor Relations Richard Dietz spoke at Deutsche Bank’s Media and Telecom conference this morning and reiterated what other AT&T execs have said: Project Lightspeed networks have enough capacity for the forseeable future. One fear about AT&T’s fiber-to-the-node... More...

June 12, 2006

TV Broadcasters Cope with Rapid Decline

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... More...

June 2, 2006

Brian Roberts: Why Not a Google for TV Ads?

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts has always been a big fan of Google, and has in the past talked about turning his company into the Google of TV. Speaking this morning at Sanford C. Bernstein’s Strategic Decisions conference, Roberts again raised... More...

May 31, 2006

Carlsbad Connections: More Verses of the Same Song

(Carlsbad, CA) Martha Stewart walked up to a microphone when there was a call for audience questions after Sony CEO Howard Stringer’s remarks at the Wall Street Journal’s “D: All Things Digital” conference. I had just asked the previous query... More...

Ed Whitacre: No Packet Prioritization for Us

AT&T Chairman Ed Whitacre spoke this morning at Sanford C. Bernstein and Company’s Strategic Decisions Conference and raised more questions than he answered. Along with the usual optimistic assessment of the company’s future, Whitacre addressed two hot-button topics for AT&T.... More...

May 30, 2006

Mediacom, Iowa Cable Operators Sue over Rural Loans

Small market-oriented cable operator Mediacom filed suit today in Federal court against the USDA over how that government agency has administered the Broadband Loan and Loan Guarantee Program, a program authorized by Congress to grant low-cost loans to companies willing... More...

May 23, 2006

Brian Roberts Returns to Visionary Form

Brian Roberts, CEO of the nation’s top cable company Comcast, is one savvy, intelligent and capable media executive who almost always says smart things. Over the past year, however, with cable on the defensive and Wall Street dissing the industry,... More...

May 20, 2006

Is Qwest Ready to Sell Out?

The New York Times’ Ken Belson interviews Qwest CEO Dick Notebaert in what seems to be a new Saturday interview series for the paper. Notebaert doesn’t touch on anything really interesting (such as Qwest’s denial of NSA demands that it... More...

May 15, 2006

Cable Operators Are Climbing the Core Video Growth Curve -- Again

For a long, long time, my job in one way or another was to keep very close track of the cable industry. For more years than I care to admit, I had to analyze in detail the cable industry’s basic... More...

May 10, 2006

Cable Operators Eye Wireless Spectrum Purchases

Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt, speaking at the company’s analyst day this morning, announced that a consortium of cable companies that have aligned with Sprint Nextel to develop new mobile offerings are eyeing a bid to buy wireless spectrum.... More...

May 9, 2006

We Really Do Want our Internet

Mike Bookey, a friend of mine who recently published a book called “America at the Internet Crossroads: Choosing the road to innovation, wealth, and a supercharged economy,” likes to say that, before we start debating the details of Internet policy,... More...

Cablevision Outshines Even Itself

Long Island-based cable operator Cablevision Systems issued its Q1 06 earnings report this morning and the accumulated, irrefutable evidence is in: cable is hot again. Even more so than its peers, Cablevision reported strong growth across the board and posted... More...

May 8, 2006

AT&T Branches Out into Satellite, WiMAX

During a speech to the Detroit Economic Club today, AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre announced that the telco is expanding into the WiMax and satellite broadband arenas. Taking the latter initiative first, AT&T plans to offer satellite high-speed service in areas... More...

Overlooked Fact: Telcos Keep Adding Video Customers

Cable operators are on a tear, with the Q1 06 earnings reports bearing witness to the power of the triple-play platform — cable operators are getting a lift across the board from their voice-video-data combos. Wall Street is starting to... More...

May 7, 2006

More Evidence of An Apple Phone

Apple is going to offer voice service sooner or later. Even if the writing weren’t on the wall, it would almost be derelict of the mobile device king to not enter the voice business. It seems that Apple agrees, even... More...

May 3, 2006

Qwest Boasts Big Broadband Boost

The last of the big incumbent telcos to report financial results, Qwest issued its quarterly earnings report this morning showing a surprising return to profitability. Largely due to a big jump in its DSL customer base, Qwest posted net income... More...

Time Warner Cable: Shooting Out the Lights

Media giant Time Warner issued its Q1 06 earnings results this morning showing improved profitablity on flat revenues, with its cable division shining as the engine of growth. Time Warner’s overall revenues were almost flat at $10.46 billion (compared to... More...

May 2, 2006

Verizon: FiOS TV Going Gangbusters

Verizon issued its Q1 06 earnings results today showing a rise in revenue (normalized to include both Verizon and MCI, which merged with Verizon in early January) but a drop in net income. Revenues rose 3.1% year-over-year to $22.97 billion,... More...

Charter Cable Surprisingly Shines

It’s a sure sign that the cable industry in general is on the upswing when one of its weakest companies posts strong quarterly results. St. Louis, MO-based cable company Charter Communications issued its Q1 06 earnings report this morning showing... More...

Verizon Ups the Speed of FiOS Broadband Service

Consumer broadband speeds continue to climb, thanks in large part to Verizon and its FiOS service, which relies on bandwidth-rich fiber-to-the-premise architectures. Until Verizon came along offering 15 Mbps/2 Mbps service, cable operators were content with their 3 Mbps options.... More...

May 1, 2006

Starbucks Goes Hollywood

With neigborhood Starbucks stores serving as caffeinated town-squares, it just makes sense that entertainment companies are turning to the ubiquitous coffee houses as marketing partners. The LA Times’ Sharon Waxman has this piece today about the coffee giant’s deal awith... More...

Level 3 to Buy TelCove in $1 Billion Deal.

In continued consolidation in the telecom sector, long haul carrier Level 3 is expected to announce today that it is buying Canonsburg, PA-based data transmission provider TelCove for $1 billion, according to this scoop by the Wall Street Journal. The... More...

April 28, 2006

Microsoft's Plan of Attack?

The New York Times’ John Markoff has this piece today regarding Microsoft’s earnings report, issued yesterday, and whether the company is telegraphing a renewed vigor by projecting increased expenses over the coming year. The Redmond giant is projecting lower shareholder... More...

April 27, 2006

Speed, Voice and VOD Propel Comcast Ahead

Philadelphia, PA-based cable giant Comcast issued its Q1 06 earnings results this morning showing strong numbers across the board. The fine performance of the nation’s cable top operator during the quarter can be boiled down to three things: speed, voice... More...

April 25, 2006

AT&T Posts Strong DSL and Mobile Voice Gains

Telecom giant AT&T issued its Q1 06 financial results today showing continued strong gains in both DSL and mobile customers. As to the company’s financials…well, it’s hard to say. This was AT&T’s first full quarter since the merger of SBC... More...

April 21, 2006

Broadcasters Breaking the Rules

Not only are web-based companies coping with ever-shifting business ground-rules, but TV broadcasters, the vanguard of the old-media world, are also making it up as they go along. The New York Times’ Stuart Elliott has this incisive piece today on... More...

Microsoft, eBay, Yahoo! Gang Up on Google

The Wall Street Journal’s Mylene Mangalinda and Robert Guth have an amazing piece fronting the paper today that provides inside detail on how eBay, Microsoft and Yahoo are trying to gang up on Google. eBay, alarmed by the launch of... More...

April 20, 2006

BellSouth Reports Record DSL Growth

As it gears up to get absorbed into the AT&T empire, incumbent telco BellSouth is in relatively good fighting shape. The company issued its Q1 06 earnings results this morning showing decent revenue, operating income and operating margin growth, all... More...

April 19, 2006

Social Production and The Wealth of Networks

As Cynthia notes, Yochai Benkler’s new book, “The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedoms” is an important work. Larry Lessig is especially effusive in his praise: This is—by far—the most important and powerful book written in... More...

April 17, 2006

Is Cable Out of Touch?

The U.S. cable industry has nothing to fear from anybody. Its plant is inherently broadband and interactive — no need for the exhorbitantly expensive upgrades that the inherently narrowband telcos must implement. Cable systems can roll out any combination of... More...

April 11, 2006

Cable Operators: Focus Should Be on Consumer Demands

(Atlanta, GA) While technology shifts make it difficult to find the right path to profitability, the key to staying ahead of the game is to keep your eye on what consumers are doing with that technology. That was one key... More...

April 9, 2006

Top Ten Questions for the Cable Industry

With the National Cable & Telecommunications Show kicking off today (I’m getting a late start and will head there tonight), Pali Research analyst Richard Greenfield has prepared a very good list of ten questions facing the cable industry. (Richard will... More...

April 5, 2006

Disney Unveils Kid-Friendly Phone

Five years ago, kids with cellphones were considered, well, unusual or at least unusually spoiled. Now, however, parents know the peace of mind that comes from being able to reach their children no matter where they are. But younger children... More...

March 30, 2006

Cablevision's Rutledge: Networked DVR Can Help Programmers

Cablevision Systems shook up the TV network establishment this week with the trial launch of its networked DVR. But, according to company COO Tom Rutledge, program providers should embrace the technology because there are opportunities to exploit with it. Speaking... More...

Comcast's Burke: No Real Telco Competition Until '07 or Beyond

Comcast Cable President Steve Burke made a number of surprisingly specific industry-wide predictions during a talk he gave today at Bank of America’s Media, Telecommunications and Entertainment Conference. The straightforward Burke addressed Wall Street’s disenchantment with the cable business, saying... More...

March 29, 2006

Sprint COO: Our Broadband Wireless Could Compete with Cable, DSL

Sprint Nextel holds a big chunk of broadband wireless spectrum, an asset the company plans to leverage with the launch of a high-speed wireless service in 2008. Although most of Sprint’s broadband plans are tied up with its cable company... More...

DirecTV CFO: Broadband Takes Time

DirecTV is working on a wireless broadband initiative, but don’t look for an announcement too soon, company CFO Mike Palkovic said today at Bank of America’s Media, Telecommunications and Entertainment conference. Sifting through the various technology and business partner aspects... More...

AT&T COO: Lightspeed Capacity Not an Issue

AT&T’s Project Lightspeed, the video-over-DSL platform that will give the giant telco a multichannel video pipeline into the home, isn’t hampered by bandwidth limitations, according to company COO Randall Stephenson, who spoke this morning at Bank of America’s 2006 Media,... More...

March 27, 2006

Comcast Baseball Fight Headed for the Hill

A fight between two entertainment giants, Comcast and Major League Baseball, might be headed for Congressional intervention, according to this piece by The Washington Post’s Amit Paley. Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-VA), chairman of the Government Reform Committee, has... More...

March 26, 2006

Qwest Program Makes Everyone a Salesperson

Of all the incumbent telcos, Qwest is struggling the most — the western region telco is losing local lines at a rapid clip, has no mobile voice arm, is far behind in its high-speed service sign-ups, has a low-growth service... More...

March 22, 2006

Cox's Esser: Let Marketplace Pick Winners and Losers

(Washington, DC) The rhetorical war between cable operators and phone companies is heating up, with cable leaders, once shy about taking public potshots at the industry’s foes, now stepping out to take the telcos to task for their national franchising... More...

March 20, 2006

ABC's Iger: Power Has Shifted to the Consumer

(Las Vegas, NV) Disney CEO Bob Iger gave a keynote speech today at TelecomNext, proving that he has a keen grasp of the swiftly shifting entertainment marketplace and underscoring Disney’s intent to continue experimenting with new modes of content distribution.... More...

Seidenberg: Growth More Important Than Size

The New York Times’ Ken Belson has this piece today about Verizon’s CEO Ivan Seidenberg and his reaction to the AT&T-BellSouth merger. The article is worth a read for two reasons — one of which is mentioned at the end... More...

March 17, 2006

Spam, Access Bottlenecks & the Invisible Hand

Esther Dyson makes some good points about emerging email services intended to address the spam problem by charging senders a fee for guaranteed delivery of emails. Though her opinion piece in the New York Times focuses mainly on a company... More...

March 16, 2006

Verizon Accuses Cable of Being "Un-American"

A fun battle has been joined in New Jersey, where the phone companies are trying to gain state-wide franchising rights. It seems that the cable industry has refused to accept TV ads by Verizon that blast the cable industry for... More...

March 14, 2006

FiOs is Going Gangbusters in Keller, Which May Bode Nothing

Business Week has this item about Verizon’s FiOs TV service in Keller, TX and how the locals down there are flocking to the telco-delivered TV service. But, as the article points out, Keller is not a typical market and may... More...

March 13, 2006

No Hail Mary Pass for Cable?

The New York Times’ Ken Belson and Geraldine Fabrikant have this item today about the cable industry and the competition—both in Washington and in the marketplace—that cable faces. Former cable exec Leo Hindery is quoted in the piece as saying... More...

March 10, 2006

Is Google's Goal "A Seamless Online/Offline Experience?"

Phil Sim has some interesting comments on Google’s Writely deal and how it relates to the search giant’s strategy. A key to making sense of Google’s various initiatives, says Phil, is to understand that its goal isn’t moving all desktop... More...

March 8, 2006

Microsoft Backs Unlicensed Use of Broadcast "White Space"

Broadcasting & Cable’s John Eggerton reports that Microsoft CTO Craig Mundie, in testimony yesterday before the Senate Commerce Committee, made “the company’s pitch that Congress set aside some of the ‘white space’ spectrum between TV channels in the broadcast band... More...

AT&T/BellSouth Merger a Sign of Weakness?

USA Today tech columnist Kevin Maney is less-then-wowed by the planned AT&T-BellSouth merger and its implications for AT&T’s future: Worried that a merged AT&T and BellSouth are like some Ma Bell Frankenstein, reassembled and about to terrorize all of communications?... More...

Verizon's Hybrid Fiber-Coax Network?

The Wall Street Journal’s Dionne Searcey has this front page piece today about Verizon’s fiber network build-out. It seems that Verizon is backpedaling from its vaunted fiber-to-the-premise architecture and instead is building something akin to cable’s hybrid-fiber coax design. Originally... More...

March 7, 2006

Shaw-Vonage Spat: A Sign of the Future?

In the midst of the U.S. debate over net neutrality, the challenge by Vonage to Shaw’s $10 surcharge is, as Cynthia notes, a significant development. Though it turns out that Shaw has been doing this since at least last May... More...

Shaw Levies QoS Charge for Third-Party VoIP

ZDNet’s Russell Shaw has this amazing item that will likely send chills throughout the VoIP and online content community. It seems that Canadian cable operator Shaw is asking customers to pay a $10 surcharge if they want to receive high... More...

March 6, 2006

The Economic Costs and Benefits of Access Tiering

While reading Ken Belson’s piece in the New York Times, I was struck by one fundamental element of the tiered access/net neutrality debate—the issue of dominant market players vs. startups and small innovators and, more specifically, the financial barriers to... More...

Deal Impacts on DBS Players?

A Dow Jones story by Ellen Sheng highlights some potential competitive implications of the AT&T/BellSouth deal, including impacts on the two DBS providers: DirecTV recently extended a five-year partnership with BellSouth but either party can bow out if there is... More...

Seidenberg: Who Pays for the Backbone?

An article last month in Multichannel News quoted Ivan Seidenberg’s comments on the network neutrality issue from a perspective that caught my attention. His comments came to mind again today, amidst the brouhaha over the latest telecom megamerger. Speaking at... More...

March 5, 2006

Jarvis on AT&T/BellSouth Deal: The Supernova of Bigness

Jeff Jarvis offers a provocative response to the news that AT&T is negotiating a $65 bil. acquisition of BellSouth. His post seems worthy of a thoughtful read, whether you agree with him or not. Time will tell the extent to... More...

March 2, 2006

Vonage Users Cite Problems with Comcast ISP

Russell Shaw, who sometimes “takes the temperature” of the Vonage user community by reading posts at the Vonage Forum, says he’s “been noticing a growing number of posts… complaining about the quality of Vonage calls over Comcast broadband connections.” It’s... More...

March 1, 2006

"Our Network Carries Our Services"

The issue of net neutrality isn’t only a factor in the wireline broadband access space. As Forbes points out, it’s also starting to emerge in the wireless 3G space. The creators of Slingbox…have another clever idea: Let consumers watch their... More...

February 28, 2006

Charter: We've Lost 4% of Subs. to FiOs in Keller

St. Louis, MO-based cable operator Charter Communications issued its Q4 05 earnings this morning, and as has been typical of this troubled company, results were decidedly mediocre. Certainly one factor affecting Charter is stepped-up competition from DBS and telcos, although... More...

February 24, 2006

More on EarthLink's Muni Wi-Fi Plans

Picking up on Mitch’s hope that efforts by Google and EarthLink and others to mount muni-Wi-Fi could stave off distorting net neutrality regulations, Richard Greenfield of Pali Research circulated today slides that EarthLink used during its recent analysts day to... More...

February 23, 2006

In the Wisdom of Congress...???

I don’t claim to be a Congressional prognosticator. But a series of recent developments got me wondering if Congress could resolve the battle over the Internet’s future by choosing not to impose net neutrality requirements on incumbent broadband providers, while... More...

Google, Earthlink Team Up on San Francisco Wi-Fi Bid

According to the Mercury News, city officials said Tuesday that Google and EarthLink have teamed up to submit a proposal to create a city-wide wireless Internet network for San Francisco. The bid was one of six San Francisco city officials... More...

February 22, 2006

DirecTV Updates Broadband Plans

At its annual investor meeting, DirecTV shed a little more light on its plans to be more of a player in the broadband space. According to a Dow Jones report, the company plans to launch a broadband video service by... More...

February 21, 2006

Michael Powell: There's Too Much Choice

Susan Crawford has this excellent summary of a speech given by former FCC Chairman Michael Powell at the annual Silicon Flatirons conference. Powell, apparently, told the attendees of the high-powered event that there is too much choice in the media... More...

February 20, 2006

EarthLink Trying to Shed Dial-Up Image

The LA Times’ James Granelli has this in-depth piece today on EarthLink and the struggles the company faces as it tries to transition from its “dial-up” reputation into a new-era Internet player. EarthLink is pushing into Wi-Fi and other wireless... More...

February 19, 2006

Bills Propose Unlicensed Use of Broadcast Spectrum

Here’s a little more on the two Senate bills authorizing unlicensed use of unused broadcast spectrum: The text of Senator Stevens’ (R-AK) one page “American Broadband for Communities” bill is here. It seems to be pretty straightforward, giving the FCC... More...

February 17, 2006

Could We See Unlicensed Use of Broadcast Band?

According to muni-wireless activist Sascha Meinrath, “[t]wo bills were introduced on Friday that would radically improve unlicensed wireless access.” Both bills would greatly improve the general public’s access to the public airwaves. The first bill, “The Wireless Innovation Act of... More...

Ad & Lobbying Wars Escalate on Telco TV Franchising

Telephony’s Carol Wilson picks up on a budding TV ad war between telco and cable interests on the issue of telco TV franchising. Wilson provides some voice-over snippets from both sides’ TV commercials. As she puts it, the telco-sponsored ads... More...

More Consumer Empowerment from SIPphone

Shortly after securing a $6 mil. round of funding led by Dawntreader Ventures, SIPphone has announced an intriguing new service. Company founder Michael Robertson describes it as “an innovative service…that combines the flexibility and cost efficiency of VoIP…with the ubiquity... More...

February 16, 2006

BPL to Get Long Island Trial

Courtesy of Richard Greenfield (now at Pali Capital), this item about a broadband-over-powerline trial that will get under way on Long Island. The Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) will test the still-unproven technology with 105 homes in the Hauppauge/Commack area.... More...

February 9, 2006

Harvesting Broadcast "White Space" For Unlicensed Broadband

Yesterday President Bush signed legislation setting 2/28/09 as a hard date for return of analog broadcast spectrum and allocating up to $1.5 billion to help fund digital-to-analog converters for owners of analog-only TV sets. Coming just a few days after... More...

February 7, 2006

Public Knowledge Proposes Guidelines for Net Neutrality Rules

Last night, on the eve of today’s Senate Commerce Committee hearings on network neutrality, Public Knowledge, a self-described “group of lawyers, technologists, lobbyists, academics, volunteers and activists dedicated to fortifying and defending a vibrant information commons,” issued a white paper... More...

February 6, 2006

Virginia Moves Toward Rules on Telco TV Entry

The Associated Press reports that the Virginia Senate and House both passed bills today that would allow telephone companies to more quickly enter the video market. The cable and telecom industries were unable to reach a compromise on opposing bills... More...

Allaire as Serial Entrepreneur

The Boston Globe as this piece today on serial entrepreneurs, movers-and-shakers that start up one successful company after the other. The piece kicks off with 34 year-old Brightcove founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire, who, along with his brother, founded a... More...

February 5, 2006

FTTH in Europe

Courtesy of the ITU Strategy Unit and Policy Newslog, this study by European consulting firm IDate showing the status of fiber-to-the-home deployment in Europe. The study, commissioned by the European Fiber-to-the-Home Council, shows the status of fiber-based communications across the... More...

February 4, 2006

Encouraging New Access Pipes & Business Models

As Cynthia has discussed in recent posts here, here and here, network neutrality and related issues such as video franchising and municipal broadband continue to hover over policy deliberations in Washington and, to some extent, broadband industry business models. And,... More...

February 2, 2006

AT&T to Offer $12.99/Mo. DSL Service

AT&T (formerly SBC) is slated to announce tomorrow that it will offer a DSL service priced at $12.99/mo., a new low for high-speed service. The tier, called DSL Express, will offer download speeds of up to 1.5 Mbps and will... More...

AT&T to Launch HomeZone Service in Q2 05

In this interview with Business Week’s Roger O. Crockett, AT&T CFO Randall Stephenson says that the telco/soon-to-be-IPTV provider plans to launch in Q2 its HomeZone product, a new service called which integrates the Internet with the TV set via a... More...

February 1, 2006

Cable Saves the Day at Time Warner

Time Warner, Inc. issued its Q4 05 earnings today, and the media empire owes a big thanks to its cable division. With theatrical films in the doldrums (particularly at Time Warner given that its cash-cow “Lord of the Rings” franchise... More...

Seidenberg on the Defensive

Verizon’s CEO Ivan Seidenberg is the subject of this article in today’s Washington Post written by Arshad Mohammed. In it, the resolute and feisty executive defends Verizon’s decision to divert billions in capital toward the building of its fiber-based Fios... More...

January 31, 2006

Pondering Broadband over Power Line

For the past two days I’ve been attending a conference in San Diego focused on BPL (broadband over powerline) and sponsored by the United Power Line Council (UPLC). Though I haven’t digested it fully yet, a couple of things stand... More...

EchoStar and DirecTV to Team on WiMax?

The Street.com’s Sandy Brown reported yesterday that DBS rivals EchoStar and DirecTV plan to team on WiMax service, which News Corp. has already confirmed it will help mount. According to Brown, the two companies have gone as far as issue... More...

January 30, 2006

Cable Gears Up on the Image Front

(Washington, DC) At a briefing for reporters and analysts at its headquarters today, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) unveiled a new multimedia, and purportedly multimillion dollar, ad campaign aimed at burnishing the industry’s image as a high-tech leader.... More...

January 26, 2006

Verizon Breaks Broadband Growth Record

As cable operators and telcos race to capture the lion’s share of high-speed Internet customers, Verizon pulled ahead during Q4 05 with a record-breaking number of net high-speed customers. During the quarter, Verizon added 614,000 net new broadband customers, a... More...

January 24, 2006

Recap of Disney-Pixar Analyst Call

Disney CEO Bob Iger and Pixar CEO Steve Jobs shared their views on today’s announcement of Disney’s $7.4 billion buy of Pixar in an analyst call held this afternoon (January 24). (Webcast here.) As Disney CFO Tom Staggs pointed out,... More...

It's Official: Disney to Acquire Pixar

Although everybody already knew it was going to happen, it’s still news when you get the official word — Disney announced today it is buying animation studio Pixar, headed by Steve Jobs, under a deal valued at $7.4 billion. It’s... More...

Verizon Launches FiOs TV in NY, MA

Verizon is slowly and surely expanding the footprint for its FTTP-based FiOs TV service. The company announced (see here and here) today the launch of its multichannel video service in two Northeastern towns — Woburn, MA and Massapequa Park, NY.... More...

January 19, 2006

Cable Rivals: No Program Access, No Adelphia Deal

A group of cable foes have formed a coalition to urge the FTC and the FCC to make approval of Comcast’s and Time Warner’s purchase of Adelphia contingent on closing a “loophole” in the 1992 Act. DirecTV, EchoStar Communications and... More...

Google: Users Pay for Access, Let Them Choose How to Use It

Even as Google faces off with the Justice Department, the search giant may also be ready to go toe-to-toe with broadband pipe owners. In his blog at Networking Pipeline, Preston Gralla reports that: BellSouth and Verizon have been trying to... More...

January 17, 2006

More on Google's dMarc Deal

This phrase from the dMarc FAQ page struck me as pretty Googlesque: “we bypass all human touch points and distribute spots directly to the station’s digital automation systems.” This paragraph from dMarc’s “Networks” page shows what they can do in... More...

January 11, 2006

WildBlue Raises Another $218 Mil.

While DirecTV eyes high-speed service delivery via WiMax, one satellite company, WildBlue, is still on track to launch broadband Internet service that relies, well, on satellite and not terrestrial technology. WildBlue Communications, which has been kicking around for years with... More...

January 10, 2006

Sounds of Wall Construction at MySpace?

Yesterday and in an earlier post I reported on claims that MySpace was blocking its users’ access to online video service YouTube, and also censoring blog posts complaining about this blocking. According to the latest post by MySpace user and... More...

DRM, Identity, Wall Building & Mashups

David Berlind continues the discussion of DRM and Walled Gardens. Describing DRM as “wall-building material,” he says Apple, Microsoft and “now Google…[are] in a bout of may the best stovepipe win…returning the industry to the stovepipe structure that the Internet’s... More...

January 9, 2006

E911 and the Two-Tiered Internet

Jeff Pulver responds to the recent Wall Street Journal piece entitled “Phone Companies Set Off A Battle Over Internet Fees.” Think about it this way. If instead of e-mail these companies delivered express-postal mail, it would be like the consumer... More...

More on DirecTV's WiMax Service

Speaking at Citigroup’s Global Entertainment, Media and Telecommunications Conference, Chase Carey, CEO of DirecTV, shed more light on the company’s WiMax service, first revealed by an earlier presentation at the same conference by Rupert Murdoch, CEO of DirecTV’s parent, News... More...

Can Two Visions of the Internet Co-Exist? I Think So.

David Smith has an interesting post on his Preoccupations blog that discusses DRM and, more broadly, the evolution of the web. In it, David cites posts by Julian Bond, Doc Searls, Rafael Behr and David Berlind, all of which echo... More...

Comcast's Roberts: We Are Innovating and Time Will Tell

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts has to be a little bit freaked out. Not only did he just get an eyeful of all the video-over-the-Internet gizmos and business plans unveiled at CES, but today, at Citigroup’s Global Entertainment, Media and Telecommunications... More...

Murdoch: DirecTV on Cusp of Deploying WiMax

News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch let one big cat out of the bag today at Citigroup’s 16th Annual Global Entertainment, Media & Telecommunications Conference Conference (go here for webcast). DirecTV, News Corp.’s U.S. direct broadcast satellite arm, is gearing up... More...

Verizon's Seidenberg: FiOs Broadband to Hit 30% Penetration in Four Years

Verizon is in the hot-seat with investors for its focus on expensive fiber-to-the-premise technology, but the telco’s CEO is convinced that the narrowband-to-broadband transformation is key to the company’s growth. Speaking at Citigroup’s Global Entertainment, Media and Telecommunications Conference today... More...

January 8, 2006

Google & The PC Makers

Doc Searls highlights excerpts from a post by Jason Calacanis entitled “CES analysis: Why I know Google will do an office suite and a desktop OS in 2006.” I don’t think Google will make a PC. I think Google will:... More...

Broadcast Spectrum: A Key Piece of the Policy Puzzle

Michael Parekh cites a key section of a Washington Monthly essay I discussed Thursday night and cited in a follow-up post triggered in part by Michael’s thoughts on “Big Bypass Battles” and video download services. The essay and Michael’s posts... More...

January 7, 2006

Google Pack as a Trojan Horse

Nicholas Carr calls Google Pack “Google’s Trojan Horse.” I think he’s got it right: There’s nothing particularly interesting or surprising about what’s in the Pack - it’s something of a dog’s breakfast, actually - but that, I’m pretty sure, is... More...

More on the TV Transition

In her latest post, Cynthia cites the following from a John Markoff NYT piece: Microsoft executives defend the way in which the telephone companies are deploying the company’s IPTV technology, saying that if consumers are exposed to the chaos and... More...

January 6, 2006

Big Bypass: Another Type of Convergence?

Recent posts by Michael Parekh (see here, here and here) and Om Malik (see here, here, here and here) on network neutrality, Internet-delivered video and the relationship between the two, remind me once again that, as a society, we face... More...

Movielink, BellSouth Discuss Two-Tiered Internet Deal

A piece in the Wall Street Journal continues the discussion of a “two-tiered Internet” that would require independent service providers to pay telcos “to receive priority treatment [on] increasingly crowded [broadband access] networks.” The WSJ story says Movielink “has discussed... More...

Community Internet: A Democratic Campaign Theme?

Glenn Fleishman at WiFiNet News points to a long Washington Monthly essay by media reform advocate Robert McChesney and John Podesta, former Clinton Chief of Staff and now President and CEO of the Center for American Progress. The essay closes... More...

January 5, 2006

AT&T IPTV Rollout Begins in San Antonio

The Wall Street Journal’s Dionne Searcey reports that AT&T has begun offering IPTV service to several hundred customers in San Antonio. Initially, the service will look much like regular cable TV, with a few new features. Customers will be able... More...

January 4, 2006

Spending My "20% Time" on a Google Grand Plan

I’m pretty sure that, if I worked at Google, I’d spend my “20% time” working on a Cringely-esque business plan involving large volumes of low-cost Google Cubes and data centers, and maybe even Google-funded local access networks…Or maybe its just... More...

Verizon Lands Cable Franchise in Maryland County

Verizon is slowly and steadily racking up cable franchises throughout its service territory — the latest franchise is in Howard County, MD, a well-to-do exurb of Washington, DC. The Howard County Council voted unanimously on Tuesday night to let Verizon... More...

CES: Not Just About the Gadgets

Mike Musgrove of the Washington Post has a piece today that articulates what we’ve all privately been discussing for the past week: CES, a show that used to be devoted to gadgets, is about…everything. With cable operators and phone companies... More...

January 3, 2006

SlingBox to Work on Mobile Devices

Place-shifting pioneer SlingBox is slated to announce at CES this week a new software client that allows any Windows Media-capable device to serve as a viewing platform for a customers’ multichannel video or PVR service. This is a phenomenal development... More...

January 1, 2006

EchoStar: Happy New Year and No More Lifetime TV for You

A contract dispute between EchoStar’s Dish Network and Lifetime TV Network boiled over into public view on New Year’s Eve when EchoStar pulled the plug on Lifetime and Lifetime Movie Networks, leaving its viewers with no access to the networks... More...

A Google PC at CES?

Sallie Hofmeister at the Los Angeles Times has a prediction piece today that centers on Google as the new 800-pound gorilla in the entertainment business. The biggest surprise: Rumors hold that Google will unveil a cheap (several hundred dollars) PC... More...

December 29, 2005

YouTube Videos Blocked on MySpace

Barb at thesocialsoftwareweblog picks up on a dustup between MySpace (now owned by News Corp.) and YouTube. It seems that the former was blocking its users from accessing embedded and linked YouTube videos. According to this post at the YouTube... More...

Meet the New AT&T

Starting on New Year’s Eve, AT&T (formerly SBC) will kick off a new branding campaign to reposition the combined company into a new powerhouse in the communications world. The effort, led by GSD&M in Austin, TX, gets some play... More...

December 28, 2005

Om and Niall on a Two-Tiered Internet

In this week’s PodSession, Om Malik and Niall Kennedy discuss the prospects for a two-tiered Internet, which Om sees as pretty likely and not necessarily a bad thing. The PodSession is well worth a read and/or a listen. From Om:... More...

Mossberg: Apple Shines Because it Focuses on Consumers

Wall Street Journal tech guru Walt Mossberg has an interesting column in tomorrow’s (12/29) edition. Mossberg, who translates technology for the average user, rails against the computer industry for its almost exclusive focus on big corporations to the detriment of... More...

December 27, 2005

The Market's Fickle Finger Points at Verizon

Despite an active and forward-looking agenda masterminded by CEO Ivan Seidenberg, Verizon looks like a loser to Wall Street. The cause of Verizon’s fall from grace? Its active and forward-looking agenda. Shortly before Christmas, debt ratings agency Moody’s (registration required)... More...

December 20, 2005

Is There Such a Thing as Too Much Bandwidth?

Om Malik got bitten by some kind of a broadband speed bug — he posts an extensive and excellent thought-piece on whether consumers need faster broadband. Backed by his own analysis of Bernstein Research data, he categorizes the transfer speeds... More...

December 19, 2005

Broadband Over Powerline Coming to North Texas

The Wall Street Journal’s Dionne Searcey and Rebecca Smith report that Current Communications LLC and TXU Electric Delivery plan to offer broadband over powerline (BPL) service to more than two million customers in Texas. The move marks the biggest deployment... More...

December 18, 2005

Cable Sees Opportunity in Local On-Demand Video

A recent WSJ story by Peter Grant discusses the growth of local “on-demand” programming being carried on cable systems. Though the piece focuses largely on a “Dating on Demand” service offered by Comcast in some of its markets, it also... More...

Driving Voice Prices Toward Zero

Last week, SIPphone’s Gizmo Project joined Yahoo in cutting the per-minute rate for VoIP calling to U.S. PSTN lines to just one cent per minute. A post by SIPphone founder Michael Robertson on his web site gives a sense of... More...

December 16, 2005

More on Google and AOL

The news that Google beat out Microsoft for a slice of AOL is sinking in and the reaction is interesting. But first: The New York Times’ Saul Hansell has an interesting piece that describes a priceless scene of last-minute negotiations... More...

WSJ: Google Triumphs Over Microsoft in AOL Talks

According to the Wall Street Journal, Google has triumphed over Microsoft in talks to gain a deal with AOL. The news is so fresh that the WSJ hasn’t even posted a full article, simply a news alert that says “Time... More...

December 13, 2005

A Two-Tiered Internet?

A Boston Globe story by Hiawatha Bray highlights the intensifying lobbying fight over issues related to “network neutrality.” AT&T Inc. and BellSouth Corp. are lobbying Capitol Hill for the right to create a two-tiered Internet, where the telecom carriers’ own... More...

December 12, 2005

Isenberg: We Need Strong, Clear Net Neutrality Rules

Noting that “Network Neutrality is a clear case of public good versus private benefit [and] that’s what regulation is for,” David Isenberg says: Network Neutrality, that is, a network that just delivers the packets, stupid, with no cognizance of what... More...

December 10, 2005

Google and Wyse Discussing Low-Cost Thin-Client PC

Though Steve Lohr’s long piece in Sunday’s New York Times didn’t include much that hadn’t already been reported on Ray Ozzie’s role at Microsoft, it did feature an intriguing reference to Google’s discussions with Wyse Technology about co-developing a low-cost... More...

Sharing Search-Ad Revenue with Users?

An interesting debate has been brewing in the blogosphere about the implications of recent comments by Bill Gates, which were reported by John Ribeiro of IDG News Service. Microsoft Corp. will share a part of its advertising revenues from its... More...

December 8, 2005

Yahoo VoIP Challenges Skype

There’s been a lot of online discussion in the past two days about Yahoo’s move to upgrade the VoIP capabilities of its IM service, including low-priced dial-in and dial-out functionality (e.g., domestic U.S. calling at one cent per minute). Michael... More...

Parsons: We're Not Sellers of AOL

The hot topic du jour is the contest between Microsoft and Google for some kind of a deal with AOL. And Time Warner CEO Dick Parsons affirmed today during a talk at CSFB’s Global Media Conference (webcast can be found... More...

December 7, 2005

Google Still in the Running for AOL Deal?

It sounds like a wild time at Time Warner regarding the finagling over a stake in AOL, with a lot of posturing and pressuring among the various parties taking place in the press. Despite yesterday’s Wall Street Journal piece that... More...

December 6, 2005

Parsons to Comcast, Google & Microsoft: Just Kidding

According to the New York Times, the highly intriguing talks between Time Warner and potential investors Microsoft, Google and Comcast about those companies’ purchase of a stake in AOL no longer involve…anyone buying a stake in AOL. Time Warner is... More...

December 4, 2005

Virgin to Buy NTL? Or Vice Versa?

Courtesy of Jack Schofield of the Guardian Unlimited’s tech blog, The Sunday Telegraph is giving even greater heft to the rumors that the UK mega-corporation headed by Richard Branson will buy cable company NTL with an eye toward merging it... More...

December 2, 2005

Not Much Telecom Competition in Europe, Group Says

According to this Dow Jones piece, the European Competitive Telecommunications Association has just come out with a study saying that regulators are failing to inject competition in Europe by favoring former state-owned phone companies. Germany and Greece come in for... More...

December 1, 2005

BellSouth's CTO: We Want to Charge for Priority Access

Despite the negative reaction to comments such as SBC (now AT&T) CEO Ed Whitacre’s “they’re my pipes” gaffe, broadband providers, and the telcos in particular (at least publicly), are tenacious in their advocacy for setting limits on competitive services and... More...

November 30, 2005

Newspapers Don't Have a Terminal Illness, Association Chief Says

Despite the highly publicized recent rounds of layoffs and shrinking circulation, print newspapers aren’t suffering from a terminal illness, Newspaper Association of America CEO John Sturm said in a speech today at The Media Institute. But there is a “full... More...

November 28, 2005

Murdoch's DBS Play Hampered by One-Way Technology

Not only does cable have a bandwidth advantage over telcos, it has a two-way connectivity superiority over satellite, a technological conundrum for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. This Business Week piece highlights how New Corp. fought to buy DirecTV only to... More...

Cable and Phone Companies Face Parallel Dynamics

Yesterday’s New York Times piece by Lorne Manly and Ken Belson on the threat to cable posed by phone companies received a lot of play in the blogosphere. The thrust of the article is that the phone companies are between... More...

November 23, 2005

Om: Let's Not Get Carried Away about Brightcove

Though he says “I think Jeremy [Allaire] is a great guy and is pretty smart cookie with most of the answers,” Om Malik raises some good questions to challenge Brightcove enthusiasts (including myself) that have commented on the company’s recently... More...

November 22, 2005

From Slate: Google's Road to Ruin

Jack Shafer, Slate’s editor at large, spins a fanciful tale of Google’s demise called “The Great Google Wipeout.” While some elements of Shafer’s scenario are not too far outside the realm of possibility, it basically assumes that Google will do... More...

The Google of Video?

In the wake of news that it was working with AOL and had raised $16.2 million from several heavy hitters (including AOL), Brightcove has received a flurry of attention and praise in the past 24 hours. Here’s a sampling (Disclaimer:... More...

November 21, 2005

Ma Bell is Back, With IP but Without Caps

It’s interesting that as Skype announces a retail distribution deal with Radio Shack, SBC is launching a branding strategy aimed at positioning a “web-friendly” no-caps version of the AT&T name as a dominant brand in the era of IP-based services.... More...

Skype's Retail Move & Network Neutrality

As Reuters reports, Skype “is reaching for the American consumer mainstream by selling its telephone kits in RadioShack stores.” Beginning Monday, RadioShack will also have a special kiosk to feature Skype products, including a new Motorola headset that uses short-range... More...

November 19, 2005

Herndon Preps to Be Next Fios Video Market

Verizon plans to flip the switch on its Fios-based video service next week in the DC exurb of Herndon, marking the second market launch of the fiber-to-the-premise video service behind Keller, TX. Verizon is undercutting the prices charged by incumbent... More...

November 18, 2005

How Would Pipe-Owners Respond to the Google Internet?

In a post entitled Google-Mart, Robert X. Cringely, predicts that Google will deploy local servers linked by the fiber optic capacity it has been buying on the cheap to “effectively take over the Internet. Oh they won’t steal it or... More...

Cable's New Tech Duo: Cisco and Motorola

A big deal was announced this morning: networking giant Cisco is buying one-half of the U.S. cable industry’s tech duopoly, Scientific Atlanta. Cisco will pay $6.9 billion or $43 per share for the video transmission and set-top box company, offering... More...

November 17, 2005

WSJ's Drucker: A Policy Failure in Broadband?

According to The Wall Street Journal’s Jesse Drucker, “The U.S. needs some big-picture thinking by policy makers about broadband. The first thing they need to do is admit that U.S. broadband isn’t keeping pace with the global market.” The inferior... More...

November 15, 2005

Murdoch: The Internet is Extraordinary

The Hollywood Reporter has an interview with Rupert Murdoch in this week’s issue. Whatever you think of his politics, it’s difficult to not admire the fact that despite decades in the media business, he’s still passionate about what he does.... More...

SBC's CTO: WiMax is Overblown

John Stankey, EVP and CTO at SBC, put the kibosh on WiMax this morning at UBS’s Global Communications Conference, saying that it might work in niche situations, but on the whole the technology won’t replace traditional transmission networks. “In my... More...

November 13, 2005

Broadband via Gas Lines?

In my last post I expressed hope that more broadband pipes might be built to lessen the economic friction caused by a duopoly market structure. Here’s one new approach recently added to the list of possibilities: Broadband-in-Gas (no potty jokes,... More...

Toward A Flexible, Frictionless Media Distribution Model

The New York Times’ Richard Siklos raises some interesting questions about where the content distribution industry is headed. After citing the unexpected success of ring tones and DVD compilations of TV shows, and the more recent success of Apple’s sales... More...

Google: A Passion for Disruptive Innovation

A story in today’s Washington Post by David Vise serves as a nice companion piece to the Business 2.0 article on Yahoo cited in my previous post. The soul of the Google machine is a passion for disruptive innovation…[Its] friendly... More...

Google Algorithms vs. Yahoo Communities

Business 2.0 editor-at-large Erick Schonfeld has written a long article entitled “The Flickrization of Yahoo.” The thrust of the piece is that Yahoo’s purchase of Flickr has “helped ignite a larger strategy” in which “Yahoo is starting to see how... More...

November 10, 2005

WSJ: Yahoo Bows Out of AOL Talks

According to the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo is out of the running to take a stake in the suddenly desirable AOL. According to the piece penned by Kevin Delaney and Julia Angwin, both sides are saying the terms offered by... More...

November 9, 2005

DSL Posts a Blow-Away Quarter

As Om points out, the telcos posted their best DSL growth quarter ever during Q3 05, adding approximately 1.2 to 1.3 million net new DSL customers, all a result of the booming growth in SBC’s low-priced DSL promotions and Verizon’s... More...

Full Microsoft Memos Posted on the Web

As Mitch mentioned, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal got a hold of internal Microsoft memos that warn in no uncertain terms of the competitive challenges facing the Redmond giant. Dave Winer worked his contacts at Microsoft and... More...

Gates, Ozzie Memos Warn of "Internet Services" Threat

The New York Times’ John Markoff reports on internal Microsoft memos sent 10/30 to senior executives by Bill Gates and Ray Ozzie and obtained Tuesday by the Times. The basic message of the memos, says Markoff is that “Microsoft must... More...

November 8, 2005

Comparing Google to Other Internet Giants

For the legions of us trying to sort through the competitive strengths and weaknesses of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL as the latter considers several suitors, a TNL.net post features a number of helpful tables, including hyperlinks, comparing the companies... More...

November 7, 2005

Broadband Speed War Commences

With Verizon building out fiber-to-the-premise technology across its territory, the telco has one weapon in its broadband competition arsenal that was formerly the sole tactic of cable operators: speed. The vast capacity of fiber enables Verizon to match, and beat,... More...

More on AOL's Sudden Attractiveness

AOL is the center of attention as a group of communications giants jostle for the honor of buying a stake in the former ailing service. IP Media Monitor today takes a look at the question: what’s so great about AOL?... More...

November 6, 2005

Pulver on Communication Policy War, Round II

In a discussion of a House Energy and Commerce Committee Staff Working Draft Bill, Jeff Pulver suggests that the concept of Net Freedoms may not amount to much if a “fair price” and “non-discrimination principle” are not attached to end... More...

Why AOL is Suddenly Hot

Fortune takes a look at AOL’s resurgence in this week’s issue, and attempts to answer the question of why the former online goat is now suddenly a sleek mink, with lots of would-be big name investors vying for a piece... More...

November 5, 2005

Yahoo Likes Its Creative Chaos

Like many folks, James Fallows has never really “got” Yahoo or what it does, a curious reaction to a company as big and powerful as Yahoo. In an article for the New York Times, Fallows walks through the seeming hodge-podge... More...

Google Strikes Fear Among a Range of Industries

Because of its far-reaching utility, Google makes a whole lot of industries nervous, according to a piece penned by Steve Lohr in Sunday’s New York Times. From Wal-Mart to Microsoft to BellSouth, Google’s central role in helping consumers search for... More...

November 3, 2005

The Rise of Web 2.0 Holds Back Old Media Stocks

The recent spate of amazing deals and complex jockeying by top communications and entertainment giants has done little to boost the stock of old media vanguards such as News Corp. and Time Warner. Even Comcast, the nation’s top cable operator... More...

November 2, 2005

Sprint-Cable Pact: Convergence of Great Magnitude

A lot has been written today about Sprint Nextel’s joint venture with Comcast, Time Warner, Cox and Advanced/Newhouse, but I thought I’d follow up with more details from today’s press conference. First, everybody involved in the deal is proud of... More...

SBC Lands PUC-Granted Franchise in Texas

After winning a legislative fight to gain state-wide franchising rights in Texas, SBC has been granted a franchise by the state PUC to offer video services in San Antonio and 20 nearby communities, just in time for the company’s promised... More...

Sprint-Nextel, Cable Operators Team on "Third Screen"

It’s finally official — Sprint-Nextel and four cable operators have teamed on a broadband wireless service that will give cable the ability to add mobile voice to its product mix and to deliver broadband content and applications to wireless phones.... More...

October 31, 2005

Broadband Access: Who Pays Who For What, and Why?

Ed Felton, a Professor of Computer Science and Public Affairs at Princeton University, raises some interesting questions in response to Ed Whitacre’s comments quoted here and here by Business Week, and discussed in earlier IPD posts here and here. [Whitacre]... More...

Susan Crawford: Focus on Facilities-Based Competition

As Cynthia notes, comments by SBC CEO Ed Whitacre quoted in Business Week have triggered strong reactions from within the ranks of net-neutrality advocates, with some describing as extortion Whitacre’s assertion that “there’s going to have to be some mechanism... More...

SBC's Whitacre: Google, Yahoo Must Pay for Broadband Pipe Access

Business Week has a pretty candid interview with SBC CEO Ed Whitacre this week, and one comment made by the telco chieftain is already fanning the net neutrality flames. When asked about whether he’s concerned over Google and Yahoo’s efforts... More...

Must-Read: SBC and Verizon Get Ready for Competitive Battle

Business Week has a series of articles that examine the critical turning points for the phone business, timed to coincide with the DOJ’s clearance (with conditions) of the mergers of SBC-AT&T and Verizon-MCI. At the heart of this series is... More...

Telco TV Tops the Million Sub. Mark

Although the fiber-based initiatives of the top telcos grab all the headlines, the bundled DBS offerings of SBC, Verizon and BellSouth topped the million subscriber mark at the end of Q3 05, according to my analysis published in today’s IP... More...

October 29, 2005

Must-Read: Google's Ad Ambitions

Saul Hansell has a thorough overview of Google’s ad ambitions in the Sunday New York Times. Hansell obviously spent a lot of time trying to peer into Google’s “black box” of advertising initiatives, and talked to quite a few insiders... More...

Seeking Television 2.0 Advertising Models

The other day, Cynthia cited a New York Post article filled with quotes from TV and advertising executives skeptical about Google’s chances of success if it tries to extend its ad-sales reach into the TV market. While these execs no... More...

AT&T: A Winning Brand or Emblem of a Bygone Era?

AT&T is once again a major player in the competitive mix…at least in name. Last week, SBC said it will change its name to AT&T following the companies merger, expected later this year. At close, the new company will unveil... More...

October 28, 2005

Earthlink Wi-Fi: A New Force in Broadband Access?

Less than a month after being chosen to build and operate a 135-square-mile citywide Wi-Fi network in Philadelphia, Earthlink has secured a second municipal Wi-Fi contract, this time in Anaheim, CA, the home of Disneyland and a major convention center.... More...

October 27, 2005

DOJ Approval of Telecom Mergers Imminent

David Hatch has a piece in the National Journal saying that the Department of Justice’s final review of the mergers between SBC Communications and AT&T and Verizon Communications and MCI is imminent, and could be as early as today. The... More...

October 25, 2005

Cox's Robbins Reads Telcos the Riot Act

(Las Vegas, NV) Cox Communications CEO Jim Robbins gave a keynote speech here at the U.S. Telecom conference. And the cable CEO didn’t mince words. He told the telephone industry audience that he doesn’t like the telcos’ public policy tactics.... More...

October 23, 2005

More Analysis of the Jockeying for AOL

David Vise has a front page article in today’s business section of the Washington Post on the intense jockeying for yesterday’s loser, today’s winner, America Online. Although it’s been broken up into its component parts online, a very large, cool... More...

October 21, 2005

Wall Street Analyst: FCC Should Act to Protect Broadband Video

Independent Wall Street Analyst Richard Greenfield from Fulcrum Global Partners issued a curious email report this morning entitled “Redefining the Idea of Video in an IP World, aka what we did with our computer last night.” Mailed to clients, this... More...

Operators Move to Block VoIP, Video Rivals

The Wall Street Journal has a piece today on how phone and cable companies are reining in customers’ Internet usage, with the not-so-coincidental byproduct of blocking IP-based competitive activities such as VoIP and video file-sharing. The article, penned by Peter... More...

October 18, 2005

More on the Courtship of AOL

USA Today and the LA Times have both published articles about a potential AOL deal with one or more of the industry’s major players. The USA Today story reviews some of AOL’s recent initiatives in the broader industry context and... More...

BellSouth Latest Telco To Team with Yahoo

BellSouth has announced a “strategic alliance” with Yahoo! “to provide co-branded broadband service to BellSouth FastAccess DSL subscribers throughout BellSouth’s nine-state operating region.” The BellSouth move follows similar deals with Yahoo! by SBC and, more recently, Verizon, the nation’s two... More...

Is the Video iPod a Threat to Cable?

You knew this was coming…questions are already being raised as to whether the video iPod, less than one week old, is a threat to cable because because it offers video-on-demand, the province of the cable industry. CBS Marketwatch has a... More...

October 17, 2005

Broadband over Powerline: Taking Off or Fading?

As Cynthia notes, today’s New York Times features a bullish piece on the potential of broadband over powerline (BPL). But, as Om Malik points out, The Morning Call balances the NYT story with “a sobering report [that] PPL Corp of... More...

NYT Profiles Two BPL Providers

The New York Times today has a valentine of sorts for the broadband-over-powerline industry. A piece penned by Ken Belson touches on the services offered by Current Communications and ComTek in Cincinnati and Manassa, VA, respectively, and notes that big... More...

October 16, 2005

What to Make of Apple's "Vingle" Trademark Filings?

The Washington Post’s Frank Ahrens wonders if three recent trademark filings by Apple Computer reflect a Steve Jobs goal of “domination of the web.” In the 10/7 filings, which Ahrens says were first reported by AppleInsider (which provides more details... More...

October 14, 2005

Street.Com Report: Yahoo Wants in on AOL Too

Does the entire Internet and media world want a slice of AOL, the dying dial-up service Time Warner used to treat as its idiot step-child? The latest potential bidder for a slice of AOL: Yahoo. According to the Street.com, Yahoo... More...

Microsoft/Yahoo/Real vs. Google/Sun/AOL/Comcast

Most of us are not up to the task, yet, of parsing through the complex competitive positioning displayed by this week’s mega-deals among the Internet giants. But ZDNet’s David Berlind seems to have a good grip on the meta-forces at... More...

October 13, 2005

John Battelle on Bidding for AOL

A John Battelle post on the battle for AOL is worth a read. (Battelle is author of a new book called “The Search, How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture”). Following some insightful... More...

Giants Realigning for Web 2.0 Era?

As Cynthia noted yesterday, AOL, whose merger with Time Warner marked the peak of Web 1.0 inflated valuations, is now at the center of a potential realignment among industry giants, all of whom are jockeying for competitive advantage in the... More...

Comcast: Genetically Reengineering Itself

Peter Grant has a good piece in today’s Wall Street Journal that dovetails nicely with the Journal’s scoop on the joint bid between Google and Comcast for a minority share in AOL. Comcast, the nation’s top cable operator, is not,... More...

October 12, 2005

Okay, Now It's Comcast-Google-AOL?

The media titans are pumped while the rest of us are dog-tired from tracking their multiplying deals. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that top cable operator Comcast might be collaborating with Internet giant Google to buy a minority share... More...

Apple's Video iPod Finally Arrives

Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the much-anticipated video iPod today at an event in San Jose, CA. The news comes one day after Echostar, the nation’s second largest satellite video provider, unveiled its own portable media player, dubbed PocketDish. According... More...

Shattering Hollywood's Release Window System?

Entrepreneur and HDTV pioneer Mark Cuban is, according to Wired News, ” hiring staff that could form the nucleus of a new DVD label” with the intent of “shatter[ing] Hollywood’s release window system by making first-run films available simultaneously in... More...

Comcast Takes Aim at Movie Windows, Revenues

According to a Variety story at videobusiness.com, Comcast has been pitching the following idea to studios: Sensing that the financially troubled Blockbuster is ripe for plucking, Comcast is sounding out the Hollywood studios on the following proposition: A Comcast customer... More...

Google's Planning Something Big in Phoenix

Courtesy of Search Engine Watch, this piece in the Phoenix Business Journal claims that Google will announce today a plan for setting up “major new operations” in the Phoenix market. It’s not clear what kind of operations, exactly, but the... More...

October 11, 2005

WSJ: Yahoo and Microsoft to Join Hands on IM, VoIP

An unbelievable alliance is slated to be announced tomorrow, according to the Wall Street Journal. Mighty rivals Microsoft and Yahoo have reportedly agreed to interconnect their free services. According to the report, the two Internet giants have made an arrangement... More...

Verizon FiOS TV Gets Thumbs-Up from Customer

Although it’s still too new to generate much in the way of consensus, Verizon’s fiber-based FiOS TV got a pretty good review from a customer in Keller, TX, the site of FiOS’ premiere launch. Someone named Craig J. contacted a... More...

October 7, 2005

Analysts See Cable's Future as Transport Utility

According to Broadcasting & Cable, a new report from “Friedman Billings Ramsey media analysts Alan Bezoza and Brian Coynes say that cable’s biggest competitive threat for video delivery is not the short-term competition from telcos but the long-term threat of... More...

AOL-MSN Talks Active Again

The WSJ reports that ” Time Warner Inc. and Microsoft Corp. have restarted discussions about forming an alliance of their Internet units, America Online and MSN, according to people familiar with the situation.” The two companies are focused on ways... More...

October 6, 2005

Al Gore on Media, the Internet and Democracy

At the Media Center’s We Media conference, held Wednesday and sponsored by the AP, Al Gore gave a speech in which he argued that “American democracy is in grave danger and “that something has gone basically and badly wrong in... More...

A New Analysis of the Muni-Broadband Debate

Michael J. Balhoff and Robert C. Rowe have put together a 211-page report entitled “Municipal Broadband: Digging Beneath the Surface.” Regardless of whether one agrees with its conclusions, the report seems like a worthy read for anyone seriously wanting to... More...

October 5, 2005

Covad to Buy California WISP

The AP reports that Covad has announced it will acquire NextWeb, California’s largest wireless ISP (WISP). A press release from the two companies values the deal at $24.7 million. According to the release: NextWeb currently provides service to nearly 3,000... More...

State Begins Granting Texas-Sized Video Franchises

According to Light Reading, “The 2005 Texas telco-video land grab has begun,” thanks to a new law that authorizes statewide franchising. Guadalupe Valley Communication Systems LP, the cable subsidiary of Guadalupe Valley Telephone Cooperative Inc., has been granted the first... More...

October 4, 2005

Another View of the Sun-Google Announcement

At ZDNet, Dana Gardner, principal analyst of Interarbor Solutions weighs in on the Sun-Google alliance: Sun’s strengths and Google’s interests do align really well, on the back end and the client…What’s most important, however, is that the new, albeit nebulous,... More...

Different Views on Sun-Google Announcement

The Sun-Google announcement certainly wasn’t as big or clear as many had speculated, so its not too surprising that views on its significance were pretty varied (here’s a video of the press conference): Here’s Om Malik’s take: The Google-Sun announcement... More...

Earthlink & Philly Offer Another Broadband Access Model

Though Google’s free WiFi proposal in San Francisco is arguably more radical in its implications, Philadelphia selection of Earthlink’s proposal, reported today by the Wall Street Journal, also represents a significant step toward developing new broadband access models. All the... More...

October 3, 2005

Google-Sun News: An OpenOffice Alliance?

Several stories filed Monday suggest tomorrow’s Google-Sun press conference will unveil a new initiative aimed at Microsoft’s Office suite: According to Susan Kuchinskas of Internetnews.com: Google and Sun Microsystems [are] expected to announce a collaboration to bring StarOffice productivity applications... More...

Appeals Court Keeps Antitrust Case Against RBOCs Alive

The Wall Street Journal reports that: A federal appeals court on Monday said an antitrust lawsuit against several of the nation’s largest telecommunication providers over whether they conspired to exclude competitors from their geographic markets should be allowed to go... More...

In Search of New Video Business Models

An assortment of news stories today provide a sense of how established and new players are jockeying for position in the video market, as it migrates from broadcast to on-demand modes and, increasingly, to IP-based distribution. Mediaweek reports that: Talks... More...

October 2, 2005

Google WiFi, Web 2.0 and Change

After my first post on Google’s proposal to build a WiFi network in San Francisco, I came across a piece written last April by Esme Vos, founder and editor of MuniWireless.com (which coincidentally held a conference last week in San... More...

October 1, 2005

A New Broadband Access Model From Google?

Published reports about Google’s San Francisco WiFi proposal suggest the company is exploring what would essentially be a new model for broadband access, a model Google seems particularly well positioned to pursue. In such a model, Google would use a... More...

September 28, 2005

A Downbeat Look at Telco TV's Future

Business Week’s Olga Kharif suggests investors may lose patience with Verizon’s FiOS and other Telco TV initiatives. To back up this contention, Olga cites a forecast by Convergence Consulting Group that “By 2007, 12% of residential consumers will be buying... More...

Mining First-Mile "Attention" Data

Robert Scoble tells us why he fears Google Wifi: I fear they are using their Wifi to build a better search engine. MSN’s engineers last week showed me how their system actually evolves without any human contact. It learns from... More...

September 25, 2005

The NYT on Lloyd Braun & Yahoo's Media Plans

The New York Times ran a long piece by Saul Hansell on Yahoo’s plans to be a major player in the video market, with a focus on Lloyd Braun, the TV exec hired last year by CEO Terry Semel to... More...

September 22, 2005

Verizon Video Goes Live in Texas

Dallas suburb Keller, TX, today became the first community in which Verizon offers a video alternative to cable and satellite. Its cable competitor in the Texas town is Charter Communications. Later this year Verizon plans to launch FiOS TV in... More...

September 21, 2005

Verizon's FiosTV Could Go Live This Week

Peter Grant at the Wall Street Journal has a piece today saying that Verizon could go live with FiosTV video service on its fiber-to-the-premise (FTTP) system in Keller, TX as early as this week. With most cable channels in the... More...

Time Warner's Parsons Eyes "Dialing Down" on Cable

With the swirling influx of competitors - telco, satellite and Internet-based - the cable industry is becoming more vulnerable to market share loss. Dick Parsons, the CEO of the industry’s number two cable company, Time Warner, apparently agrees. Speaking at... More...

September 20, 2005

FCC, DOJ Eye Divestiture Requirements for ILEC-IXC Mergers

According to a piece in the Wall Street Journal this morning, the FCC is on the cusp of approving Verizon’s purchase of MCI and SBC’s purchase of AT&T, with Commissioner Kevin Martin pushing for approval as early as tomorrow. But... More...

September 19, 2005

Verizon Fios Build-Out Forces Family to Flee House

This entry really belongs in the “best of blogs,” only I could find no blog entry about it. It seems that in the process of building out its Fios network in Northern Virginia, Verizon practically destroyed a family’s home, wiping... More...

September 13, 2005

Will eBay-Skype Harm Cable's Prospects?

Among all the analysis of eBay’s acquisition of Skype comes one intriguing assessment, or perhaps epiphany: eBay’s increased commercialization of Skype could harm the cable industry’s prospects. Richard Greenfield of independent securities research firm Fulcrum Group Partners issued a memo... More...

Tech Firms Advocating Net Neutrality

With both cable and phone companies free of mandatory access rules, the calls for net neutrality are rising. The National Journal’s Tech Daily has this item by Bara Vaida about a group of high-tech players, including eBay, Google, Yahoo and... More...

September 7, 2005

Statewide Telco-TV Franchising Becomes Law in TX

Multichannel News reports that “As expected, Texas Gov. Rick Perry has signed the bill, passed in a special legislative session, which authorizes statewide franchises for competitive cable franchises.” In a press release, Verizon Southwest Region President Steve Banta said “We... More...

September 4, 2005

Are Big Players Getting into Muni Wi-Fi?

Business Week suggests the answer is yes: As towns across the country launch wireless broadband networks to bring affordable Web access to their residents, companies from tiny RedMoon to heavyweights such as Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ ) are jockeying to become... More...

August 27, 2005

More on Google Launches & Strategy

Two mainstream tech-columnists, the Wall Street Journal’s Walter Mossberg and the New York Times’ David Pogue, both have mostly good things to say about last week’s launch of Google Desktop 2 and Google Talk. A broader view of Google’s growth... More...

August 25, 2005

The Dark Side of Google: Googlezon

Google is the hottest company to hit the Internet or the media or Wall Street in years, combining tremendous skill, ultimate versatility and unlimited money into one sprawling, sizzling enterprise with unending potential. (I know I’m repeating myself. I’ve said... More...

August 22, 2005

Feds Look at Cable Regional Sports Networks

Bill McConnell from The Deal has a piece on how the FTC is looking at regional cable sports networks in the context of the Adelphia buyout by Comcast and Time Warner. The issue: whether cable operators have too much power... More...

August 20, 2005

Speculating on Google's Spending

A new spate of Google-speculation was triggered late last week after the company said Thursday that it would raise more than $4 billion through a new stock offering. Combined with the roughly $3 billion of cash it currently has on... More...

August 18, 2005

Telco IPTV Challenges: Integration, Installation, Interference

USA Today’s Leslie Cauley uses Pioneer Telephone as a case study of the nitty-gritty implementation issues facing telco IPTV. IPTV, while alluring, also presents some challenges. One of the most daunting is “integration”— making sure the mishmash of software, hardware... More...

August 8, 2005

Missouri Attorney General Questions Broadband Pricing Ads

The Missouri Attorney General’s office has opened an investigation into advertising for low-priced high-speed service with a focus on SBC and “other” companies, presumably Missouri-based Charter Communications. At issue is not the low priced options themselves ($14.95 for new customers... More...

August 4, 2005

Senate Committee Scrutinizes Cable's Terrestrial Loophole

National Journal’s David Hatch has a piece about hearings on cable competition planned by the Senate Antitrust Committe. One target of the hearings, slated for September or October, is the “terrestrial loophole” that cable operators received in the 1992 Cable... More...

August 1, 2005

Digital Media Taxonomy Developed

Courtesy of Rafat Ali at paidcontent.org, Rutberg & Co., an investment bank focused on wireless and technology sectors, has developed a digital media taxonomy, a schema that attempts to classify the buzzing mass of digital communications into a coherent framework.... More...

July 29, 2005

Ensign Bill on "Consumer Access to Content & Applications"

As Cynthia noted in an earlier post, there’s a lot to chew on in Senator Ensign’s (R-NV) 72-page bill, entitled “Broadband Investment and Consumer Choice Act.” In this and future posts we’ll take a closer look at specific provisions in... More...

Must-Read: Mermigas on Big Media's Myopia

Courtesy of Cory Bergman at Lost Remote, this splendid piece by Hollywood Reporter’s Diane Mermigas on how major media companies seem oblivious to the rapid and inevitable diffusion in entertainment and information content creation and distribution. What seemingly triggered this... More...

July 28, 2005

Verizon Eyes Lucrative Fairfax for Fios TV

Incumbent telco Verizon is about to put another franchising notch on its belt: the company announced today that it is seeking approval for a cable franchise in DC suburb Fairfax County, VA, one of the wealthiest counties in the country,... More...

July 26, 2005

Cable-Telco Rivalry Draws Ire of County Officials

Montgomery County, Maryland is a hot-spot in the increasingly heated rivalry between cable operators and phone companies. And according to this Washington Post article, both industries had better watch their steps. Montgomery County Council members have rebuked both Comcast and... More...

July 22, 2005

SDG&E To Test Broadband Over Powerline

San Diego Gas & Electric has joined the growing ranks of utilities undertaking trials of broadband over power line (BPL) technology. According to the San Diego Union Tribune: SDG&E said its test will be limited to about 10 company employees,... More...

AT&T, HP, Earthlink Finalists for Philly Wi-Fi

Wireless Philadelphia has selected three consortiums led by AT&T, Hewlett-Packard and Earthlink as finalists to design, build and maintain Philadelphia’s planned citywide Wi-Fi network. The nonprofit organization plans to make a final selection, including a second “backup” bidder, on July... More...

July 21, 2005

Gilder: TV and Hollywood Will Die

Guru of the dot.com heyday George Gilder offered some dire predictions at the AO2005 conference, according to News.com’s Michael Kanellos. While Gilder still holds sway over the technology cognescenti, we take issue with these predictions, namely that TV and Hollywood... More...

SBC DSL Growth Slows: Cable Guys Must Be Laughing

Giant telco SBC released its Q2 05 earnings this morning (more later) but the biggest news hidden by the company’s press release is that for the first time in twelve months, SBC’s mighty DSL juggernaut has slowed. In the second... More...

July 7, 2005

Google Invests in Broadband over Power Line

According to the Wall Street Journal: Google Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Hearst Corp. are investing about $100 million in Current Communications Group, a start-up that offers high-speed Internet connections over the power system, say people familiar with the... More...

June 26, 2005

Michigan Gives Boost to Broadband over Power Line

According to a press release from the Michigan Broadband Development Authority (MBDA), the agency “has closed on a $520,000 loan with the New York-based Shpigler Group, Inc. that will bring broadband over power line (BPL) service to two mid-Michigan communities.”... More...

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