Although McCain himself may not be an active Internet user, “he is in touch with what Americans are doing on the Internet, he has a family, he has kids who use the Internet, he has a daughter who has a blog,” Holtz-Eakin said. “I think it’s an unfair characterization” to say that McCain is out of touch with an activity so central to most voters’ lives. “He’s more in touch with America than any other human being I know.”

Holtz-Eakin also offered insight into how a McCain administration would approach a variety of telecom and tech policy matters. He reiterated the general themes that emerged in McCain’s broader economic plan such as tax credits for R&D and immigration reform to enable more international scientists, engineers and technologists to work in the U.S.

As to whether the current FCC Chairman, Republican Kevin Martin, would keep his job in a McCain administration, Holtz-Eakin was less than reassuring. There are “lots of personnel decisions to make but that’s all premature at this point,” he said.

But like Kevin Martin, McCain is not a big fan of the cable industry. The current Chairman of the Senate Commerce thinks cable has too much power and he has particularly embraced the notion of forcing cable companies to sell individual channels on an a la carte basis. Unlike Martin, who favors such cable tier unbundling for primarily “family values” reasons (to weed out certain kinds of objectionable channels or programs), McCain supports the notion for primarily economic reasons, namely as a way to lower monthly cable bills.

“His view is that cable companies have had far too much authority and monopoly power in many marketplaces,” Holtz-Eakin said. “There was no ability to ameliorate that other than by directly demanding that they be responsive to some consumers’ desires to get specific channels and not be forced to get others. He pursued that and he would continue as a general matter to look at these issues in that way. You don’t want markets that show unusual concentrations of power on any side of the equation.”

Unlike his Democratic rival, McCain sees no need to foster advancements in government’s use of technology through the creation of a new cabinet-level national CTO. “The senator wants to have an effective government and I don’t think making a new president appointment and adding a layer to the federal government is a solution to that,” Holtz-Eakin said.

According to Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas, less than 1% of Comcast's customers exceed this cap, with the median usage pegged at 2 to 3 GB per month. Comcast says that 250 GB is equivalent to downloading 125 standard definition movies or 62,500 songs.

This delineation, however, has nothing to do with Comcast's impending implementation of a "protocol agnostic" network management program that has been spurred by the controversy surrounding Comcast's P2P throttling initiatives. The 250 GB cap is merely a way of making transparent what has been company practice for years; namely to pull the plug on bandwidth "hogs."

Comcast came under fire for cutting off "excessive" bandwidth consumers without first informing them what constitutes excessive usage. The 250 GB, now incorporated into Comcast's acceptable use policy, makes explicit what has been implicit all along.

Customers who exceed the 250 GB limit will get notified of this fact in their monthly bills, Comcast's Douglas says. Comcast won't provide a monitoring tool so that users can track their bandwidth consumption levels. Such heavy users "will know what tools exist" for tracking consumption. "More than 99% of our customers don’t need such a tool," according to Douglas.

Customers who exceed the limit will also be given the option of upgrading to a commercial tier of service, typically costing many times over the monthly rate charged for residential broadband service. Contrary to earlier reports, Comcast won't charge extra fees on a metered basis if a customer exceeds the caps although "that is something we're looking at," Douglas says.

Even if only 1% of Comcast's customers could hit the cap's limits, every customer could theoretically be affected by the protocol agnostic management plan Comcast is developing. "They're both important programs for Comcast for how we manage our network and whether our customers have a good experience," according to Douglas, although the 250 GB cap is a "totally different topic."

So, under the protocol agnostic network management program, which is still under development, users could face bandwidth constraints as traffic on a congested network gets slowed down. Once the congestion subsides, the constraints would be lifted.

Comcast has yet to specify what those real-time bandwidth constraints might be. Trials of protocol agnostic management methods are currently underway but "we’re committed to getting at that technique by the end of the year," Douglas says.

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 part of the company's shift to a protocol agnostic network management scheme.

According to sources, customers who exceed this limit will be charged $15 for each 10 GB over the cap. Although consumer advocates and cap foes are likely to raise a ruckus over this limitation, in reality it's a generous cap, at least by current bandwidth usage standards. Moreover, it's a huge improvement over some of the bandwidth caps being tested or implemented (check out the crazy low limits in place at Sunflower Broadband) and it certainly beats Comcast's current practice of throttling P2P applications.

More troubling to me is something else that Karl reports -- there has also been "consideration of a new system whereby users who received more than four DMCA letters in a twelve month period potentially faced account suspension." Hollywood and the record industry have been pressuring broadband providers to carry their water both domestically and internationally, urging these third parties to cut off customers who are alleged to have violated copyright laws.

In the meantime, more details about Comcast's broadband caps should be forthcoming in the form of a press release, according to the report. I've got an email into Comcast and will provide more details if I hear anything.

Update: I just got off the phone with spokesman Charlie Douglas who said the new policy (spelled out here), aimed at extreme users, doesn't say anything about disconnecting customers who receive DMCA notices. More on the specified cap in a separate post.

If you watch the video, you'll see that Greenwald kept moving farther and farther away from the event, as instructed by security guards, but the distance wasn't enough. The cops were called to push Greenwald even farther away from the party - they intimated that Greenwald could be arrested for violating the law.

In the second incident, an ABC producer was actually arrested for taking pictures on a public sidewalk outside the Brown Palace Hotel. He has been charged with trespass, interference, and failure to follow a lawful order because he was taking pictures of Democratic Senators and big donors leaving a meeting.

But it's somehow unseemly for Democrats to be involved in calling the police to harass or arrest journalists -- more disquieting than if Republicans were to do the same thing. We expect more tightly controlled communications from Republicans, particularly after eight years of a totally scripted Bush Administration.

I would also argue that such heavy-handed tactics are the least effective way of managing the press. Couldn't a savvy PR person or seasoned pol have diffused the situation by negotiating with the journalists or dangling promises of even better material or even inviting the reporters for free rounds of drinks (a tried but true method that works almost every time)?

In any event, calling the cops on reporters is what I would call a PR technique of last resort. Yet it has happened at least twice so far at the convention in Denver. Let's hope someone smart figures out some other way of dealing with annoying reporters.

The real value of actually attending the big show is networking, behind-the-scenes gossip and, most of all, partying. And unlike regular political campaigns, the big parties' national conventions aren't subject to FEC donation limits, so special interests and corporate lobbyists can open the money spigots to throw some pretty impressive parties, receptions and other events.

Corporations, unions and lobbyists have already raised $112 million to fund the two major conventions, with most of that money going for...good times. Despite recent campaign finance reform laws, which generally bar lawmakers from accepting meals or gifts from special interests, loopholes exist (finger food is OK, entertainment is fine so long as 24 non-Congressional employees are there, etc. ) that will allow sponsors to schmooze with national legislators and other personages at the conventions.

Among some of the biggest sponsors at the Democratic National Convention are telecom, tech and media giants. Colorado-based Qwest is the single biggest corporate sponsor at $6 million and the controversial Kanye West concert, a highlight of the convention, is funded by the RIAA.

However, no comprehensive list of convention sponsors is available and accurate records of who paid what won't be available for months. So, I scanned available resources (mostly an excellent table produced by the Campaign Finance Institute) and came up with the following list of tech, telecom and media giants who are spending big in Denver:

This list is by no means comprehensive. For one thing, many executives at tech, telecom or media companies could be big donors, but the data on those contributions won't be out for months. For another thing, this list doesn't include all the related PACs that might be footing bills.

If I'm missing anyone, let me know.

For folks (like me) who have for years sat through countless demos by tech giants and start-ups alike which display exactly this kind of Internet connectivity on TV sets, an announcement like this generates this response: Oh brother, not another effort to bring the Internet to TV sets. But two things about the Widget Channel seem promising.

First, the effort has garnered a lot of interesting partners including Blockbuster, CBS Interactive, CinemaNow, Cinequest, Disney-ABC Television Group, eBay, GE, Group M, Joost, MTV, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Schematic, Showtime, Toshiba and Twitter. More importantly, the nation's top cable company, Comcast, has jumped aboard, promising to test the Widget Channel by the first half of 2009 on Comcast's interactive programming guide using Tru2Way technology.

But great partners alone won't cut the mustard. Just ask Microsoft -- its interactive TV platforms do what the Widget Channel does and much more and the software giant has had dozens of blue-chip partners over the years, all to no avail.

But don't look for Internet widgets on your TV set anytime soon. Aside from the fact that there are a lot of bodies scattered along the Internet TV highway, the widgets will only work on devices (set-tops, digital TVs, DVD players, etc.) that come embedded with the Intel chips. I'm not sure about the pricing, but it's likely that the new silicon will raise the cost/unit for these devices, which means later-rather-than-sooner adoption.

The FCC confidently concludes that Comcast's practice is discriminatory and hence runs afoul of its 1995 2005 Internet policy statement.

The record leaves no doubt that Comcast’s network management practices discriminate among applications and protocols rather than treating all equally. To reiterate: Comcast has deployed equipment across its networks that monitors its customers’ TCP connections using deep packet inspection to determine how many connections are peer-to-peer uploads. When Comcast judges that there are too many peer-to-peer uploads in a given area, Comcast’s equipment terminates some of those connections by sending RST [reset] packets.

Comcast's selective interference of Internet traffic stops consumers from using applications of their choice and discourages the development of technologies that can maximize users' control over the information they want to receive, more violations of the FCC's Internet policy, the order concludes.

As to whether this interference constitutes reasonable network management, which is permitted under the policy, the FCC sees no rationale for the throttling and accuses Comcast of "verbal gymnastics" to justify the practice.

Comcast tries to avoid this result by arguing that it only delays peer-to-peer applications, and that the Internet Policy Statement, properly read, prohibits the blocking of user applications and content, but not mere delays. We do not agree with Comcast’s characterization and instead find that the company has engaged in blocking. As one expert explains: “It is never correct to say that Comcast has delayed P2P packets or P2P sessions, because the P2P traffic will never flow again unless the end system initiates a new session to the same device, even though it now believes that device is unable to continue a transfer. The argument that terminating a P2P session is only delaying because a device may attempt to initiate a new session some time later is absurd. By this incorrect argument, there is no such thing as call blocking; there is only delaying.

The FCC all but calls Comcast a liar when recounting the history of the controversy that led to this order.

When first confronted with these press reports [of P2P problems on Comcast's network], Comcast -- the nation’s second largest provider of broadband Internet access services -- misleadingly disclaimed any responsibility for the customers’ problems...[but following tests by the AP] Comcast changed its account and admitted that it targets peer-to-peer traffic for interference.

Even though Comcast claimed that it implemented this interference policy during periods of heavy congestion, "Comcast changed its story yet again" after being confronted with contradictory evidence, the order states, admitting that its P2P management is triggered regardless of the level of overall network congestion.

The FCC also accuses Comcast of being slippery when it comes to notifying customers of its network management practices. Comcast contends that its Terms of Use statement informs consumers that there might be upstream and downstream rate limitations and that this constitutes notification. Not so fast, the FCC argues. "Comcast’s claim that it has always disclosed its network management practices to its customers is simply untrue," the order states, adding that no one can infer from this language that P2P traffic could get throttled.

Although Comcast ultimately revised its Terms of Use to include more specific information about P2P, "Comcast’s first reaction to allegations of discriminatory treatment was not honesty, but at best misdirection and obfuscation. If Comcast actually believed its practices were reasonable, it should not have behaved in this manner," the order states.

More than half of the order is devoted to whether the FCC has legal jurisdiction to order Comcast to stop its P2P practices and force the operator to offer details about its replacement method for dealing with Internet traffic, a so-called "protocol agnostic" management system. Comcast has argued, and independent communications attorneys tend to agree, that absent a clear-cut Congressional mandate or some other strong legal directive, the FCC doesn't have the authority to impose regulatory obligations related to Internet service providers.

The FCC offers a list of complex, and often attenuated, legal rationales for why it does indeed have the authority to issue such an order, starting with the fact that Internet provisions in the 1996 Telecom Act were inscribed into section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934, "the very same Act that established this Commission as the federal agency entrusted with “regulating interstate and foreign commerce in communication by wire."

Aside from this extremely broad Section 230 authority, the FCC cites six other separate statutory provisions that gives it leeway to adopt regulations related to the Internet:

---Section 1 of the Communications Act, which instructs the FCC to make communications services as widely available as possible at reasonable prices;

---Section 201 of the Act, which makes unlawful common carrier practices that pump up prices -- the FCC says Comcast is imposing costs on DSL providers by diverting P2P traffic away from its own networks;

---Section 706 of the Act, which directs the FCC to encourage deployment of advanced communications services -- the FCC says Comcast is limiting the development of P2P and perhaps retarding the take-rate for broadband services;

---Section 256 of the Act, which promotes accessiblity to public telecommunications networks -- the FCC says that even though Comcast's cable plant is not necessarily a public telecom network, it interconnects with public networks;

---Section 257 of the Act, which mandates ongoing review to ensure that entrepreneurs don't face market barriers in providing telecom and information services -- the FCC says that entrepreneurs face obstacles when they don't know what Comcast is doing regarding network management; and

---Section 601 of the Act, which seeks to assure that cable operators provide the widest possible diversity of information sources -- the FCC says that order will allow Comcast customers to access a greater diversity of information.

As to whether the FCC can act without first implementing rules -- Comcast says that the Commission must go through an orderly rulemaking process first -- the Commission claims that the courts have upheld its power to adjudicate disputes even when no rules are in place.

Consumer groups hailed the decision has a breakthrough that should protect Internet users from broadband provider abuses. Free Press (which filed the original complaint that led to this decision) Policy Director Ben Scott said "This order marks a major milestone in Internet policy. For years, the FCC declared that it would take action against any Internet service provider caught violating the online rights guaranteed by the agency. Today, the commission has delivered on that promise."

Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn said "We commend the Commission for stepping in to preserve the public interest and addressing the substantial threat posed by Comcast’s conduct to the open character of the Internet."

Comcast, on the other hand, is mulling over its legal options, particularly the decision over whether it should appeal the order, although it's almost certain that Comcast will fight the FCC in the appeals court. For now, however, the company is saying nothing. "We are examining the order and evaluating our options," spokeswoman Sena Fitzmaurice said.

The big fears about using white spaces for broadband services, concerns mostly trumped up mostly by TV broadcasters and professional sports, is whether white space wireless devices would interfere with broadcast TV transmissions and wireless microphones -- Schatz offers some interesting color on a recent field test of prototype devices at the Redskins' FedEx Stadium.

The second thing that raises the profile of white spaces is Google's launch of a supposed public interest initiative called Free the Airwaves, which the search giant dubs a "call for action for everyday users."

But, like Om Malik, I'm suspicious of Google's motives in launching the Free the Airwaves campaign. My antenna go up even higher given the fact that FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is moving in lock-step with Google as is evident in the fortuitously timed WSJ article. Are we being messed with somehow? That's the vague sense that I have.

Like Om, I long ago stopped believing in the “Google for good” mantra. Still, it makes a lot of sense to open up the airwaves for more robust wireless broadband services.

Maybe we'll find out more today after Kevin Martin hosts a press briefing on the digital TV transition at 1 pm ET today at the Newseum (you can watch it live on C-SPAN), which is the third thing that made me think that the WSJ article and Google's announcement are part of a slick campaign of some kind.

Update: My friend and top-notch engineering scientist Jeff Krauss sent me a note saying that he witnessed two of the interference tests and found, as did the FCC, that the unlicensed devices caused interference for cable subscribers. Here's his report.

CNET's Declan McCullagh has this illuminating investigative article about a "secret" DC lobbying organization called the Law and Media Group (LMG), which, among other things, has been active in placing op-eds in various publications on behalf of its clients, most notably Comcast and Microsoft.

It's not illuminating that either company would hire a "public affairs" firm to help it sway opinion with ghost-written editorials placed by seemingly non-affiliated individuals (a pro-Comcast editorial published in the Harvard Crimson and ostensibly written by a Boston area community organizer was probably penned by an LMG staffer) or form a phony coalition (the Corn Growers Association suddenly opposed a Yahoo-Google ad pact).

Even more interesting is how dogged McCullagh has been in uncovering LMG's efforts. He, like me and I suspect many other writers and bloggers, probably received dozens of emails, phone calls and friendly political pitches from LMG over the past few years. This is nothing new in the political game -- I can name a half dozen firms that have done the same thing on behalf of (mostly corporate) clients.

The Corn Growers alliance with Microsoft seemed to have pushed him over the edge. Back in June Declan wrote a post that traced an anti-Google Corn Growers Association letter back to LMG through metadata contained in a PDF sent to reporters, which raises the most interesting aspect of the article: a sophisticated lobbying firm hoping to leave no traces of its behind-the-scenes manuever left a giant digital thumbprint on an article mailed to the press.

As any first-year litigator now knows, if you don't scrub a electronic document of its metadata, you risk handing an adversary a boatload of potentially damaging information, including who wrote it, when they wrote it, on what machine they wrote it and much more. It's ironic that a deft political organization working on behalf of high-tech clients got tripped up by something so technologically simple.

Aside from this digital discovery object lesson for everybody involved in politics, McCullagh's piece is a fascinating, albeit unsurprising, examination of the stealth employed when companies try to shape public opinion about political matters.

During the quarter, the top cable companies combined added a net 669,375 new broadband customers, fully four times the 155,000 net broadband customers added by the top telcos combined. Cable's share of all the companies' (cable + telco) net broadband customer gains was 81%, up sharply from cable's 56% share of the growth during Q1 08 and only 44% share in Q2 07.

Both cable and phone companies have acknowledged the sudden disparity between cable and telco broadband growth rates. Cable operators say that speed, not price, is the ultimate killer app and DSL just can't compete. It's the new dial-up.

Phone companies say that a weak economy and a marketing pullback hit them harder than expected. It's hard to tell at this stage just what really happened during the quarter, although I tend to think that the telco broadband price war, which started in 2003, has, in fact, played itself out.

Customers who hopped on board for $12.95/month DSL are now frustrated by the speed limitations and don't view low DSL prices as a bargain. Plus, AT&T and Verizon seemed consumed with their high-stakes, higher-margin wireless services during the quarter, to the detriment of double-play and triple-play marketing.

Whatever the case may be, if this disparity keeps up, phone companies could soon actually lose broadband customers.

(Download our handy spreadsheet that details the current and historical broadband subscriber data for the top nine cable companies and top four telcos. The data is free although registration is required.)

The media giant issued its Q2 08 earnings results this morning showing, once again, that AOL isn't getting any healthier despite billions of dollars in accquisitions (Advertising.com, Bebo and others) all centered on propping up the perpetually failing online unit. During the quarter, AOL continued to lose access subscribers, although as CEO Jeff Bewkes pointed out during the company's earnings call, the 604,000 net subscribers lost is the lowest loss level since AOL jettisoned its subscriber model.

AOL's subscriber loss was expected, but the online unit continued to post deteriorating ad revenues amidst an online ad boom and despite the elaborate efforts by Time Warner management to create a one-stop ad shop in its complex Platform A initiative. During the quarter, AOL generated $430 million in ad revenue, a quarter-to-quarter decline of 11%.

Virtually nothing else about AOL was positive. Cash flow dropped 25% year-over-year to $350 million while operating income tumbled 74% to $230 million.

It's no surprise, then, that Bewkes hinted that AOL itself, as opposed to just its access business, may be on the sales block. Announcing that there would be three separate units inside Time Warner to deal with AOL -- one for the access businesses, one for the "audience" businesses and one to support both of those units -- Bewkes said "we have the opportunity to do something strategic [ed. note: strategic=sales] with either of these businesses today."

During the quarter, TWC added a net 201,000 high-speed subscribers, a run-rate about 7% higher than the net adds during Q2 07 and a gain that constituted "more net adds that the two largest phone companies combined even through their geographic footprint is three times the size of ours," CEO Glenn Britt said during the company's earnings call. "The clear implication is that we’re continuing to take residential broadband share." By quarter's end, TWC served 8.125 million high-speed customers, representing almost 31% penetration.

Despite its maturity, Time Warner Cable's digital voice service also added more net new customers than it did during the year-ago quarter. TWC gained 251,000 net new residential voice customers during the quarter, up from the 241,000 net new subs. reported for Q2 07. At the end of the quarter, Time Warner served 3.4 million voice customers, representing 13% of homes passed.

Even the very mature digital TV service grew at an accelerated year-over-year rate, with TWC adding 200,000 net new digital customers, up 8.7% from the net digital adds during Q2 07. By the end of Q2 08, 63% of TWC's basic customers were purchasing digital TV.

In contrast to this healthy service growth was the loss of 9,000 core video subscribers, reversing the strong net basic customer gain during Q1 08 but still down from the 57,000 basic subscriber loss during the year-ago quarter.

Total cable revenues grew by nearly 14% year-over-year to $4.3 billion, while cash flow advanced by only 9% to $1.57 billion due to restructuring charges related to its spin-off from parent company Time Warner Inc. and a Q2 loss on cable systems held for sale. Even with the solid fundamentals, Time Warner Cable cut its earnings outlook for the year due to ongoing restructuring charges and the system loss.

During the call, company execs discussed Cablevision's big appeals court win that permits the fellow operator to proceed with its networked DVR service. Time Warner Cable is one of the pioneers of networked DVR service and currently offers a service, Start-Over, that is rooted in the concept.

"We’ve said for a long time that centralized network DVR is a better solution than having hard drives in everybody’s homes. If this particular court case becomes law, we will develop that," Britt said. But don't look for immediate launch of a networked DVR option -- legal challenges still lie ahead and "this is all a lot more complicated than the headlines," he added.

(Download easy-to-digest, detailed current and historical data on Time Warner Cable at our corporate web site here. The data is free although registration is required.)

During the quarter, Insight, which serves around 700,000 core video customers in Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio, accelerated its growth in basic, digital, high-speed and voice customers. Insight added a net 3,800 basic customers, up from the 2,640 net adds during the year-ago quarter, to wrap up Q2 with 692,800 basic subscribers, representing around 53% of homes passed.

High-speed data advanced to 12,400, up from 11,300 net broadband adds during Q2 07, giving Insight 424,600 total broadband subscribers, representing 33% of broadband-enabled homes passed, by quarter's end.

Telephony net adds climbed to 18,700, up from the 10,500 net voice service adds during the year-ago quarter. Insight ended the quarter with 230,300 voice subscribers, representing a 19% penetration rate.

Insight's revenues rose 16% year-over-year to $214.8 million, while cash flow grew by 15% to $17 million.

Insight is the third operator in a row to post healthy Q2 08 customer gains (and is the only cable operator so far to post accelerating gains across the board) in the face of what should be market share erosion as phone companies, specifically AT&T and Verizon, ramp up their video competition initiatives. Not only have these cable operators seemingly checked the telco incursions into their core video businesses, but they have also continued to make healthy inroads into the phone companies' own core voice businesses while maintaing strong growth momentum in high-speed data subscriptions even as growth in telco-delivered broadband services has dramatically dropped.

The court said that even though Cablevision set up a complex system that supports the remote recording, that system is basically akin to a VCR, the manufacturers of which were held free from infringment liability in the Supreme Court's landmark Sony Betamax case. Writing for the court, Judge John M. Walker said that "We do not believe that an RS-DVR customer is sufficiently distinguishable from a VCR user to impose liability as a direct infringer on a different party for copies that are made automatically upon that customer’s command."

Here, by selling access to a system that automatically produces copies on command, Cablevision more closely resembles a store proprietor who charges customers to use a photocopier on his premises, and it seems incorrect to say, without more, that such a proprietor “makes” any copies when his machines are actually operated by his customers.

But, the court did seem to hold open the idea that Cablevision's contribution to the creation of an infringing copy is so great that it might, in some other case with different arguments, be held liable for direct infringement. Walker wrote:

We need not decide today whether one’s contribution to the creation of an infringing copy may be so great that it warrants holding that party directly liable for the infringement, even though another party has actually made the copy. We conclude only that on the facts of this case, copies produced by the RS-DVR system are “made” by the RS-DVR customer, and Cablevision’s contribution to this reproduction by providing the system does not warrant the imposition of direct liability.

The court also held open the door that Hollywood could arge that the RS-DVR is responsible for contributory, as opposed to direct, infringement.

We do not address whether such a network operator would be able to escape any other form of copyright liability, such as liability for unauthorized reproductions or liability for contributory infringement.

Nevertheless, the decision was decisively in favor of the networked DVR and Cablevision hailed it as a victory for consumers. "This is a tremendous victory for consumers, which will allow us to make DVRs available to many more people, faster and less expensively than would otherwise be possible," Cablevision COO Tom Rutledge said in a statement.

Despite this, EchoStar posted a 9% year-over-year rise in subscriber-related revenue due to rising average revenue per subscriber and a nearly 50% hike in net income, thanks to cost-cutting. Subscriber revenue rose to $2.88 billion, up from $2.76 billion a year ago and net income jumped to $335.86 million, up from $224.19 million.