Verizon DSL?

Yay. It's like 1999 in here. :)

space: 1999 ?

Google hits high on reports of video service

Google Inc. continued its New Year's stock run-up on Thursday, hitting a new high amid reports that it is about to take on Apple Computer Inc. with an Internet video service.

The Mountain View-based Internet search giant hasn't confirmed the reports that first surfaced in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday.

The Journal and others say Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) will unveil a pay-per-download video service on Friday, to be known as the Google Video Store.

Initial content on the service reportedly will include CBS shows, Sony BMG music videos and content from the National Basketball Association.

The company will also reportedly announce Google Pack, downloadable software from Google and other companies.

The Journal quoted unnamed sources saying the software will include the open-source Firefox Web browser, a version of Norton AntiVirus software from Symantec Corp. (NASDAQ: SYMC), Adobe Systems Inc.'s (NASDAQ: ADBE) Reader software, RealNetworks Inc.'s (NASDAQ: RNWK) RealPlayer multimedia software, Trillian instant-messaging software from Cerulean Studios and Lavasoft AB's Ad-Aware antispyware software.

Google stock finished Thursday up $6, or 1.35 percent, to $451.24.

BUSINESS

Mobile TV

A fuzzy picture

Jan 5th 2006
From The Economist print edition


Mobile TV is comingâ??but how the market will develop is still unclear


â??THIS is a really exciting timeâ??a new era is starting,â? says Peter Bazalgette, the chief creative officer of Endemol, the television company behind â??Big Brotherâ? and other popular shows. He is referring to the upsurge of interest in mobile television, a nascent industry at the intersection of telecoms and media which offers new opportunities to device-makers, content producers and mobile-network operators. And he is far from alone in his enthusiasm.

Already, many mobile operators offer a selection of television channels or individual shows, which are â??streamedâ? across their third-generation (3G) networks. In South Korea, television is also sent to mobile phones via satellite and terrestrial broadcast networks, which is far more efficient than sending video across mobile networks; similar broadcasts will begin in Japan in April. In Europe, the Italian arm of 3, a mobile operator, recently acquired Canale 7, a television channel, with a view to launching mobile-TV broadcasts in Italy in the second half of 2006. Similar mobile-TV networks will also be built in Finland and America, and are being tested in many other countries.


Meanwhile, Apple Computer, which launched a video-capable version of its iPod portable music-player in October, is striking deals with television networks to expand the range of shows that can be purchased for viewing on the device, including â??Lostâ?, â??Desperate Housewivesâ? and â??Law & Orderâ?. TiVo, maker of the pioneering personal video recorder (PVR), says it plans to enable subscribers to download recorded shows on to iPods and other portable devices for viewing on the move. And mobile TV was one of the big trends at the world's largest technology fair, the Consumer Electronics Show, which took place in Las Vegas this week.

Despite all this activity, however, the prospects for mobile TV are unclear. For a start, nobody really knows if consumers will pay for it, though surveys suggest they like the idea. Informa, a consultancy, says there will be 125m mobile-TV users by 2010. But many other mobile technologies inspired high hopes and then failed to live up to expectations. And even if people do want TV on the move, there is further uncertainty in three areas: technology, business models and the content itself.


Tuning in

At the moment, mobile TV is mostly streamed over 3G networks. But sending an individual data stream to each viewer is inefficient and will be unsustainable in the long run if mobile TV takes off. So the general consensus is that 3G streaming is a prelude to the construction of dedicated mobile-TV broadcast networks, which transmit digital TV signals on entirely different frequencies to those used for voice and data. There are three main standards: DVB-H, favoured in Europe; DMB, which has been adopted in South Korea and Japan; and MediaFLO, which is being rolled out in America. Watching TV using any of these technologies requires a TV-capable handset, of course. Although several new models were unveiled in Las Vegas this week, no such handsets are yet available in Europe or America, and few in Asia.

In contrast, watching downloaded TV programmes on an iPod or other portable video player is already possible today. And unlike a programme streamed over 3G or broadcast via a dedicated mobile-TV network, shows stored on an iPod can be watched on an underground train or in regions with patchy network coverage. That suggests that some shows (such as drama) better suit the download model, while others (such as live news, sports or reality shows) are better suited to real-time transmission, notes Michelle de Lussanet of Forrester, a consultancy. The two approaches will probably co-exist. Future iPods may be able to receive real-time broadcasts, while mobile handsets will be able to store broadcast content or download it from PCs or PVRs for later viewing.

Just as there are several competing mobile-TV technologies, there are also many possible business models. Mobile operators might choose to build their own mobile-TV broadcast networks; or they could form a consortium and build a shared network; or existing broadcasters could build such networks. Some channels will be given away for free, while others are for paying subscribers only. The outcome will vary from country to country, depending on the regulatory environment and the availability of spectrum. In Italy, 3 bought Canale 7 to get its hands on its spectrum and its broadcaster's licence; in Britain, Finland and America, the scarcity of spectrum makes shared networks most likely.

The big question is whether the broadcasters and mobile operators can agree how to divide the spoils, assuming there are any. Broadcasters own the content, but mobile operators generally control the handsets, and they do not always see eye to eye. In South Korea, a consortium of broadcasters launched a free-to-air DMB network last month, but the country's mobile operators were reluctant to provide their users with handsets able to receive the broadcasts, since they were unwilling to undermine the prospects for their own subscription-based mobile-TV services.

Then there is the question of who will fund the production of mobile-TV content: broadcasters, operators or advertisers? Again, the answer is probably â??all of the aboveâ?. Endemol's new mobile-TV division is talking to both operators and broadcasters about the commissioning of new shows, says Mr Bazalgette. But operators are newcomers to the world of television. Existing broadcasters have the advantage that they can use traditional TV to promote mobile content. But for operators, building mobile-only TV franchises will not be easy. Another problem is that mobile operators have yet to work out how to deal with advertisers. When Anheuser-Busch, a big drinks company, approached British operators about placing mobile-TV advertising, says Ms de Lussanet, it was passed back and forth between their technical and marketing departments.

Assuming the technology and the business models can be sorted out, there is still the tricky matter of content. At the moment most mobile-TV content is simply re-broadcasts of traditional channels, though in some cases programmes have been re-edited for mobile transmission. But the medium opens up many new possibilities, such as live streaming of raw material (as Endemol has successfully done with â??Big Brotherâ?), mobile-only â??behind the scenesâ? content that complements traditional broadcasts, and entirely new, short-form programmes designed specifically for mobile transmission.

Since mobile phones are two-way, interactive devices, other possibilities include quiz shows in which the viewers are also the contestants, and programmes based on â??viewer-generatedâ? content. 3, for example, has a popular service called â??See Me TVâ? which allows subscribers to upload short video clips. The author of the clip receives a small payment (1p in Britain, for example) each time the clip is viewed.

The potential for mobile TV is vast, in shortâ??but so is the degree of uncertainty over how it should actually be put into practice. Most observers do not expect widespread adoption of mobile TV, if it comes at all, until 2008 at the earliest, since building the required ecosystem of technology, partnerships and content will take some time. Stay tuned.

i'm currently pounding my head on my desk… apparently verizon cannot even start the switch without me first cancelling my existing DSL, meaning it could be 7-10 business days for them to get their act together. plus, i've heard cancelling DSL can be a real nightmare thus putting me in limbo even longer. bleech!

Originally posted by vansmack:

I burn a lot of TV shows to DVD-RW to share with friends who don't have TiVo, but I erase them when they're done. Only a few things have I ever burned to DVD for permament archive:

- Man U's 1999 Champions League Final
- The Austin City Limits Music Series
- A collection of late night talk show performances by bands that I enjoyed
- A few other live music shows/performances that I enjoyed over the past 2 years

I added Journey - Live in Houston 1981: Escape Tour to my list of permanent burns.

Thank you VH1 Classic.

Originally posted by kosmo vinyl:
i'm currently pounding my head on my desk… apparently verizon cannot even start the switch without me first cancelling my existing DSL, meaning it could be 7-10 business days for them to get their act together. plus, i've heard cancelling DSL can be a real nightmare thus putting me in limbo even longer. bleech!

who are you with now? I had speakeasy dsl in dc and cancellation was a simple phone call

I'm with Earthlink which justs resells Covad same as Speakeasy, elsewhere I've see that there can be miscommunication about removing DSL from a phoneline, i.e. orders set-in and not followed up on, or orders only partially completed, etc.

i want fios so badly. apparently a school 5 blocks east of here has it and there's a verizon central office 2 blocks west of here. according to the check on verizon's website, though, it's not available here!?

hopefully that'll change very soon.
the speed/cost ratio for fios is much better than comcast and i've had really crappy service from comcast (previously at&t, and before that mediaone – through all the mergers/buyouts), so i'm looking forward to something new.

i want fios too, which is partly why i'm considering the switch, because i can switch from dsl to fios without cancellation. however, if it means pulling my remaining hairs out waiting for two behemoth co's to get thier collective acts together…

i'm a moron at the computer, and i was really amazed by how fast and easy the installation went.
also, haveing just spent a year paying almost 24/month for dial-up from AOL, i find the 14.99 verizon deal heavenly.
and fairly reliable.
that's not to say there aren't moments when it's sloggy, but it's a good deal.
i was almost motivated to write to verizon and commend them on it, actually.

January 15, 2006
Digital Domain

Hey, Baby Bells: Information Still Wants to Be Free
By RANDALL STROSS

AT the top of my wish list for next year's Consumer Electronics Show is this: the introduction of broadband service across the country that is as up to date as that 103-inch flat-screen monitor just introduced by Panasonic. The digital lifestyle I see portrayed so alluringly in ads is not possible when the Internet plumbing in our homes is as pitiful as it is. The broadband carriers that we have today provide service that attains negative perfection: low speeds at high prices.

It gets worse. Now these same carriers - led by Verizon Communications and BellSouth - want to create entirely new categories of fees that risk destroying the anyone-can-publish culture of the Internet. And they are lobbying for legislative protection of their meddling with the Internet content that runs through their pipes. These are not good ideas.

Slow broadband seems to be our cursed lot. Until we get an upgrade - or rather an upgrade to an upgrade - the only Americans who will enjoy truly fast and inexpensive service will be those who leave the country. In California, Comcast cable broadband provides top download speeds of 6 megabits a second for a little more than $50 a month. That falls well short, however, of Verizon's 15-megabit fiber-based service offered on the East Coast at about the same price. But what about the 100-megabit service in Japan for $25 month? And better, much better: Stockholm's one-gigabit service - that is, 1,000 megabits, or more than 1,300 times faster than Verizon's entry-level DSL service - for less than 100 euros, or $120, a month.

One-gigabit service is not in the offing in the United States. What the network carriers seem most determined to sell is a premium form of Internet service that offers a tantalizing prospect of faster, more reliable delivery - but only if providers like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft pay a new charge for special delivery of their content. (That charge, by the way, would be in addition to the regular bandwidth-based Internet connection charges that their carriers already levy.)

An executive vice president of Verizon, for example, said last week that the proliferation of video programs offered via the Internet opens a new opportunity for his company: a new class of premium online delivery for Web sites wishing to pay extra to give smooth video streams to their customers in the Verizon service area. The executive, Thomas J. Tauke, said that a fast lane for premium content providers would not reduce the quality of regular service for everyone else, and that sites could choose not to sign up without suffering retribution. "To the best of my knowledge," he said, "there's no negative."

From the consumer's perspective, given the dismal state of the status quo, shouldn't any service improvement be welcomed? The short answer is: not necessarily.

For one thing, the occasional need for a preferential fast lane for streaming video - that is, moving pictures displayed as fast as they arrive, rather than downloaded first and played from memory - exists in the United States only because our standard broadband speeds are so slow. Were we ever to become a nation with networks supporting gigabit service, streaming video would not require special handling.

Perhaps more important, the superabundance of content in the Internet's ecosystem is best explained by its organizing principle of "network neutrality." The phrase refers to the way the Internet welcomes everyone who wishes to post content. Consumers, in turn, enjoy limitless choices. Rather than having network operators select content providers on our behalf - the philosophy of the local cable company - the Internet allows all of us to act as our own network programmers, serving a demographic of just one person.

Today, the network carrier has a minor, entirely neutral role in this system - providing the pipe for the bits that move the last miles to the home. It has no say about where those bits happened to have originated. Any proposed change in its role should be examined carefully, especially if the change entails expanding the carrier's power to pick and choose where bits come from - a power that has the potential to abrogate network neutrality.

This should be taken into account when Baby Bells say they need to extract more revenue from their networks in order to finance service improvements. Consumers will pay one way or the other, whether directly, as Internet access fees, or indirectly, as charges when a content company opts for special delivery and passes along its increased costs to its customers. It would be better for the network carriers to continue to do as they have, by charging higher rates for higher bandwidth. (Sign me up for that one-gigabit service.)

Left unmentioned in Verizon's pitch is the concentration of power that it enjoys in its service area, which would allow it to ignore the equal-access principle whenever it wishes. We are asked to take on faith that it and the other telephone companies with similar plans will handle ordinary network traffic with the same care they would show if they had not begun parallel businesses for the carriage trade. How likely is that?

Vinton G. Cerf has as good a claim as anyone to being the "father" of the Internet - he was the co-author in the 1970's of key protocols that define it. He worked for many years at MCI and joined Google last year. After hearing a description of Verizon's contemplated offering of a premium delivery service for video, he was skeptical that Verizon and other broadband carriers, would adhere to promises to keep their networks open.

Mr. Cerf said that back in the 1990's, when the Web arrived, consumers could choose from among hundreds of dial-up service providers, without geographical constraints. But "as broadband developed," he added, "the set of choices telescoped to zero, one or two," and the lack of choice means that "we now have a serious issue on our hands."

Woe to us all if the Internet's content is limited by the companies who also handle the plumbing. "The Future of Ideas," by Lawrence Lessig (Random House, 2001), shows how innovation and creativity associated with the Internet are the byproducts of its openness, its role as a commons that is accessible, by design, to all. Professor Lessig, who teaches law at Stanford, said last week that even now, broadband carriers have failed to demonstrate their commitment to the principle of network neutrality. "They've fought it at each stage," he said, "and they have never embraced the principle."

An illustration of his point popped up the same day. In an interview, William L. Smith, the chief technology officer at BellSouth, described to me his company's trial offering in West Palm Beach, Fla., last year of a speedy download service for Movielink content. When asked whether BellSouth would offer its special service on an exclusive basis to a particular content site and agree to exclude the sponsor's rivals, he did not hesitate in treating the question as a matter of simply settling on the right price. The N.F.L. and Nascar strike exclusive distribution deals, he said. Why not network carriers?

The largest Internet companies are the ones that could easily afford whatever terms the carriers demand for exclusive deals that would lock out smaller rivals and new entrants. But they have not done special deals with the carriers and instead have joined together to try to persuade Congress to protect the principle of network neutrality and prevent the Bells from striking exclusive deals with anyone. Last November, Amazon, eBay, Microsoft and Google, among others, formally registered their concern with a House committee that is revising the basic telecommunications law; they noted that a draft version of the bill failed to make network neutrality a matter of policy without exception. Whether the committee has responded positively to the suggestions from the Internet players should be known soon.

IN his debut keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show two weeks ago, one of Google's founders, Larry Page, credited the "dreamers in universities" who had had the foresight to create a network system without gatekeepers, which made it "maximally flexible" to permit the unplanned appearance of the World Wide Web. That, in turn, had made possible the unplanned appearance of Google.

More unplanned appearances will follow - but only if the ecosystem is protected from tromping telephone companies that are genetically incapable of understanding "maximally flexible."

Randall Stross is a historian and author based in Silicon Valley. E-mail:ddomain@nytimes.com.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/15/business/yourmoney/15digi.html?ex=1294981200&en=70e576508126d648&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Scratch what I said. It's gone down quite a few times since Dec. Also, seems to time out.

Originally posted by MTB-Markie:
I wonder what BBC will eventually do. In the UK you pay a license fee, which is essentilly a subscription payment. It would be great to watch good T.V. again.

Markie, doesn't look good for folks in the US, if Sky is any indication:

If youâ??re a Sky digital customer already subscribing to Sky Sports 1&2 or Sky Movies 1&2 you can now get an amazing new service called â??Sky by broadbandâ?? at no additional cost.

Sky Movies on your PC

On â??Sky by broadbandâ?? thereâ??s a choice of hundreds of films available to download, ranging from classics like The Hustler to recent Hollywood blockbusters including I, Robot, Layer Cake, The Girl Next Door and Garfield.

The best of Sky Sports

With â??Sky by broadbandâ?? you can also enjoy highlights from every Barclays Premiership and UEFA Champions League match as well as rugby, golf, cricket, and even our ever popular Soccer AM show.


Click here to register for â??Sky by broadbandâ?? then and within a few minutes youâ??ll be able to access hours of quality entertainment, all at no extra charge. Then just sit back, relax and enjoy some of the best of Sky on your PC.
Please have your viewing card number handy when registering.

Sky Sports on Sky by broadband is available at no extra charge to Sky digital customers subscribing to Sky Sports 1 and 2. Sky Movies on Sky by broadband is available at no extra charge to Sky digital residential customers subscribing to Sky Movies 1 and 2. To view Sky by broadband youâ??ll need a home PC with Microsoft Windows XP and we recommend a minimum 1MB broadband. UK and ROI residents only and for use within the UK and ROI only. Further terms apply. See www.skybybroadband.com for full system specifications and terms and conditions

So nothing stops me from getting someone in the UK with Sky to sign up for me?

There are plenty of people in mainland Europe who watch sky. You just need someone in the UK to set up a sham account.

Oh, FTS:

To register for and download Sky by broadband, you will need:

A PC with Windows XP
Windows Media Player version 10 or above
A fast internet connection such as broadband (recommended)
To subscribe to a package which includes Sky Sports 1 & 2 and/or Sky Movies 1 & 2
To be based in the UK or ROI
You can only download Sky by broadband to one PC in your household and you must be the Sky digital account holder to download it

Originally posted by MTB-Markie:
To be based in the UK or ROI

Enforcement may be tough here. I have a UK subscriber log-in to listen to United matches on UK radio, and it hasn't been blocked once stateside.

Yeah based in the UK for billing, but the whole point of the broadband service is that you can use it when you are away from home….

Originally posted by MTB-Markie:
Yeah based in the UK for billing, but the whole point of the broadband service is that you can use it when you are away from home….

I would argue "one point", not "the whole point" - most folks would use Broadband service for video on demand (essentially to watch shows they missed or to see repeats). Travellers, on the other hand, would use it more often when they are away from home, but the last two hotels I stayed at in London did not offer broadband services, and most wi-fi spots can't handle high quality video.

Now for the illegal market (those of us without UK addresses), I'm certain they are not taking our wishes into consideration.

Originally posted by vansmack:
I would argue "one point", not "the whole point" - most folks would use Broadband service for video on demand (essentially to watch shows they missed or to see repeats).

You have sky you have broadband, but you do not have a DVR…. I wonder what penetrance DVRs have in the UK and here.

It's ages since I have stayed in a hotel with broadband, but then its ages since I left US of A.