political

AOL's TV gambit

America Online is streaming the pilot episode of The WB Television Network's " Jack & Bobby" this week. The company said it's the first time a new show has premiered in streaming-video form on the Internet.

While it's too early to tell if this is a winning play for AOL, it's certainly a good step for its objectives. Beaten up by subscriber losses in its dial-up service, AOL needs to convince broadband customers that it's got something that nobody else has. This HBO model could work if there's enough exclusive content that people … Read more

Wake up, TV networks

The Financial Times on Monday wrote an interesting piece about Web streaming during UEFA Euro 2004, the venerated soccer tournament that drives Europeans bonkers every four years. The FT reported that the official Web site served up more than 500 million page views and more then 50 terabytes of data during the three-week event. England's nail-biting match against home team Portugal alone streamed 2.9 gigabits of data per second. (England lost in penalty kicks after David Beckham launched a dud over the woodwork).

TV networks need to get into the game. Sports nuts want their sports when they … Read more

All broadband, all the time

Kudos to BroadbandReports.com for its ability to scour its ripe message boards for the latest skinny on what's working in the world of broadband and what's not. Today, folks over there reported that community members received notices from AOL to beta test a VoIP product. BroadbandReports also consistently gets the first notice of service changes, such as speed upgrades, in certain cable or DSL areas.

Good for them. Proves that user generated content provides enough smoke to reveal a fire.

Powell takes on the Ninth

FCC Commissioner Michael Powell last week won an important procedural victory when he and the acting United States solicitor general asked the Supreme Court to reverse a landmark decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals over broadband legislation.

The Ninth Court in April rejected the FCC's attempt to reverse the court's decision that cable broadband services could be forced to open their lines to third parties. More specifically, the court said cable companies have elements of telecommunications and information services in their technology. Current rules require telecommunications services to open their lines to third parties. Up to … Read more

A week off the grid

I'm off to spend a week in the Trinity Alps, away from anything that looks like a computer. Weaverville, Calif. isn't quite Lake Geneva, but I'll be quite happy complaining to the local deer. Who I'm guessing aren't Wi-Max enabled yet, but I'll ask.

This is why group blogs are a great thing. More room for vacations.

Sweden's not a U.S. state?

These are the perils of automatic copyright protection plans. Apparently Dreamworks sent a note to a Swedish BitTorrent tracker site asking that its content be removed, citing the American Digital Millenium Copyright Act. The site responded (warning: profanity involved) with the following:

"As you may or may not be aware, Sweden is not a state in the United States of America. Sweden is a country in northern Europe. ... US law does not apply here. For your information, no Swedish law is being violated."

Thanks to Broadband Reports for the link.

Fun new broadband support in Windows

According to this interview with Bill Gates, the next version of Windows (Longhorn, now due 2006), may have support for all kinds of high-speed networking technologies, partly at Intel's behest. He mentions ultrawideband and Wi-Max specifically.

When Microsoft released Windows 95 with TCP/IP support, it helped a lot of early Internet applications take off ?? not least being just basic dial-up ISP access. Maybe Longhorn will have similar effects.

AOL goes for broke in Seattle

America Online is planning to blanket Seattle with promotions peddling its broadband service next week. Thanks to the online giant, commuters will get free ferry tickets and AOL will carpet-bomb public concerts and events with promotions.

This is part of the company's attempt to sell AOL for Broadband as a way to stop its blood loss from dial-up consumers defecting to faster access. AOL hopes that selling a $14.95 version will be enough an incentive to keep its subscribers.

AOL's promotional push has been somewhat schizophrenic. AOL used the Super Bowl and its ill-fated half-time show to … Read more

A chill in P2P land?

The Justice Department's announcement that it had raided file-swappers' homes should be closely watched by peer to peer types. Yes, it was meant to scare them. But it should. Some attorneys' initial take on this was that the investigation was really just like the old warez busts, targeting a highly organized group of pirates. Not exactly Grandma on her Kazaa (who the Recording Industry Association of America has sued).

But that's only partly true. The warrants were served against people operating Direct Connect hubs, which are sort of like mini-Napster servers that sit in the middle of their … Read more

Strange signs in broadband equipment market

Synergy Research reports that sales of cable broadband equipment rose by a healthy 7 percent last quarter. But DSL equipment sales fell, despite strong growth in DSL subscriber lists in the United States. (Synergy hasn't posted the press release, but it should be up soon.)

Is there a disconnect here? Possibly some smoke and mirrors in the way telephone companies are reporting DSL subscribers? Or are they just working off inventory, and this quarter's real subscriber growth will result in a bounce in DSL equipment sales next quarter? Either way, it's something to watch in the upcoming … Read more