Not Good Enough, Netherlands Regulators Say

The largest Dutch cable operator Ziggo has said it now reaches one million digital homes and is claiming to be the number one digital provider in the country. The figures means around 30% of all 3.3 million homes served is now digital.

Not good enough, Netherlands regulators believe. Coming: new rules giving alternate video providers access rights to cable plant. One wonders: will anybody want to do so?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Voice Usage and Texting Trends Headed in Opposite Directions

Image
You can see where this is going. Younger users text more than they talk, and though today's users 25 and above still talk more than they text, the usage pattern is uniform: younger age cohorts text more than older age cohorts.

So as each age cohort advances, one might predict that texting behavior will grow over time. How much it grows is the only real question.

Users 18 or younger actually"talk" about as much as users 55 to 64. One suspects an awful lot of "voice" activity is of the coordination and collaboration sort, so that younger and mid-life workers might be in work groups that require more coordination than workers 55 to 64.
Read more

Who Are the Key Telco Competitors?

Image
Industry competitors normally pay money to track their market share versus their "real" competitors. The problem is that, in rapidly-changing and porous new markets, the legacy competitors--even when they are the most benchmarked firms--are not the strategic competitors.
These days, many service providers would say that "Google" or other app providers are their key competitors, even as they continue to benchmark against others in their "narrow" markets (mobile market share, or fixed network video or internet access).

The biggest single change in the internet value chain between 2005 and 2010, for example, was the shift of revenue from telcos to Apple, Microsoft and Google. Telecom providers lost 12 percent of profit, while Apple, Microsoft and Google gained 11 percent.
source: McKinsey
Nevertheless, the strategic issue is diminishing relevance. The "access to the internet" and associated service provider functions simply represent less value in th…
Read more

Does Wireless Charging Cause RF Interference?

USB-based device chargers can create noise that interferes with touchscreen operation especially when the chargers omit noise suppression features. So with the advent of wireless charging, one wonders whether noise will be added to the communication channels used by Wi-Fi or Bluetooth devices.
It appears that such corded charging creates noise in the 100 kHz to 1 MHz range, and should therefore not cause problems with Wi-Fi or Bluetooth devices.
But what about wireless charging? Granted, charging systems work by creating localized magnetic fields, which should not, in principle, interfere with radio frequency signals. But three major approaches to wireless charging (radio charging, inductive charging and resonance charging) do use radio frequencies.
Radio charging, intended to reach low-power devices operating within a 10-meter (30 feet) radius from the transmitter, is seen as a way to recharge batteries in medical implants, hearing aids, watches and entertainment devices.
The transmit…
Read more