Grande Communications: Multitasking on One Screen

Grande Communications, a San Marcos, Texas-based broadband provider, is launching a multiplexing service that allows viewers to watch as many as five discrete live video feeds on a single screen.

GrandeVision will launch in Austin, at no additional charge for its digital cable customers. Users will be able to use their remote controls to navigate between channels and interact with Web video and banner ads.

Grande provides Internet, local and long-distance telephone and digital cable in parts of Austin, Corpus Christi, suburban northwest Dallas, Midland, Odessa, San Antonio, San Marcos and Waco.

Sports fans will go crazy!

Telcos, Satellite Providers Picking Up Customers

In any competitive market with a leading incumbent and many challengers, one normally would assume that the direction of market share shifts would be away from the incumbent and towards challengers, assuming those challengers are reasonably competent at crafting offers and delivering on their promises.

And that is just about what ChangeWave survey suggests is happening in the mass market video arena. A February survey suggests that video consumers who plan to switch providers are disproportionately switching to new providers.

Asked the names of their planned new providers, about 30 percent said they would switch to DirecTV while 28 percent said they would switch to Verizon FiOS. About 14 percent said they would switch to at&t while 10 percent said they would switch to Dish Network.

That's 38 percent choosing satellite providers and 44 percent choosing telephone company video services.

Mobile Web: 38% Euro Usage by 2013

Analysts at Forrester Research say 38 percent of mobile phone users in Western Europe will use mobile Internet services by 2013. That's 125 million Europeans accessing the Web regularly from their mobile phone, triple the number that do so today.

As that happens, something will start happening with mobile advertising, no matter how undeveloped the art is at the moment. Forrester reports that 83 percent of marketers it surveyed recent believe mobile advertising will become more effective over the next three years, despite a finding that just seven percent of users "trust" mobile ads.

That's just the nature of the business these days. Communications service providers are in the midst of transformation efforts that require them to replace most of their current revenue with new sources. Do they--does anybody--have absolute crystal clear vision on precisely how all that will happen? No. Will it happen? Yes.

Is that quite a lot of uncertainty? Yes. But will service providers get there? Yes. In that regard, the communications business is no different than lots of other businesses these days. Most of the products lots of companies will be selling in 10 years haven't been invented yet.

How Many WiMAX Providers

A business associate asked how many WiMAX operators might be active globally. Maravedis says they have profiles on about 256 operators globally, and I assume there are others possibly too small to have been profiled yet, or who have not yet begun operation. Given the large number of small independent wireless ISPs just in the United States, it seems likely many will kick the tires on WiMAX gear.

Amazon Adds Elastic Compute Cloud Persistent Storage

Amazon is adding persistent storage for users of its Elastic Compute Cloud. These volumes can be thought of as raw, unformatted disk drives which can be formatted and then used as desired (or even used as raw storage if you'd like), Amazon says.

Volumes can range in size from 1 GB on up to 1 TB; developers can create and attach several of them to each EC2 instance, Amazon says. They are designed for low latency, high throughput access from Amazon EC2. Needless to say, you can use these volumes to host a relational database.

Users also will also be able to perform "snapshot" backups of your volumes to Amazon Simple Storage Service, a feature that can be used to create new volumes or to roll back stored data to an earlier point in time.

"The snapshot is extremely powerful technology and allows for building highly fault-tolerant applications operating world-wide," says Werner Vogels, Amazon CTO. "Combine these snapshots with Availability Zones and Elastic IPs and you have all the tools to manage and migrate even the most complex of applications."

Both of the new innovations make it easier to envision use of cloud computing resources as the way to host Web-accessed applications for just about any sort of application, especially globally.

AOL Ad Net Hits 91% of U.S. Internet Audience in March

Each of the top 15 ad networks delivered ads to at least half of the total U.S. Internet audience in March, says ComScore. Platform-A, the AOL ad network that combines Advertising.com, Quigo and Tacoda, served ads to 170 million U.S. Internet users in March, representing 91 percent of the total U.S. online population, to rank as the top ad network.

That's not to say 91 percent saw or interacted with every ad, but that the network placed them. That's serious reach, on at least one dimension.

On a stand-alone basis, Advertising.com would rank as the top ad network with a reach of more than 167 million Internet users. Yahoo! Network ranked second with a reach of 160 million, followed by Google Ad Network (152 million) and Specific Media (140 million).

As ad networks have expanded their reach and influence online, a new crop of ad networks has surfaced to serve specific demographic and behavioral target segments, says comScore

Snap Shots Network delivers ads to users of Snap.com’s Snap Shots. The network reached more than 18 million U.S. Internet users in March. Widgetbucks Network delivers contextually relevant ads through a widget, and had reach of 9.5 million, while NeoEdge Game Network, which delivers ads through games, had a reach of nearly 1 million.

Other ad networks on this list target specific audience segments, such as HispanoClick by Batanga (Hispanics), Indieclick (young influencers or “tastemakers”) and The Heavy Men’s Network (men).

Waiting for FiOS

We haven't seen any doorhangers or other outbound marketing yet, but it appears, given the recent activity by Verizon-branded trucks in the neighborhood, plowing orange conduit into the ground, that Verizon is laying an optical distribution network in Reston, Va., presumably in preparation for rolling out FiOS service.

We already buy Verizon voice and digital subscriber line at the Reston location, so what will happen--absolutely, positively--is that a new Verizon video and FiOS Internet access account will be purchased, as soon as we get the opportunity to sign the check. Verizon will, of course, lose a DSL account while Comcast loses at least one video RGU.

These days, consumer services are akin to trench warfare, and this is how the war is fought: one RGU at a time.

YouTube More Dominant than Google

Though online video sites as a category have seen a seven percent drop in traffic year over year since March 2007, YouTube has gained share, recording a 32 percent growth in visits over that same period. YouTube's market share in the video sector is now at 73.18 percent, says Hitwise.

That's even more dominant that Google is in search share. Google saw an all-time high 67 percent of searches performed in March, Hitwise says.

MySpace TV came in second place last month, with just over nine percent of visits. Google Video was 3rd at four percent, meaning that the two Google properties have 77 percent marketshare.

That's about as dominant as a company can get.

A $60 Billion Communications Market

In 2008, U.S. ethnic communities will spend $59.8 billion on telecommunications services, accounting for over one third of all residential telecom expenditures, according to Insight Research Corporation. The largest minority group, Hispanics, representing 14.8 percent of the total US population, will spend the most.

Blockbuster to Buy Circuit City?

Blockbuster has offered to acquire Circuit City Stores. If the acquisition is completed, and if the merger process runs smoothly, Blockbuster would successfully have morphed itself into a broad-based consumer electronics distributor. If it does not, well, at least Blockbuster tried.

Critics of the deal will point to the challenge of merging two struggling businesses to create one viable business. Some will simply say it is tying two stones together and expecting them to float.

The hopeful might say there does not appear to be much of a future for Circuit City as a stand-alone business, while Blockbuster faces key challenges of its own in making the transition to digital distribution of movie content.

The logic might be that some forms of digital content distribution will feature the ability to download immediately inside a retail outlet. That would fit with Blockbuster's traditional video rental business. The broader logic is that Blockbuster needs to get into another business, and this is a way to do it.

Framing P2P

In an interview with the Royal Television Society’s Television magazine, Virgin Media’s new CEO Neil Berkett points out that Virgin already is doing content delivery deals with content providers. In fact, lots of application providers, content providers and ISPs have been doing so for quite some time. They use content delivery networks to expedite delivery of their video bits, for example.

Some people will think that's a bad thing; others think it's a good thing.

Really, it's a matter of "framing," or setting a reference. If you ask a user whether they'd prefer to have their service optimized for best performance of video or voice, whenever they decide to use those services, typical users probably would say "yes."

To the extent you ask a user whether restrictions should be placed on the amount of bandwidth they paid for can be used, they'd probably say "no." If you asked a typical user whether a small minority of users should "hog" most of the bandwidth everybody is sharing, most users would probably say they think that's wrong.

It is the framing of the issue that determines the response. It's not as though all "freedom" issues are on one side, all the "control" or "responsibility" issues on the other. Both issues are intertwined.

As almost always is the case, one has to determine who the "freedom" is for: most users, all users, a few users; a few providers or all providers; a few content providers or all providers. Any shared resource obviously cannot avoid answering such questions in a very practical way.

Dish Network Satellite Now Space Junk

The brand-new SES Americom AMC-14 satellite, which was to boost Dish Network's high-definition programming line-up, now is space junk. After a failed launch, SES Americom engineers have concluded there is no way to boost the satellite into proper orbit.

Between the launch of Sputnik on 4 October 1957 and 1 January 2008, approximately 4,600 launches have placed some 6000 satellites into orbit, of which about 400 are travelling beyond geostationary orbit or on interplanetary trajectories.

Today, it is estimated that only 800 satellites are operational. Roughly 45 percent of these are both in low earth orbit and geostationary orbit. Space debris comprise the ever-increasing amount of inactive space hardware in orbit around the Earth as well as fragments of spacecraft that have broken up, exploded or otherwise become abandoned. About 50 percent of all trackable objects are due to in-orbit explosion events (about 200) or collision events (less than 10).

More Interest in Downloads than Live Mobile TV?

Mobile TV might be more a "download" than a "streaming" or "broadcast" application, at least for the moment, says Nokia Internet services executive Niklas Savander, reported by Reuters news service..

"We have seen that there are multiple segments who are not interested in the broadcasting, but rather in downloads," Savander says.

That likely will change over time. But not until customers acquire a new habit and the variety of "live" video improves. Some people might want to watch local TV broadcasts, or a handful of popular "cable style" networks.

Sometimes the subscription model increases viewing appetite. Cable operators found that approach worked for some forms of video on demand. But right now, most people (except Sprint Simply Everything customers) probably would prefer an a la carte download or "episodic" use option.

There are use cases one can imagine. Users without digital video recorder access, or the ability to program DVRs remotely, or traveling users without a Slingbox in their luggage, might watch long-form material.

The key thing is that users respond to variety; they respond to content richness. And until "live" broadcasting services can offer really rich variety, usage is going to be relatively limited.

There are exceptions, of course. Viewership of news channels always goes way up in the case of extraordinary news events. At those times, people are going to want to watch on their mobiles, if it is available. But most of the ime, people probably think they can wait.

The preference for downloads might speak more to the issue of content access than anything else.

Services Bigger Part of "Equipment" Business

In the consumer electronics, small business technology or telecom infrastructure markets, services are becoming a more important part of the "product" being sold.

A case in point: Service providers paid $70 billion in service revenues in 2007 to providers of infrastrucure systems and products, according to Technology Business Research. That's an increase of abouteight percent over services spending in 2006.

Simply put, technology is sufficiently more complicated, and service providers are sufficiently less endowed with internal staff, that deployment, maintenance, consulting, integration and management services are essential.

The other trend is that suppliers are increasing their focus on services businesses to help insulate against slowing demand for hardware. Talk to Cisco channel partners if you doubt the trend. With margins and gross revenues for hardware slowing, services revenue picks up the slack.

At the same time, more traditional infomation technology specialists are taking advantage of the more software-intensive nature of network operations.

Qwest Outage

Qwest Communications experienced a widespread phone and Internet outage late in the afternoon of April 10 in the Denver area and other parts of Colorado.

Service was down for more than an hour in some locations, customers reported, though Qwest logged the outage starting at 4:04 p.m. and ending at 4:44 p.m. The outage took out some optical circuits that wireless carriers including Verizon Wireless and at&t wireless.