Comcast to Boost Upstream in FiOS Areas

Comcast will boost upload speeds for its customers in Verizon FiOS areas June 5 or so, reports Broadband Reports.com.

The rumor is that 6 Mbps customers will see their upstream speeds boosted to 1 Mbps, while 8 Mbps customers will see their upstream speeds boosted to 2 Mbps.

As we understand, prices will not change. Competition works, apparently.

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Buy a $5 gift card, or by enter your personal information in the company's database for a rewards program. Starbuckswill give you 2 hours of free Wi-Fi.

40% GPS Mobile Device Growth Through 2012

Worldwide shipments of GPS-integrated mobile devices will grow at an annualized rate of nearly 40 percent over the next five years, reaching 834 million units in 2012, according to Parks Associates.

Mobile handsets and smartphones will constitute the majority of shipments up to 2012, but personal navigation devices will remain the most widely used and preferred navigation choice in the next three years, says Harry Wang, Parks Associates senior analyst.

“GPS will come to your mobile handset as a standard feature, but mobile carriers are still a couple of years away from turning GPS into a money-making, mass-market feature,” Wang says. Currently, consumers prefer PNDs thanks to the combination of a bigger screen, more versatile functions, and growing affordability.

Email Still Preferred for Communications with Businesses

No question: when it comes to interacting with a business or friends, email rules. An Ipsos survey recently found that 67 percent of consumers prefer email as a primary method of communications in their personal and business capacities, and 65 percent say they will continue to prefer email in the future.

Consumer opinion of the future importance of email registered far above future expectations for video conferencing (19 percent), instant messaging (17 percent), SMS text messages (12 percent) and Web meetings (12 percent).

Significantly, 65 percent of the demographic between the ages of 18 to 34 expect to favor email to communicate with businesses in five years. That makes sense: a retailer is not likely to be found on a "buddy" list. Nor are most major retailers likely to rush to publish such customer service "buddy" lists so consumers can contact them that way.

Craigslist Blocks VoIP

Craigslist.org does have a problem with spam. In its attempts to defeat spam, though, it also now seems to be blocking attempts by legitimate VoIP number users to authenticate the ads they want to place on Craigslist, reports Cory Andrews of VoIP Insider.

Craiglist apparently uses a telephone verification process that places an automated outbound call to a user placing a classified ad in certain categories.

The problem is that Craigslist is categorically blocking legitimate VoIP and Pre-paid cellular users from authenticating themselves.

The call delivers a unique code using text to speech, which is then used by the poster to authenticate the ad they are placing.

Craig’s uses a third party service, ReduceFraud.com, to screen out VoIP and Pre-paid cellular numbers, and will not deliver an automated verification call to VoIP numbers.

How do they check? "They check the DID number to see who owns the NPA NXX X number block, and if the DID number is owned by Level 3 Communications, they classify it as VoIP," says Andrews.

ReduceFraud.com is owned and operated by a California firm Telecentrex, who offers its own hosted VoIP service.

Consumers Pulling Back

The percentage of consumers who feel we are in tough times or a recession has increased since April, according to a monthly survey by The NPD Group, Inc.

In May, 58 percent of consumers said we are in a recession, compared to 55 percent in April.

What’s more, consumers are not only less optimistic about the economy, they are beginning to change their behavior in response.

How are consumers reacting? The survey respondents said they are planning to spend less on things like apparel and footwear. And with vacation season approaching, 49 percent of consumers said they plan to cut back on leisure travel.

“Consumers are finally starting to react to the price of gas and other rising costs and are shifting shopping intentions,” says NPD chief industry expert Marshal Cohen.

Channel Conflict Growing in Video Business

There's always some tension between the economic interests of content owners and distributors of that content. Cable operators make their money one way; programmers another. So when Time Warner Cable CEO fires off a warning, that's just part of growing tensions in the video entertainment ecosystem.

"There is a model today for financing TV programming where the cable networks rely on subscription revenue as well as advertising revenue," says Britt. "As cable companies, we are in effect retailers; we buy programming wholesale, we put it in a package, and we sell it to subscribers."

But programming moving direct to Internet distribution will upset the current arrangements, he warns.

"Programmers shouldn't think that if they put the same content on the Internet for free, at the same time we're showing it, that we're going to pay the same wholesale price as we were paying before," Britt tells the Wall Street Journal.

Global Software Piracy Scorecard

In 2007, for every two dollars spent on legitimate software purchases, one dollar’s worth of software was obtained illegally. In the highest piracy countries–those with 75 percent piracy or higher–for every one dollar spent on PC hardware, less than seven cents was spent on legitimate software, says the Business Software Alliance.

In developed markets, that ratio is eight times higher. By the end of 2007, there were more than one billion PCs installed around the world; nearly half have pirated software on them.

Best Buy Expands Recyling Programs

Best Buy Co. has launched a test of its newest electronics recycling program to in 117 U.S. stores, in addition to the existing programs offered by Best Buy stores, which have focused on mobile phones, ink cartridges, batteries and other smaller mobile devices.

Starting June 1, 117 stores in the Baltimore, San Francisco, and Minnesota markets are inviting customers to bring in no more than two units per day, per household, for recycling at no charge.

Customers can bring items such as televisions and monitors up to 32”, computers, phones, cameras, and other electronics devices and peripherals in for recycling.

The following items cannot be accepted through this program:

• Televisions or monitor screens greater than 32”
• Console televisions
• Air conditioners
• Microwaves
• Appliances (customers are invited instead to use Best Buy’s appliance haul-away and pick-up programs)

Meanwhile, Best Buy continues to offer these electronics and appliance recycling options, available in every U.S. store:

• Recycling kiosks: at the front of every store, ink cartridges, rechargeable batteries, cell phones, CDs, DVDs, and PDA/smart phones can be dropped off for free recycling
• Appliance and television haul-away: Best Buy will remove an old or obsolete appliance or television free of charge from a consumers' home when a new product is purchased and delivered by Best Buy Home Delivery or Geek Squad Home Theater Installation Service.
• Appliance and television pick-up: For $100, Best Buy will arrange a home visit to remove up to two (2) appliance units and/or televisions for recycling, with $20 for each additional unit.
• Tech Trade-In: Visit www.bestbuytradein.com to trade in select gently used electronics for a Best Buy gift card.

BT to Cut Carbon Footprint 80% by 2020

British Telecom plans to reduce its carbon emissions 80 percent by 2020. BT earlier had said it would invest close to half a billion dollars in wind farms that could supply close to 25 percent of the company’s power needs by 2016.

Wireline, Wireless, Broadand All Up in France

There's some interesting data emerging about wireless substitution. To wit, wireline subscriptions in some markets do not appear to be declining as wireless grows.

To be sure, share is shifting to new competitors. But that's a different question than abandonment of wireline accounts in favor of wireless-only service.

France added around 675,000 new broadband users in the first three months of this year to boost the country’s high speed internet user base from 15.551 million to 16.225 million, reports the country’s regulator Arcep.

On an annualised basis, the French residential and business broadband market climbed 18.6 percent from 13.676 million at the end of March 2007, the report said. ADSL continues to be the overwhelmingly popular access technology, accounting for 15.475 million access lines, with the remainder made up by cable, FTTx or satellite services.

Arcep also reported a strong rise in wholesale access lines in the period under review, up 338,000 lines to 7.825 million. France had also unbundled 5.521 million local loops by the start of April 2008, with some 4.012 million subscribers taking fully unbundled services.

In other findings, mobile subscriptions also continue to grow, while fixed lines also were up. So much for wireless substitution.

50% Home Network Penetration

More than half of broadband users in the United States today have some form of home network, according to ABI Research. In 2006 one third of broadband subscribers had such networks.

Fifteen percent of home network owners today are streaming music over the network and another one in ten is streaming video, ABI notes.

Verizon Wireless Data Revenue Up 65% in 2007

Verizon Wireless data revenue is exploding, says Verizon Chief Financial Officer Doreen Toben said Thursday.

Verizon wireless data revenues grew 65 percent in 2007, representing almost one-quarter of service revenues for Verizon Wireless, a joint venture between Verizon and Vodafone.

On an annualized basis, first quarter data revenue would reach almost $10 billion, she said, putting Verizon “only at the beginning of explosive growth.”

Mobile Ad Revenue Bigger than Web Ad Revenue?

Google CEO Eric Schmidt says mobile advertising would make more money than advertising on the traditional Web in a few years.

That could be a huge number, though some might question whether the numbers are achievable. Analysts at Piper Jafray, for example, peg U.S. Internet advertising at about $30 billion in 2008.

What isn't clear is whether mobile advertising represents another $30 billion or will augment the growth of PC-based Internet advertising.

Schmidt seems to be the former, not the latter.

Schmidt pointed to reports of staggering mobile internet usage by iPhone users as an indication of the platform's viability and noted that iPhone makes the mobile internet lucrative by equipping users with a good mobile Web browser.

Skyfire Labs in late May raised $13 million in series A venture capital to create a new mobile-optimized browser, which is some indication of thinking that mobile apps are promising. And since advertising is based on monetizing attention, the investment suggests some thinking that a sizable revenue model is available.

The Customer Service Hall of Shame

AOL has the worse ranking among companies with "poor customer service," according to MSN Money's second annual Customer Service Hall of Shame, a ranking of companies with the worst customer service, based on a nationwide survey commissioned by MSN Money and conducted by Zogby International.

Comcast was said to have poor customer service by 42 percent of respondents. Sprint, Qwest, Time Warner CAble and Cox Communications also are on the list of "10 worst" performers.
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About 47 percent of people who had an opinion of AOL's customer service said it was "poor." MSN Money writer Karen Aho notes that communications companies and banks that provide complex and at times highly technical products are on the list precisely because those products are so complex.

Still, one has to note that AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile are not on the list. Without excusing poor performance, consumer customer service is a tough job, hard to do well. As someone who once worked for a system integrator, I can attest that questions sometimes came in that I wasn't sure who was responsible for handling.

I don't think I'd claim we ever did a great job of it. It's tough, dogged work.

In fact, it can be unpleasant work. My wife occasionally gets calls from angry consumers who have a right to be angry, and all she can do is direct them to a department that probably was responsible for the unresponsive behavior in the first place. She knows the service "sucks." But large organizations that really don't care tend not to fix those sorts of problems.

In fairness, all big companies struggle with customer service, for good reasons. It's hard to do well, especially when the average size of any single account isn't large enough to devote as much support as one probably should provide.

Still, one notes that some names did not appear on the list. As tough as it is, customer service is better at some companies than at others. As a personal aside, I'm not sure I can agree with poll respondents who say Qwest customer service is poor. That hasn't been my personal experience at all.

In fairness, though, my contact with Qwest is as a business customer, and business customers get better service.

For the survey, conducted online in March, Zogby asked more than 7,000 people across the country to rate their customer experiences with 140 leading companies in 14 industries, including airlines, hotels, insurance companies and big-box stores such as Wal-Mart. Respondents could answer "excellent," "good," "fair," "poor," "not familiar" or "not sure."

The companies in the Hall of Shame were ranked by the percentage of people familiar with a company who answered "poor."