Net neutrality: Job-killing zombie

Imposing net neutrality could reduce broadband expansion and cost the U.S. economy upwards of 300,000 jobs, according to a new Phoenix Center study.

Just a 10 percent decline in IT infrastructure investment, Brett Swanson of Entropy Economics found, could eliminate 502,000 jobs and $62 billion in gross domestic product growth. This is a price that the U.S. economy cannot afford.

Opinion: Net neutrality: Job-killing zombie - Douglas Holtz-Eakin and Sam Batkins - POLITICO.com

Slight Dip in Consumer Satisfaction with Broadband Access Services

Overall customer satisfaction with residential high-speed Internet service providers has decreased slightly from 2009 due to declines in satisfaction with cost of service and offerings and promotions, according to J.D. Power and Associates.

The study finds that overall satisfaction with residential high-speed Internet service averages 634 on a 1,000-point scale, a decrease of five index points from 2009.

The study also finds that customer satisfaction with cost of service averages 584 in 2010, a 12-point decrease from 596 in 2009. Contributing to this decline are decreases in satisfaction with fairness of prices paid and ease of understanding pricing options.

“Although product performance is most important in retaining customers, the top reason they switch providers is cost-related,” said Frank Perazzini, director of telecommunications at J.D. Power and Associates.

It isn't always clear how such "satisfaction" ratings affect customer propensity to churn, though. Some products just never seen to be seen as providing high value and reasonable price. Airline service comes to mind. But most consumers are happy with broadband. See http://ipcarrier.blogspot.com/2009/12/is-broadband-satisfaction-directly.html

J.D.Power and Associates

Moms text at home, use apps outside the home

We have a tendency to think of some products as "commodities." Even when that characterization is correct in some ways, it very often is not completely correct, with some important potential marketing implications.

Unless I completely miss my guess, I'd say the "Droid" and "Evo" probably appeal mostly to men, for example.

My unscientific sample suggests the typical first impression some women have is that the Droid and Evo are "heavy," the implication being that neither is a device  would prefer to carry and use.

The point, whether the characterization is mostly right, or not, is that user segments likely exist that service and app providers, as well as device manufacturers, have only begun to assess and design around. To be sure, a smartphone is a multi-purpose device. But most people have lead apps that are more important than most others, and could create opportunities to differentiate the end user experience.

Time Warner Cable Tells Subs How to Cut Cord

Though it is Cablevision Systems Corp. that now is feuding with Fox over the cost of programming, the temporary content blackout is not unprecedented. Time Warner Cable has had its own programming cost disputes, and produced this video to show its customers how to connect their PCs to their TVs to watch content online, during the blackout.

Cablevision is doing the same at the moment. It's ironic, though.

Mobile Users Prefer Browsers over Apps

Although about a third of U.S. mobile phone subscribers used a downloaded application in August, according to comScore, and app downloads have shown impressive growth, many mobile device users appear to think browsers offer the better user experience.

Mobile users polled by Keynote Systems for Adobe reported a preference for mobile browsers to access virtually all mobile content. Games, music and social media were the only categories in which users would rather use a downloaded app than browse the mobile web.

Mobile Users Prefer Browsers over Apps - eMarketer

YouTube's Promoted Videos Program Hits 500 Million Views

YouTube’s "Promoted Videos" program hit a major milestone this month, hitting half a billion views. This figure certainly lends more credence to recent conjectures that the video-sharing site might, in fact, be starting to generate significant revenue, if not profits, for Google.

Think about Twitter's "Promoted Tweets" and you will get the idea.

The Promoted Videos program launched two years ago, and, according to the YouTube blog, has seen a six-fold increase in viewers clicking on these creator-sponsored vids in the past year (advertisers basically pay to have these videos appear in search results, on the YouTube homepage and on video pages).

YouTube's Promoted Videos Program Hits 500 Million Views -- Profits on the Horizon?

Google exec: Android was “best deal ever”

Buying Android Inc., the wireless-software startup founded by Andy Rubin, was Google’s “best deal ever,” said David Lawee, vice president of corporate development at the search giant.

Google acquired Android in 2005 for an undisclosed price which has been estimated at $50 million.

Google exec: Android was “best deal ever” | VentureBeat

Microsoft Says Tablets Are Not A Threat to PCs

Microsoft CFO Peter Klein says he is “confident” that the rise of tablets will expand the market for PCs, saying he was “enthusiastic about our opportunity” and insisting that consumers will continue to turn to Windows for “choice and value.”

Executives also said that to date they had not seen a “material” shift from low-end PCs to tablets. Some will not agree with Klein or Microsoft, but so far the iPad might be a new device category, rather than a full replacement for a PC. What might happen later, when early adopter market is satiated, and tablets start to be available at lower cost, in different configurations, remains to be seen.

Some light users who rely on email and ebook reading might find a tablet a perfectly workable substitute.

Microsoft Says Tablets Are Not A Threat | paidContent

Appcelerator, PayPal Team for Mobile Commerce

Mobile commerce is a huge business opportunity because, at least in the United States, there is not much infrastructure to support it, though that appears to be changing fast. One example is Appcelerator's recent integration with PayPal, which will allow smartphone apps to use PayPal more easily as a mobile payment mechanism.

Now iPhone, Android and iPad developers using the paid version of the company’s Titanium framework get the ability to conduct mobile commerce.

Virgin Media Prepares for 100 Mbps Service Launch

Virgin Media has announced the rollout timetable of its 100 Mbps broadband access service, which will priced between £35 a month (about $56) when bought in a bundle, or just £45 per month (about $72) when bought as a stand-alone product.

The 100 Mbps service will go on sale from December.

The average download speed in the United Kingdom was 5.2Mbps in May 2010, up from 4.1Mbps in April 2009. Nearly a quarter (24 percent) of U.K. residential broadband connections had a headline speed of above 10Mbps in May 2010, compared to eight percent in April 2009, according to Ofcom, the U.K. communications regulator.

Virgin Media

Why Don't All Users Buy the Broadband Equivalent of a Lexus?

Faster is better, where it comes to broadband. But so is a Lexus, right? But there's a reason we have vehicles in all sizes, optimized for different applications, at different price points.

We do different things with vehicles, and for most of us, money is not unlimited. Were it not so, perhaps most people would drive a Lexus. If one assumes there is very little a single cannot do with 15 Mbps, then a family can well benefit from 50 Mbps, if it believes it will have three or four users online, all at the same time, all watching video at the same time.

Lots of households will find that overkill, at least for the moment. In some cases, users can buy 50 Mbps service from Comcast, for about $100 a month. That's a better deal than $145 a month. But the issue for many users will be how much those users really want to spend for service, when they are paying their own money.

Just for Fun: Time Traveler Using Mobile Phone in 1928 Chaplin Film

Just because we all need a break from serious pursuits....

Mobile Gmail Now "Feels" More Like an App

Google has improved the performance of Gmail on an iPhone, suggesting that the performance gap between native mobile apps and web apps will grow smaller over time.

The new improvements make scrolling faster. In fact scrolling speed seems to match swipe gestures. This is helpful for long conversations where a few quick flicks will get you to the information you need much faster than before.

Also, toolbars stay on screen while users are scrolling, rather than moving down after each scroll. Being able to access toolbars from any point on the page should make it easier to triage email and move around the app.

Gmail in mobile Safari: now even more like a native app - Official Google Mobile Blog

Aro Mobile Launches in Beta, Unifies Mobile Contact, Social, Email Information

Aro Mobile , a mobile application now in beta mode, aims to simplify mobile use by unifying information stored in the mobile that relate to people and contacts. It's another example of consumer "unified communications" that illustrates why it has been harder than many thought for business-oriented UC solutions to take root: there are lots of ways to unify specific parts of the communication environment, without unifying "everything."

Accelerating Hosted PBX Services

Steve Gleave talks about accelerating sales of hosted PBX services

Many service providers I talk to would often prefer their sales teams to sell hosted PBXs over premises based alternatives. But the reality is that market adoption for hosted business services can be hindered by sales strategies, pricing models and marketing pitches that don't stack up when compared next to premises-based solutions.

If this is your dilemma you may find that:

* your existing sales teams are too familiar with premises PBXs' familiar features, benefits, and pricing
* there is a much stronger organisational structure built to sell and support in-house PBXs than for hosted services
* individual salespeople have deep, field-level relationships with PBX vendors, many of which provide sales incentives
* general suspicion towards hosted PBX as an inferior product.

Read the full article here: Overheard: Water cooler talk from the Metaswitch office, July 2010