Blogging Etiquette, Just for Fun

Standard-Definition TV Still 80% of Viewing

Some might be perplexed to find that about 80 percent of U.S. television viewing is of content in standard definition, not high definition.

Though some 56 percent of U.S. households own HDTV sets, only 13 percent of total day viewing on cable and 19 percent of viewing on broadcast television is “true HD” viewing, which requires an HD television and HD tuner that are tuned to an HD channel.

About 44 percent of homes either do not have an HDTV set or an HD service. Also, because most HDTV-owning homes have at least one non-HDTV set, about a third of total programming is viewed on a standard set.

Even on HD sets, about 20 percent of viewing is through non-HDTV feeds.

None of those statistics should be so surprising, however. Some types of programming, especially sports, really show the value of the higher-definition. But other types of programming, such as news, actually do not provide a similar level of value, one might argue.

Also, not all programming created in standard definition has been up-converted to HDTV format. There are other elements at work, as well. HDTV adds lots of value when a viewer is looking at a large, flat-screen display. The picture clarity is harder to appreciate on a smaller screen, and lots of TV viewing still occurs on smaller screens.

In fact, even beyond that, one can argue that multiple, independent value drivers are at work. Flat screens are attractive to end users for reasons having to do with form factor, irrespective of whether the content is displayed in HD format.

Even the shape of an HDTV receiver, with the different 16:9 aspect ratio, seems to strike most users as better than the 4:3 aspect ratio of a standard definition set. So some value is obtained simply by swapping 4:3 screens for 16:9 screens. Likewise, people prefer bigger screens to smaller screens. Not all those values are always directly linked to HD image resolution.

Then there is the issue of playback peripherals. There still are huge numbers of non-HDTV DVD players in regular use, and image resolution still seems for most people to be quite acceptable. Likewise, digital video recorders similarly add value for reasons having nothing to do with the actual matter of HDTV signal delivery.

HD TVs Now the Majority, but HD Viewing Lags Behind | Nielsen Wire

Publishers to Get 70% of Sales on Kindle

Amazon.com Inc. will start paying publishers 70 percent of the retail revenue for magazine and newspaper sales, after subtracting delivery costs, for each magazine or newspaper sold at its Kindle Store.

The move by Amazon, which takes effect Dec. 1, 2010, comes at a time when newspapers and magazines are increasingly looking at digital platforms like the Kindle and Apple Inc.'s iPad to replace revenue lost to decreasing print ad revenue, and at at time when Amazon wants to ensure it has the broadest support from the print publishing community for its ebook reader.

Publishers to Get 70% of Sales on Kindle - WSJ.com (subscription required)

Enterprise Customers Will Drive LTE Adoption Until 2015

 Worldwide service revenues generated by fourth-generation Long Term Evolution networks are forecast to grow quickly once networks are launched, reaching $100 billion by 2014. Revenues will be driven by laptops, smartphones and other devices, especially high-traffic enterprise subscribers using web, email and video services, say researchers at Juniper Research.

Revenues from consumer users will remain under half of total revenues until at least 2015, Juniper Research says.

About 90 percent of survey respondents believe that today’s pricing models will have to change, as well. That would suggest there is wide understanding of the need for matching consumption with pricing.

read more here

Netflix Hits an Inflection Point

“By every measure, we are now primarily a streaming company that also offers DVD-by-mail,” said Reed Hastings, Netflix co-founder and CEO. That's what you might call an inflection point. Netflix has passed the point where most of its viewing happens by network delivery, not mailing of a DVD.

The percentage of subscribers who watched instantly more than 15 minutes of a TV episode or movie in the third quarter of 2010 was 66 percent compared to 41 percent for the same period of 2009 and 61 percent for the second quarter of 2010. In the fourth quarter, a majority of Netflix subscribers will watch more content streamed from Netflix than delivered on DVD, the company believes.

As with other metrics about video entertainment, observers will ask what it means. Some will say Netflix streaming now represents an alternative to cable TV, for example, while others will maintain it is supplemental viewing that more likely displaces purchases of HBO subscriptions, for example.

What virtually nobody will be able to contest is the fact that Netflix has made a successful transition from a supplier of DVD by mail services to a provider of streaming movie content.

Netflix ended the third quarter of 2010 with approximately 16,933,000 total subscribers, representing 52 percent year-over-year growth from 11,109,000 total subscribers at the end of the third quarter of 2009 and 13 percent sequential growth from 15,001,000 subscribers at the end of the second quarter of 2010.

The net subscriber change in the quarter was an increase of 1,932,000 compared to an increase of 510,000 for the same period of 2009 and an increase of 1,034,000 for the second quarter of 2010.

Gross subscriber additions for the quarter totaled 4,101,000, representing 88 percent year-over-year growth from 2,180,000 gross subscriber additions in the third quarter of 2009 and 34 percent quarter-over-quarter increase from 3,059,000 gross subscriber additions in the second quarter of 2010.

read more here

Cisco Study Says IT Policies Hamper Mobile Workers

Cisco's most recent study of global communications finds that security concerns are slowing adoption of mobile enterprise capabilities.

Telcos Poised to Grab Bigger Role in IT Services Business?

Look for signs of growing channel disruption as cloud-based managed services start to gain traction. The reason is that technology suppliers historically reliant on some channel partners, seem to be shifting to alternate channels, especially the large telcos.

Technology vendors are in many cases favoring distribution by the large telcos, the analysts say. For example, Microsoft is making its Windows Azure Platform Appliance and Office 365 available only to select telcos. Cisco Systems likewise is relying on telco partners to sell its managed service products.

The big potential issue is that many of the new managed services products might be more suitable for delivery by telco partners than by the historic channel partners such as  value-added resellers, system integrators, managed service providers, resellers and other partners, say Tim Harmon and Peter O’Neill, Forrester Research analysts.

Forrester Research estimates that more than 60 percent of technology product revenues are generated through channel partners including . But cloud technology options, including software-as-a-service (SaaS), therefore are poised to significantly alter channel structures.

HGTV, Food Network Back on AT&T U-Verse

AT&T Inc. and Scripps Networks Interactive have reached an agreement to bring back several cable channels, including HGTV and Food Network, that had temporarily gone dark on U-Verse due to a contract dispute.

The cable channels, which also include DIY and the Cooke Channel, went dark on U-Verse for the same reason other channels have gone dark on other distribution platforms: disagreements about the programming fees distributors pay to carry the networks.

News Corp.'s Fox Networks and Cablevision Corp. recently came to an agreement to end a high-profile blackout of several Fox channels, including the national network.

All of those spats provide evidence of growing stresses in the multichannel video business between distributors and programming owners, each attempting to maximize revenue and profit at a time when price resistance by consumers appears to be growing.

AT&T, Scripps Networks Reach Deal For HGTV, Food Network - WSJ.com (subscription required)

Time Warner Cable to Launch "Look Back"

Time Warner Cable is launching a service called "Look Back" that allows its subscribers to watch some of their favorite shows three days after they've originally aired. The move is a way of adding more "on demand" features offered by over-the-top providers such as Netflix and Hulu.

The new service also will provide differentiation from satellite providers DirecTV and Dish Network, as well as video services from the phone companies Verizon Communications and AT&T. The satellite providers cannot easily match the service because of bandwidth issues, while the telcos likely could match the offer, but haven't done so, so far.

Time Warner Cable targets rivals, Hulu with Look Back | Reuters

Europe Debates Neutrality issues

Though it appears there is little to no chance of significant network neutrality legislation or regulation in the U.S. market over the next couple of years, the subject still is being looked at in the European Community, which has largely seen this as a U.S. issue, for the most part.

A Sept. 30 report by the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications, the European Union’s telecommunications advisory group, has concluded that there was no new need for new regulation of this type, at this point.

The group, which is made up of the bloc’s national telecommunications regulators, said operators in more than a dozen countries — Austria, Croatia, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Switzerland, France, Greece, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland and Britain — had either blocked or throttled services like Skype or file-sharing Web sites.

But most blocking stopped after being reported to local media or regulators. Some might be more comfortable with regulations, but the EREC points to those instances as examples of problems working themselves out quickly, without the need for regulatory action.

 read the full report here

Who Buys Metro Bandwidth, What Do They Buy?

Zayo Group recently closed its deal to buy American Fiber Systems, which provides metro bandwidth services in Boise, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Nashville, Reno, and Salt Lake City.

So what types of firms buy metro bandwidth products in those cities? As you might expect, communications carriers and Internet access providers, especially the large carriers, represent 40 percent of sales. Enterprises or large public organizations represent 27 percent of sales.

But mobile companies account for 15 percent of sales as well. Education organizations represent seven percent of demand while content companies represent six percent of sales. Healthcare organizations represent five percent of sales.

About 33 percent of sales volume is dark fiber and 29 percent of sales are for private line services.

Ethernet now represents 16 percent of sales while Internet access contributes 13 percent of revenue. Optical wave sales contribute another eight percent of revenue.

Zayo Group Closes Its Acquisition of American Fiber Systems

Facebook Rapidly Gains Display Ad Share

You'll note that neither Google nor Apple shows up among the share leaders, at least, not yet.

Nokia takes back control of Symbian

Nokia now will assume a role in Symbian development more analogous to what Google is doing with Android, and unlike its recent effort to create a bigger open source community around the mobile operating system.

Nokia says it now will care of Symbian platform development from April 2011 onwards, while the cross-industry Symbian Foundation will in the future take care of only licensing of the software.

Nokia bought out other shareholders in Symbian in 2008 and opened the software for any manufacturers to use for free on an open-source basis. But that effort has fizzled, leaving Nokia as the primary backer of the mobile operating system.

Nokia takes back control of Symbian software | Technology | Reuters

NTIA Finds 66% of Broadband Adopters Say "Lack of Interest" is Reason for Non-Adoption

Lack of need or interest, lack of affordability, lack of an adequate computer, and lack of availability are the main reasons people do not use broadband Internet access at home, a new study by the National Telecommunications and Information and the Department of Commerce's Economics and Statistics Administration say.

Internet non-users reported lack of need or interest as their primary reason for not having broadband at home. This group accounted for two-thirds of those who don't have broadband at home.

http://www.esa.doc.gov/DN/

Study Looks at Impact of Comcast-NBCU Merger on Subscriber Fees

In a new economic study released today, the American Cable Association predicts that consumers over the next nine years will pay at least $2.4 billion more for pay-television service as a result of unrestrained pricing power that will flow from the combination of Comcast Corp. and NBC Universal.

What isn't clear to me is whether the predicted price increases for national and satellite, telco and regional cable operators because of the merger is greater than the estimates a reasonable economist might have made for annual price increases based strictly on "programming cost" rationale. The study seems to assume an average of about 22 percent a month fee increases to distributors, and a typical fee for NBCU national networks of about $1.56 per subscriber, per month.

Those estimates are derived from 2009 per subscriber per month subscription fees for the NBCU national cable networks estimated at USA - $.55, CNBC - $.29, SyFy -$.21, Bravo - $.19, MSNBC - $.16, Oxygen = $.10, and mun2 - .06, for a total of $1.56.

The study also assumes an increase in retransmission consent fees for the NBC over-the-air signals of about 50 cents per subscriber, per month.

You can be the judge of the merits of the argument.

http://www.americancable.org/files/110810%20Rogerson%20III%20Ex%20Parte%20Comcast-NBCU%20FINAL.pdf