Google Describes Impact of its Search Algorithm Updates

LightSquared Will Have to Address GPS Interference Issues

Interference issues are not unusual when new applications are proposed in adjacent frequency bands. Garmin says mobile transmitters using Lightsquared spectrum will interfere with GPS signals. Those issues always get addressed, as the new applications are not allowed to operate until the issues are resolved.

read about the issues here

iPad Still Dominates Tablet Sales, Android at 25%

During the fourth quarter of 2010, 22 percent of the 10 million tablet devices that where shipped ran on Android. Overall the market grew by 120 percent sequentially with Apple maintaining it’s leading position with 75 percent of global market share, according to Strategy Analytics.

Clearwire Tests LTE

"Ongo" Launches Subscription Mobile News Service

Google as "Dangerous" as AT&T?

Optus CEO Paul O’Sullivan thinks content monopolies can be just as troublesome as access network monopolies. O’Sullivan, whose firm has battled incumbent
Telstra for more than a decade, said that while gatekeepers in the broadband access or voice areas still are important, he also can foresee much greater risks in the longer term in the application provider area.

Content and application monopolies can be just as troublesome as network access monopolies, he said.

Optus: Google, eBay just as dangerous as network monopolies • The Register

Dish Network CEO on Transitions

Dish Network CEO Charlie Ergen has been through big transitions in his days in the video entertainment business. Many will not recall it, but there was a time when satellite programming delivered to cable TV headends was not encrypted. In other words, any consumer who was willing to spend the money on a satellite system could watch all cable TV programming for free. But in 1986 HBO encrypted its feeds, and all the other satellite-delivered channels followed shortly thereafter.

The transition was that sales of C-band "television receive only" (TVRO) dishes peaked at about 735,000 in 1985, after growing parabolically in the few years before 1985.

Shipments dropped to 235,000 as more than 50 percent of all satellite retailers close their businesses. See http://www.mediabiz.com/news/dth_history/#1983

Ergen started out in the TVRO business in 1980. In 1986 Ergen applied for a direct broadcast satellite license. The point is that the original C-band business erupted somewhat suddenly, then declined just about as suddenly, after satellite feeds were encrypted. The shift of the consumer satellite video business to both Ku-band technology and the DBS business model likewise was a transition from the original C-band business.

Given the maturity of the existing video entertainment business, Ergen, like every other executive at every other company in the space, has been thinking about the implications of the coming shift to online delivery.

"I think I know where this thing is going now," he says. "If you were in the phone business and wireless came along and you kept on putting in a twisted pair of lines, that was still a good business for another 10 years, 15 years, but at some point that wasn't a very good business."

"So I'd rather be on the leading edge of that than the back end of it," he said.

"The hope is that you don't take too much money out of the ecosystem while you're figuring it out," he said. What he means is that the new business might cannibalize the existing business, and the trick will be to finesse the transition without undue cannibalization.

Dish Network's CEO Discusses Q4 2010 Results - Earnings Call Transcript - Seeking Alpha

Coupon Sites Reached 19 Percent North American Users in December

Coupon sites such as Groupon and LivingSocial reached 18.8 percent of the U.S. Internet population in December, according to data from comScore.

On a global basis, coupon sites reached 6.9 percent of users, the measurement firm estimated, while penetration in Europe reached 9.6 percent of users, having grown by 5.7 percentage points compared with December 2009.

Coupon Sites Reached 19 Percent North American Users in December | ClickZ

OneRiot Launches Social Ad Targeting for Mobiles

OneRiot has launched what it believes is the world’s first social targeting service for mobile ads. OneRiot now enables advertisers to reach targeted audience segments on mobile devices.

Segmentation and targeting are based on factors such as audience interest profiles, demographics, social influence and realtime conversations.

OneRiot Blog

75% of TV Viewers Now are Multitasking

Deloitte’s latest survey of media habits indicates that nearly three quarters of American consumers are multitasking while watching TV.

According to the research, 42 percent are online, 29 percent are talking on cellphones or mobile devices, and 26 percent are sending instant messages or text messages.

That might suggest to some that TV simply is not as engaging as it once was.

Deloitte’s “State of the Media Democracy” Survey

Skype Angles for More Share of Outbound Landline Calls

"Skype To Go" has been available for some time, but Skype now is positioning the service as a way to provide lower-cost calling from landline phones or mobile phones.

"You don’t need an Internet connection, and you don’t need to be in a 3G coverage area," Skype says. "Let’s say your aunt lives in Australia and you live in New York. Simply give us your aunt’s number in Australia, and we’ll convert it into a unique Skype To Go number with a New York area code."

"Then, all you need to do is call this number from your mobile or landline, and you can talk right away to your aunt in Australia at Skype’s amazing rates," Skype says.

Perhaps oddly, many such applications now are marketed as "communications as a service." It is odd because legacy communications always was a service. What is new is the ability for applications to provide that utility. But sometimes those application-based approaches are marketed as new "X as a service." In many cases, these new application or "over the top" approaches also were services, before. "Communications as a service" is a Non sequitur.

Skype - The Big Blog - Introducing Skype To Go - a new way to save on calls abroad from any phone

Why Mobile Will Not be as "Commoditized" as PC Market

One reason the mobile application environment will not be as simple as the PC environment can be glimpsed by looking at the state of mobile browser usage or operating systems in use. There is no uniformity similar to what one seems in the PC market.

http://paidcontent.org/article/419-infographic-mobile-browsers-compared-worldwide-or-what-nokias-giving-up/

Bandwidth Demand Pushing Higher-Speed DSL

New subscribers to very-high-speed digital subscriber line (VDSL) services are set to nearly quadruple by 2014 as more competitors begin to ramp up their support for the technology, according to new IHS iSuppli research.

The number of new annual VDSL subscriber additions will grow to 60.1 million in 2014, up from just 15.6 million in 2009. A total of 23.3 million new VDSL subscribers were added in 2010.

Make Netflix Pay for Universal Service?

Mark Cooper, director of research for the Consumer Federation of America, thinks Netflix should have to pay into the Universal Service Fund. To the extent that the Federal Communications Commission is looking to shift USF funding to support broadband, rather than voice, that notion, though sure to be resisted by application providers, also is likely to receive support from access providers.

It would not be unusual, for example, to hear executives from rural phone service providers say that application providers driving bandwidth consumption by consumers should also share in the support burdens.

The FCC is trying to migrate USF subsidies to fund broadband rather than phone service this year. The question of who must contribute into the fund now comes into view precisely because of the shift to a broader business ecosystem, where most of the new value and revenue accrue to application providers rather than the access providers.

Debates over USF and other support mechanisms always are highly contentious, but in the past have largely pitted various parts of the access provider community against other members of the community. These days, though those sorts of issues remain, at least for voice services, there is new attention being paid toward spreading a support obligation more broadly.

Consumer group wants to tax Netflix to pay for rural broadband - The Hill's Hillicon Valley

80% of Users Not Getting Top Value from Unified Communications

A non-scientific survey of 126 people registered to attend a unified communications conference in the United Kingdom has found that half of respondents have a unified communications solution in place, but 80 percent do not feel they are getting the most from it, Unified Communications Expo 2011 reports.

The results also show that lack of finances is significantly slowing adoption of unified communications in both business and technology sectors.

"The research suggests that UK businesses are still struggling to get to grips with the approach, and that the wealth of communication channels, especially social media related channels, is hindering rather than helping them," says Mike England, Unified Communications Expo director.

UK Businesses are Struggling to Communicate With one Voice - new Research From Unified Communications Expo 2011