Net Neutrality: 4-6 Years of Uncertainty

Professor Tim Wu says the Federal Communications Commission's net neutrality rules mean at least four to six years of uncertainty, as it will take that long for court challenges to the FCC's authority to bubble up to the Supreme Court for final ruling.

"We’ll get an initial indication in about two years (the length of time it will take for the initial legal challenge), but a final answer may require the Supreme Court to get involved," Wu says. Meanwhile, if the new rule is struck down by a federal court, the FCC retains the power to reenact it using a different basis of authority (its backup power, so to speak). That will effectively reset the authority question for another two years.

The ruling will have other effects. There are lots of firms that sell software allowing service providers to create services offering priority handling of packets, and custom services built on the apps users care about most. It will now, in the U.S. market not make so much sense to try and sell such products to wireline operators, as they probably will not want to bother creating services other than "best effort."

That shifts the whole focus of sales effort to other countries where creation of such services is possible. Inside the United States, only the wireless providers will be able to create many new types of differentiated service. That's good for mobile providers, but not so good for the commodity providers of fixed broadband service.

The Art Of Kicking The Can: Uncertainty Rules When It Comes To Net Neutrality

A 42-Inch Android Tablet? Seriously?

Apparently this is a test of potential demand for a 42-inch-screen Android tablet. Not sure it makes much sense for most people, but I can imagine lots of point-of-sale display applications.

Best Gadgets of 2010

Gadgets matter for lots of reasons, mostly because they frequently are fun, and sometimes help us be productive. But at least in part because gadgets drive demand for communications and communications services. And, ultimately, that demand supplies the demand that allows us to keep investing in better networks.

At the end of the day, consumers decide whether advanced communications are important, by our willingness to spend on the services.

iAd Producer Makes iAd Ad Creation Easier

Apple's new "iAd Producer" will make it easier for would-be advertisers to design and assemble high-impact, interactive content for iAd. iAd Producer automatically manages the HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript behind your iAd to make creating beautiful, motion-rich iAd content as easy as point and click, Apple says.

For advanced developers, iAd Producer offers sophisticated JavaScript editing and debugging, along with a powerful extension mechanism that enables them to create and re-use their own page templates and components.

That's going to delight, or at least appease, brands that found Apple's instance on creative control stifling.

iAd Producer - Apple Developer

Can Twitter Inform Stock Trades?

A hedge fund called Derwent Capital Markets says it will launch a new fund in February that will trade based in part on analysis of Twitter sentiment. This approach is built on research from the University of Manchester and Indiana University that showed how the number of emotional words on Twitter could be used to predict moves in the Dow Jones index.

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1010/1010.3003v1.pdf

Researchers said they found that a change in emotions as expressed on Twitter would be followed by a move in the index between two and six days later, and that this method had greater than 87-percent accuracy.

Someone Is Trading Stocks Based on Your Tweets

Was Skype Outage an Attack?

The ultimate cause of the Skype global outage is still unclear (or at least Skype isn’t ready to talk about it yet), but it does not appear Skype completely rules out the possibility of an attack designed to take the network down.

Skype CEO Will Offer Users Credits For Outage; Does Not Rule Out Malicious Attack

Use Android to Program Google TV

FCC chair to approve Comcast-NBC merger with conditions

The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission issued a draft order approving Comcast's proposed merger with NBC Universal on Thursday, putting the deal up for vote.

Approval would come with several conditions related to Internet video distribution of NBC and Comcast content and the sharing of shows to competing cable and satellite firms. The merger would also have to ensure that competing networks get on Comcast's platform.

The Justice Department is conducting a separate review to see if the deal passes antitrust laws.

Post Tech - FCC chair to approve Comcast-NBC merger with conditions

Google Doesn't "Get" Hollywood

If Google managers hope to license premium TV shows and films for Google TV and YouTube, they should do what Netflix did and build relationships through traditional means. That's the recommendation of one studio executive.

After two years wooing the film and TV sectors, Google is still not very tuned in to the industry, said two film sector insiders who spoke to CNET.

These same executives cautioned against naming Netflix the winner of Internet distribution, adding that there's a long way to go in this contest. But both sources acknowledged that Netflix has had more success acquiring content thanks to the company's big head start in the sector as well as adopting a smarter approach to Hollywood.

Why Netflix has content and Google TV doesn't | Media Maverick - CNET News

Broadband Networks: Slim Returns

Wireline networks have the weakest returns on invested capital with a 1.5 percent gain over the last decade, argues Sanford Bernstein financial analyst Craig Moffett.

Wireless networks had a meager return of 0.3 percent. Cable garnered a 2.5 percent return. Satellite networks had the best return on invested capital at 5.5 percent.

At least in part, that's one reason DirecTV shares have trounced other companies in 8-year returns, he argues. Other stocks—AT&T, Comcast, Dish, Sprint and Verizon—have negative returns, says Moffett.

But here’s where the returns get tricky. Once you add up the costs of various telecom deals, the returns look much worse.

Broadband networks: Returns on invested capital stink | ZDNet

Monetizing Mobile Networks

One way of looking at ways mobile operators can create revenue in new ways.

Hard to Top Apple, Really

Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, has been named the Financial Times "Man of the Year."

“Steve’s the last of the great builders,” says Roger McNamee, the prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist. “What makes him different is that he’s creating jobs and economic activity out of thin air while just about every other CEO in America is working out ways to cut costs and lay people off."

Put simply, Apple under Jobs has created markets, not "taken market share." That's a big deal.

One can only hope McNamee is wrong about that last assessment.

read more here

Skype Outage Continues

Skype's service outage continues into its second day. Skype says that traffic is running around 30 percent of what typically is expected.

Skype - The Big Blog - Status update on downtime

Android Market Gets AT&T Carrier Billing

Android users who are customers of AT&T now can use AT&T "Direct Carrier Billing" for purchases from the Android Market.

The move shows the role a mobile service provider can play in mobile payments for digital goods, even though carrier billing has been available for decades.

Some firms using carrier billing from a number of carriers say the payment method can be expensive without volume, but Android Marketplace should not have a "volume of transactions" problem.

Android Developers Blog: More Payment Options in Android Market

Google Makes Comparison Shopping Easier

Google has introduced a new feature for product searching in the United Kingdom, called "Nearby Shops."

Nearby Shops shows stores in a user's vicinity that sell what a user is searching for. As you can well imagine, this is going to help steer users to "stuff" they want, but also could lead to an increase comparison shopping behavior, since it will be easy to find other locations that might have the same items, in case a user decides a price or other item elements are not right.

Google Launches Nearby Shops In UK | jatiN mahindrA doT coM

"Getting" Social Media Takes Work and Time

We might generally agree at this point that social media tends to work better for consumer brands than for business-to-business brands, though at some point that is likely to change.

What is harder to contest is the issue of what it takes, not to understand, but to use, social media such as Facebook. A new study by A.T. Kearney illustrates some of the issues. The study found that 89 percent of consumer replies on company’s Facebook pages remained unanswered. To be sure, not every post requires a reply. But A.T. Kearney points out that Gucci didn’t reply to a single thread in the last three months.

That appears to be a common problem that mostly is "budget" related. Though it doesn't necessarily "cost" much to use Facebook, replies imply monitoring, and that takes people and time. And if the volume of replies and comments is large, then the labor to monitor and reply is going to be significant. Few large firms seem prepared to create entirely new staffs to handle this function, and perhaps few small firms can do so.

Even when marketers responded, only 15 percent of their posts “invited further conversation” and 17 percent actually “addressed the consumer by name. That is arguably tougher in a business-to-business setting, because many, if not most posts in such settings are "anonymous," suggesting that a poster needs or wants to keep an identity hidden. That's not so useful.

Firms that were a bit more friendly and responsive on Facebook averaged a consumer-to-company post/response ratio of 3:1. Most, however, had a 1:4 ratio. If you think about it, that's probably reasonable, since not every post does require a substantive reply.

Read the full study here: http://www.atkearney.com/index.php/Publications/socially-awkward-media-volume-xiii-number-2-2010.html

Read an analysis here: Why Some Of The World’s Biggest Brands Still Don’t Get Facebook - Elaine Wong - Media Geek - Forbes

Users Appear to Prefer "Do Not Track" Rules

Most people do not seem to like the idea of advertiser tracking of their online behavior, and with the Federal Trade Commission looking at tracking, it seems likely some new "do not track" program is coming.

The ironic facet of the issue is that refined tracking, conducted with permission, would mean a much-higher chance that most of the ads a user sees over the course of a day might actually be relevant, interesting and valuable.

Some forms of tracking, such as "remember me" functions, also are highly useful, and represent one way of maintaining "permission" status for any tracking programs.

Newspapers Stream More Video than Broadcasters

With the caveat that usage and bandwidth are not direct proxies for "revenue," Brightcove and TubeMogel report that newspapers surpassed broadcasters in total minutes streamed for the first time in the third quarter of 2010.

Brightcove suggests that newspapers are rapidly adopting and producing video content for what was once a print business. Of course, broadcasters probably figure they are "streaming" (broadcasting) all day, so online might not be so important to them.

Online media properties (which includes pure-play Web properties and blogs) also had a strong growth quarter in player loads (127 percent growth) and titles uploaded (23 percent growth), suggesting that video adoption and production activity is on the rise across the growing media category, Brightcover says.

Perhaps significantly, game consoles such as the Wii and PlayStation lead in viewing time with an average
of 2:45 minutes watched per view, compared with online video averaging out to just under 2:27 minutes per view.

read more here

Are People Watching TV?

Because consumers are using their PC for activities that require more attention than watching TV, which is mostly a passive activity, some might say TV viewing statistics are questionable.

Almost a third of consumers are playing games on their computers while watching television, and one-quarter are doing schoolwork, for example.

The Data Digest: What Are People Using Their PC For While Watching TV? | Forrester Blogs

SMBs Still Prefer Premises-Based IP Telephony

The growth potential of the hosted market over the next five to six years is still low when compared to premises-based IP telephony solutions, Frost & Sullivan says. Most smaller businesses still appear to want local control and prefer the one-time cost of a premises-based system, since the monthly charges associated with hosted services.

This is particularly true in the 50-to-100 extensions segment. While hosted telephony services have improved considerably in terms of voice quality and uptime, an on-site system is often less costly to maintain over a longer period of time and can exceed hosted services' uptime rates.

No Jitter | blog | Threats to the SMB Premises-Based IP Telephony Market