Cablevision and Scripps Networks; Fox and Time Warner Cable Deals Have Implications for Telcos and App Providers

Cablevision and Scripps Networks Interactive have reached an agreement that paves the way for the return of the Food Network and HGTV programming to the cable operator’s system. Inability to come to terms meant HGTV and Food Network disappeared from Cablevision after the old contract expired on Dec. 31, 2009 and the two sides could not agree on terms for a new contract.

Separately, News Corp and Time Warner Cable managed to agree on a new deal without a service interruption. That deal meant no service interruption for viewers of the Fox television stations, Fox, Fox Cable Networks and Fox’s Regional Sports Networks.

That deal also covers Bright House Networks sibscribers in Florida.

DirecTV and Versus have not come to terms and Versus has been dark on DirecTV since Nov. 11, 2009.

Contract disputes between programmers and cable operators are not new, and the precedent likely applies to telcos and their application providers and handset providers as well. Which is to say that although all the value chain or ecosystem partners rely on each other to create end user value, each participant has a specific role in the value chain and distinct financial interests that have to be accommodated.

The same sort of thing exists in the online video and music and e-book reader spaces as well. The point is that there is a temptation to see application providers and Internet access providers as enemies with little in common. In fact, applications make networks valuable, and without networks, the increasing number of valuable network-based services cannot work.

Of late there are signs some of the former tension between Google and some ISPs, for example, has melted. Google and Verizon are working together on creating applications and optimizing Android device operation on the Verizon network, for example.

That isn't to deny that some amount of tension always will exist between ISPs and application providers. As the cable, music (Apple and music companies) and online video examples illustrate, each participant always will seek to maximize their own value and revenue within the overall value chain and ecosystem.

Financial interests are distinct, not identical. Ultimately, though, a stable ecosystem producing end user value will benefit from some stable understanding that key value chain participants all must profit, if the widest use of new applications and maximum end user experience are to be supported.

It won't be easy. Skype is a contributor to the declining value of basic voice revenues, for example. App developers obviously want to secure a place in the revenue and value chains. ISPs want to continue restructuring their own revenue models away from voice and towards new services based on IP networks.

Over-the-top app providers often believe they "don't need the ISPs." But over time, as the cable example shows, and as music, video and print content value chain participants will have to continue to work out, the best outcome is a flourishing new value chain where the key participants all win. That's best for providers and best for end users. Though it certainly will not be easy, it is the best way forward.

More "Middle Mile" Projects Funded by NTIA

The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration has announced grants totaling $63 million to expand broadband access and adoption in Massachusetts, Michigan and North Carolina.

Most of that money went to build new "middle mile" regional networks in Michigan and North Carolina.

In Michigan, Merit Network got a $33.3 million infrastructure grant with an additional $8.3 million in matching funds to build a 955-mile advanced fiber-optic network through 32 counties in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula.

In North Carolina, MCNC: $28.2 million infrastructure grant with an additional $11.7 million in matching funds and in-kind contributions to build a 494-mile middle-mile broadband network passing almost half the population of North Carolina in 37 counties.

Consumer Centric Communications

Live blog of Pacific Telecommunications Council panel on "consumer-centric communications"

Consumer Centric Communications: I was looking forward to this panel, and my expectations were met and exceeded. There’s a lot of great work being done in areas of e-health and remote communications that the title doesn’t accurately speak to. However, e-health is a good representative area illustrating ways and players addressing global human needs, and the technology that supports it.

David  Sawcer: Pfizer model and tele-health used to analyze questions like why mobile has such a potential benefit but not so great adoption? My experience show that all aspects of successful remote collaborative care, remote monitoring and senseing, and remote access to data and resources. Collaborative care: in military, servicemen would get posted to remote locations with limited health care, generally necessary to evacuate them. We set up a satellite link to joint services hospital, we were able to provide interactions to store-forward info, or interact with local care providers. Was possible to provide diagnosis or treatment questions but had limitations.

Access to data and services: using remote PDAs, drug formulary and interactions database, and online diagnosis (e.g., Up To Date and paid service through university) – didn’t exist until a few years ago, now widely adopted.

Remote sensing/monitoring: in Africa, rural health care, congesitive cardiac care (can be fatal) is common. Is simple question to monitor at local level with bathroom scales (weigh patients), then text in for medical advice (take certain amount of medicines). Unfortunately the program failed when someone stole the bathroom scales. Colleague Elizabeth: when there isn’t a good substitute, alternatives come about organically. On interface part of equation: on patient side, great willingness to use mobile phones or devices (if easy). David: Services most useful when regularly updated with reliable information and was given away free. Technology has to fit the way we work. Costs haven’t been well calculated re: efficiencies, investment; no studies in this area. We talk to the carriers a lot as they’re looking for new areas, but it’s not on their horizon. Pediatric study at UC Irvine and UC San Francisco: got to refer patients on web, by form interface, to appropriate providers. 400 referrals over 4 years shows disparity in usefulness.

Ravi Sharma: Modeling digital flows in the eHealth Eco-system: Strategic implications for players. Example of community center, relatively bandwidth intensive. This market is multi-sided, there is a critical role for telecom network operators (what’s in it for them?). Research questions: 1. identify key stakeholders in this space, model the digital info flows among them. 2. Analyze the values created vs values-captured… Is an ecosystem that encompasses all key players, allows interoperability among them by providing a common platform for interfaces and transactions. Business models: e-commerce based, centrism-based (hospital or provider centric), and platform based (Google; proprietary vs open). Shift in focus from provider-centric to patient-centric models. Time is right to look at electronic personal health records (PHRs). Value of this ecosystem is a function of many components. (Diagram of digital info flow). (Here’s the PDF paper.) Game theory/analysis questions: does value captured justify value created for every player? Does a player stand to lose by opting out of this system? Future work: is a player better off in-system? corresponding value in quantitative terms? what characterizes a win-win business model that makes for a fair, efficient, and stable (sustainable) value network?

Audience discussion: Many efforts on grassroots level to standardize and discover information sharing practices. Singapore doctors training includes steps for diagnosis, shared records with patients. Also generational change brings updated attitudes and technology practices.

Eunice Hsiao-Hui Wang: User acceptance of 3.5G mobile broadband services: the early adopters’ scenario. Early adopters focus of studying user behaviors of 3.5G (HSDPA). Study’s objective: availability: affordabilitiy and adoption (continued subscription). More people like to access the Internet by mobile devices. In Taiwan, several mobile networks (GSM, GPRS, 3G, 3.5G), also wireless (WiFi, WiMax). 23M cell phones, 100% penetration rate, 13M Internet broadband subscribers, penetration rate 66% (Jan 2009). Among Internet broadband subscribers, only 7.7% adopting mobile broadband services and growing fast. Small business user market (3.5G subscription bundling with smart phones like Blackberry, PDAs – slow user growth), potential critical mass market (3.5G bundling with free NetPC and affordable flat monthly fee ($27US).

Survey: web-based on 255 Taiwanese 3.5G mobile broadband subscribers, where is critical mass (behavioral pattern)? Technology Acceptance Model: belief – attitudes – behavioral intention, leads to belief: perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness and perceived playfulness. (graphic of reserch framework) Sample demographics: 53% female, 23.5% age 21-25 and 25.5% 26-30 years old, 55% university level, mostly lower income brackets. Conclusions: perceptions not significantly related to behavioral intention. Most significant factor is attitude: positive attitude leads to greater possibility of continued use. Suggestions: easy, simple and user-friendly service is essential, enhanced convenience-driven interface design encourages subscription (gets jobs done efficiently).

Live Blog of Voice 2.0 Panel at PTC

Jonathan Rosenberg, chief technology strategist at Skype; Rodrigue Ullens, Voxbone CEO; Frank Fawzi, IntelePeer CEO and Mke James, Metaswitch Networks director of systems engineering kick around "Voice 2.0."

Voice 2.0: Beyond the Hype: Lots of ways people are using voice today, let’s look at changes. Gary Kim moderating discussions from Rodrigue, Mike, Frank, and Jonathan.

Jonathan: Voice 2.0 (see yesterday’s talk): it’s not voice anymore, it’s video. Voice is becoming integrated with other media, part of a broader communications experience. As voice and video permeates the web, everything fits together as interactive content experience with seamless integration.

Frank: interactive video being woven into experience. We’ve seen significant interest by enterprise carriers to enrich end-user experience, trying to reach audience by any means possible (clicking links, sms, etc.). It’s critical that you deliver quality as part of business process. We’ve seen minutes double, 4.5B end of 2008 to about 10B annualized run rate now, coming from all kinds of customers, uses, and sources.

Mike: Traditional voice now dull and boring, now it’s about software and applications. Voice embedded in PC, more integration with TV. No one carrier is everything to everyone, need support for 3rd parties to develop.

Rodrigue: Internet-based company with Internet-based business model, voice as part of it. Not a fight between AT&T and Google, is an ecosystem of business models in global market. Enterprises are next opportunity (IT direct, management and apps), mentality of using certain apps is going to change. Telcos can afford their business model is by staff and host switching, engineers, need to embrace new opportunities.

Gary: What strikes me about this panel is that panelists will benefit from creative applications and capability. This is clearly a good thing. What advice would you offer others in the ecosystem? No way to fight this, many new ways to drive revenue. Frank: We talk with carriers about opportunities to reach their end users, deal with hundreds of millions of phone number in their registry. How do you think about creating opportunities to expand embedded voice, lower cost of communications, increase applicability of voice in new ways? Expansion and connectivity between voice and multimodal technologies? (15 times more likely to convert with human interaction).

Gary: Rich voice? Jonathan: what makes voice sales more effective is the real people. All this technology is about replicating face to face interactions. It’s not just the words, it’s the nuances, facial expression, the reasons we get on airplanes. Voice is lowest level, video is next step closer to experience of sitting next to each other. As quality gets higher, you get increasing value of return.

Gary: implications of infrastructure with regard to partners? Mike: Sometimes we need to get out of the way and allow the end points to negotiate.

Gary: voice has always been cloud-based, but now there’s more to the cloud. Frank: communications as a service, using (common) links to access cloud. Slight distinction: now all we need to do is enable an IP pipe. Jonathan: leveraging the IP model, worldwide network model. Allows new service providers to offer new services. Voice was regional, now you can reach anywhere in the world. Rodrigue: one of the ways of providing voice over other apps: use hardware, open source, infrastructure where costs are declining and redundancy is scalable. Mike: agreeing, legacy connectivity enables… Rodrigue: lots of affordable solutions available today. Jonathan: a lot of cloud service providers develop locally, value is in software.

Question: What drives this Voice 2.0 development? Suggested application stores, is there community and/or clearinghouse function, who is gatekeeper? Jonathan: There is no one answer. One interesting area is the web and different web apps, distribution channel is the browser. Other: mobile apps, e.g., iPhone and Apple App store. Frank: types of folks that we work with, we’re not opening an app store, working with communities of interest who may want to add voice as a feature to enrich their end user experience. Mike: many models of distribution including the web, branded carriers and app stores; other carriers distribute through their own channels.

Gary: regarding voice as an app: abilty of smartest guys to be surprised. For example, Apple may not have expected App Store to be as big as they are. Now others are building app stores. Rodrigue: takes several months or years to create new products, while on the web you can launch, analyze, relaunch. Innovation can be brought online on behalf of their users.

Gary: executives express concern about protecting their brand. How to make use of developer community? Jonathan: on the web, if you want to see how things work, try it, collect results, improve or add new features. That new model of massive “learn as you go” is a hallmark of success of the web. Voice 2.0 is about embracing the benefits of the web, contrast with traditional telecom models (long time to roll out new features, compared to adding IM to Facebook).

Gary: US telecom industry replaced 50% of their revenue model in the 1990s. I’m calling for them to replace 50% over next 10 years. (You’ve done it.) Jonathan: it comes down to embracing the developers, doesn’t give up value to user. Windows: huge group of 3rd party developers. Devices and networks open up, carriers become portals, to become operating system of voice 2.0. Frank: wireline revenue disappeared, new technologies can displace existing revenue models. Wireless can help, uses for voice increase abundance of opportunities (scalable networks).

Question: Future of mobile environment: Jonathan: hoping for open environment where providers like us can add value-added services. It’s one of the next frontiers: getting quality up is a big challenge and growth opportunity.

Gary: experience is limited where networks are not robust (really cooking). Jonathan: capacity changes the equation.

Question: how do you tackle voice 2.0, what are trends? Rodrigue: identifier (phone number) from voice calls enable new innovation. Jonathan: enterprises are seeing vast deployment in IP communications (video, presence, IM), but landlocked inside of enterprise. Need to create new generation of peering technologies, security, etc. Cisco just announced product that’s focused on this problem, using phone numbers as identifiers (VIPER), peering.

Joe Weinman: concern for stability, scalability and reliability (911 and safety-critical apps), what strategies for innovation of massive disruptions, dilemma of brand protection vs innovation? Frank: point where scalability, robustness and quality becomes critical, need to have a high quality services, how does that apply on telco level, how to you move a large organization into disruptive model without affecting customers, mission critical services, and existing revenue streams? It’s more challenging. Jonathan: questions that presumption: reliability can be obtained, available; data is more critical than voice link going down. IP pipe needs to be always up. Rodrigue: difference between telco and app provider: telco provides infrastructure, everything is redundant, critical lines. Have a different business, e.g. BT and Ribbit, play at another layer (other business units). Frank: you guys are providing the infrastructure, reliabilty from traditional means; disruption does not take away responsibility of network providers. Joe: Mixing apples and oranges. Access is a critical issue, but at application layer testing becomes a brand protection mechanism. Mike: in some places, telcos are tied by regulatory bodies, services like Skype do not replace 911. Frank: we’re all capable of creating opportunities for ourselves. Gary: would be interesting to do a study about when we think things will break, all critical apps are IP based. We rely on the connection, not our hardware or software that can be fixed by rebooting. Interesting what human beings are becoming accustomed to. Frank: we’re willing to accept certain things, like quality of wireless compared to wired.

Ifbyphone Buys Cloudvox to Support Development of New Apps

Ifbyphone, provider of Web-based  voice and phone applications especially for call center type applications, announced today that it has acquired Cloudvox to give its customers the tools they need to build their own open-source, customized phone applications to fit their business needs.

The deal gives Ifbyphone an open applictions programming interface it can use to provides Web developers (even less experienced ones) with all the pieces they need to build working Web-based telephony services.

At the same time, Ifbyphone will still equip them with the technology they need to deploy and scale their newly-built applications.

Developers can build web telephony services to work with any existing software, whether it uses Python, Ruby, PHP, Java, C# or HTTP. They can still build on all the features they need to control every phase of a call with only a few clicks of a mouse — and without adding any new equipment or infrastructure, Ifbyphone says.

The move is an example of the growing importance of end-user created and customer applications in the business and organization segment of the market.

Truphone Becomes a Mobile Service Provider

These days, any company that really wants to become a mobile service provider can do so. Recently Mitel, a provider fo business phone systems and solutions, became a mobile service provider to deliver turnkey communications solutions for its business customers.

Now Truphone has launched "Truphone Local Anywhere," allowing local mobile calling initially in the United States and the United Kingdom, using a subscriber information module (SIM) approach. Addtional markets, including European countries, Australia, Hong Kong and South Africa, will be added in 2010.

Initially, the service will be most valuable for U.K. mobile users who want to call the United States, but the service soon will extended across Europe and other markets U.K. callers may frequently wish to reach.

The new service offers mobile users local rates for voice, data and text services for all countries where Truphone establishes operations, all on a single SIM.

In conjunction with the launch of Truphone Local Anywhere, the company announced it has become a mobile virtual network operator in the United Kingdom.

Truphone Local Anywhere eliminates the need for users to swap SIM cards, juggle multiple mobile devices or use complex dial-back systems in efforts to avoid costly roaming charges.

Amazon Offers Authors, Publishers 70% of Revenues from Kindle Sales

Amazon.com has launched a new program allowing authors and publishers who use the Kindle Digital Text Platform to earn 70 percent of the revenue from each Kindle book they sell, net of delivery costs.

The new option does not replace the existing DTP standard royalty option and will be available on June 30, 2010.

Delivery costs will be based on file size and pricing will be $0.15 per MByte, Amazon says.  At today's median DTP file size of 368 KBytes, delivery costs would be less than $0.06 per unit sold.

This new program can thus enable authors and publishers to make more money on every sale. For example, on an $8.99 book an author would make $3.15 with the standard option, and $6.25 with the new 70 percent option.

"Today, authors often receive royalties in the range of 7 to 15 percent of the list price that publishers set for their physical books, or 25 percent of the net that publishers receive from retailers for their digital books," says Russ Grandinetti, Vice President of Kindle Content.

The new pricing shows, once again, how disruptive the Internet can be. This new plan will encourage more authors to "go direct" to Amazon, or at least force their publishers to sell ebooks at a substantial discount.

That will increase the pressure on traditional publishers to cut prices on wholesale Kindle books.

Amazon says the new program applies only to author or publisher-supplied list prices between $2.99 and $9.99. Why that price range? It creates a permanent and substantial pricing gap between Kindle-delivered content and a physical product delivering the same content. The list price must be at least 20 percent below the lowest physical list price for the physical book.

Publishers won't like that, but will have to get used to it.

The title is made available for sale in all geographies for which the author or publisher has rights, which similarly avoids the typical regional royalty deals, putting pressure on publishers worldwide.

Books must be offered at or below price parity with prices for the same content on other e-book readers or physical products.

This looks like a brilliant play from Amazon.  E-book prices need to (and should) drop substantially: When the cost of an incremental sale is near-zero, publishers have no business charging physical-book prices.

The traditional publishing industry obviously will have to deal with the reality of a new cost structure in the business, and that will have ramifications up and down the ecosystem. Margins will be lower, on a permanent basis, with all that implies for existing business arrangements.

On the other hand, the new policies could increase the volume of sales and certainly will create an opportunity for more niche publishing. It's just another example of how the Internet disrupts the economics of any business it touches.