Google Launches “Call phones in Gmail”

Google has launched a "Skype-like" calling capability from within Gmail. If you have a a Google Voice number and account, that number is what people will see as the "calling number." Others will use a generic number. Calls within the United States and Canada are free, and the service initially is available only in the United States. International calls are billed at rates identical to, or similar to, what Google Voice already offers.

Clearwire Says it Will Serve a "New Customer Segment"

Clearwire Corporation says it has plans to serve a new customer segment, and will tell us all what the new segment is on Aug. 30, 2010.  

Some Tablets Are Blurring Line with Smartphones

Tablet manufacturers are experimenting with demand for devices with different form factors, especially size.

European Broadband Speeds Up 20%, Prices Down 8% between December 2009 and June 2010

Following 18 months of relative stability during the recession, competition is once again driving a reduction in prices in the European fixed broadband market, Analysys Mason says. The average price paid for a fixed broadband service bundle (that is, a single-, double- or triple-play package) has declined by about five Euros between the fourth quarter of 2009 and the second quarter of 2010 to 40.7 EUR per month.

At the same time, access speeds continue to increase. Almost 20 percent of the tariffs tracked during the second quarter of 2010 offered downstream bandwidths of 30 Mbps or greater (although the proportion of subscribers that actually take these ultra-fast services is likely to be much lower than 20 percent).

There are several obvious implications. As we have come to expect, speeds keep increasing, while prices per megabit per second continue to fall. Given discussions about increasing U.S. broadband speeds, it is worth noting that where 30 Mbps service is available, at prices lower than we see in the United States, fewer than 20 percent of consumers choose to buy such services.

Also, mobile substitution is starting to become a bigger issue. That likely will have a "depressing" impact on typical or average speeds, even if consumers have their own rational reasons for choosing lower-speed services.

As a result, the average price per megabit per second has declined from 7.5 EUR in the fourth quarter of 2009 to just 5.8 EUR in the second quarter of 2010 (see Figure 1). Some service providers, such as Romtelecom in Romania, offer services at a rate as low as 0.1 EUR per megabit per second.

Service providers continue to charge a 24 percent premium for bundles that include a broadband service with a downstream speed of 30Mbit/s or greater. This ultra-fast broadband premium has remained steady over the first half of 2010, despite an overall decline in the price of fixed broadband bundles in Europe.

Competition from mobile broadband services also contributed to the downward pressure on fixed broadband tariffs during the first half of 2010.

However, the premium that providers charge for mobile broadband services is also eroding. Prepaid mobile broadband services with usage caps of 3 GBytes or more now undercut entry-level fixed broadband service propositions in most Western European countries.

Some broadband markets in Central and Eastern Europe, such as those of Poland and Estonia, are also approaching pricing parity for fixed and mobile broadband services.

The median speed of a DSL service in Europe has reached 8 Mbps for the first time, compared with 15 Mbps for cable modem and 50 Mbps for residential fiber-to-the-basement services.

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Google to improve YouTube mobile site for mobile marketing

Google is improving its YouTube service on mobile devices, which could provide a boost to brands planning a viral video campaign.

The site will be built on HTML5 standard and can be accessed via the phone's web browser, which will provide viewers with better quality videos to watch.

Mobile users of YouTube will also be given enhanced social networking features which will make it easier to share video links on Twitter, Facebook and Google Buzz.

DMA: Google to improve YouTube mobile site for mobile marketing

Apple in talks on 99-cent TV show rentals

Apple Inc. is reportedly renewing efforts to get TV networks to offer their shows on iTunes for as little as 99 cents per show.

The report from Bloomberg, based on unnamed sources, comes as Apple is widely expected to be ready to announce a new product called iTV next month.

Apple in talks on 99-cent TV show rentals

66% of U.S. Broadband Customers Buy Services Running Between 3 Mbps to 25 Mbps

Many have focused on those portions of a recent Federal Communications Commission report on the state of U.S. broadband that suggest 14 million to 24 million Americans cannot get broadband access at speeds of 4 Mbps or higher.

 read the report here..

But the FCC also released another report with some perhaps-surprising color on broadband access.

read the report here

One interesting factoid is that 66 percent of U.S. consumers already are buying access services running at bandwidths between 3 Mbps and 25 Mbps, with 31 percent using services running between 6 Mbps and 10 Mbps.

Click on the image for a larger view.

About 16 percent already buy services running between 10 Mbps and 25 Mbps. About nine percent buy services running at rates between 3 Mbps and 6 Mbps.

Keep in mind that the study also includes mobile broadband connections that are highly valuable, but run slower than fixed connections. Those connections already represent 25 percent of total connections. Since most of those connections run at less than 4 Mbps, they represent connections that are below the FCC's threshold for "broadband."

Actual users might agree that higher speeds are desirable, but few likely would agree their connections are not highly useful, despite the lower bandwidths. Value is partly based on "speed," but also is based on other important attributes, such as whether the connection is tethered or fully mobile.

Mobile services tend to cost more than fixed services, on a capacity-per-dollar basis, but that in itself would not explain the growing popularity and use of mobile broadband.

Despite arguments by many observers that U.S. fixed-line broadband access services are not competitive, it is a curiously "uncompetitive" market where speeds double every four years, for more than a decade, growing 20 percent a year over the last 13 or so years. 

Prices are a harder thing to measure, given the changes in the basic product over time. In other words, what a consumer pays today for a broadband connection is not an "apples to apples" comparison, given the doubling of speed every four years. The "product" a consumer can buy today, for any nominal price, is a different product than was purchased four, eight or 12 years ago. 

Nevertheless, the American Consumer Institute notes that, between 2004 and 20009 alone, Internet access pricing declined 23 percent. 

Another academic study suggests cable modem prices grew 0.8 percent, while digital subscriber line prices grew five percent, between 2004 and 2009. At the same time, cable modem speeds increased 85 percent while DSL speeds increased 80 percent, that same study found.

On a cents-per-bit basis, cable modem prices declined 45 percent, while DSL cost dropped 42 percent. Over that same period of time, the consumer price index grew 14 percent. 

Fuel prices increased 26 percent, food increased 15 percent, housing increased 13 percent, medical care prices increased 21 percent and education increased 32 percent. 

It is a strange "uncompetitive" market indeed that has doubled "quality" (speeds) every four years while prices overall have declined 23 percent. 

Some observers have suggested that the Google-Verizon agreement on how to handle network neutrality is a concession by Verizon that fixed-line broadband actually is "uncompetitive," or at least not as competitive as wireless broadband is. Some observers might argue that Verizon has conceded nothing of the kind.

The FCC study, one might argue, suggests that despite the apparent lack of competition in the fixed-line broadband market, the data suggest consumers are indeed reaping the benefits of competition.