Google Fiber in Provo Prices Same as Kansas City

Google Fiber in Provo, Utah will be priced the same way as Google Fiber in Kansas City. People will be able to sign up for free 5 Mbps download/1 Mbps upload service, with the offer guaranteed for seven years.

Symmetrical gigabit access is priced at $70 a month.

When bundled with Google's video entertainment service, the dual-play package will cost $120 a month.

Using a Drone-Mounted Camera to See what a Surfer Sees "In the Water"

If you've ever seen a picture of a surfer (the ocean kind), shot from shore, you have one view of what's going on, but you can't see what the surfer sees while on the wave. 

Sometimes you see a head-mounted camera shot, and that gives you a different sense of what the rider is experiencing. 

But here's something I have never seen before, namely a video camera apparently mounted on some sort of drone, that is shooting from above the rider and along the ride itself. 

As somebody who used to spend lots of time in the water, this is closer to what the rider sees: how you know the wave is moving over shallower water and is going to wall up, or moving over deeper water, and about to reform. 

In the former case, you need to drive faster to make the section, or you'll be in the soup (the white water).  In the latter case, you need to cut back, to ride the most-powerful part of the wave (the curl). 

It's fun. A great way to waste about three minutes. 

Skype Will be Native Part of Windows 8.1 Start Screen

A decade ago, many observers might have argued it would be provocative if a major over the top communications app was made a basic part of the Windows operating system, since that would make communications a basic part of the PC operating system. 

But it now seems nobody will protest when Skype becomes part of Windows 8.1, eliminating the need to download a client.

Insrtead, Skype will be "front-and-center" as a native part of the Windows 8.1 experience.

That shows how much the communications market has changed. Communicating using an over the top messaging app simply is a daily part of Internet experiences for many people. Microsoft doesn't really have to worry about angering its business partners by building Skype right into the operating system. 

"Communicating, connecting and sharing should be a seamless part of every Windows experience," Skype says. 

International telephone traffic grew five percent in 2012, to 490 billion minutes, according to TeleGeography. 

However, as call volumes continue to grow, so do the challenges facing the international long-distance industry. But as any industry excecutive can tell you, calling volumes are different from calling prices. 

International migration, the rapid uptake of mobile phones in developing countries, and steady reductions in international call prices, especially in the form of flat-rate and free calling plans, have contributed to traffic increases. 

Nevertheless, recent volume growth rates are well below the 13 percent average annual increases in volume that carriers could count on to offset price declines over much of the past 20 years, TeleGeography says. 

So while international phone traffic growth is slowing, traffic from voice and messaging applications like Skype is growing faster. Cross-border traffic using Skype grew 44 percent in 2012, to 167 billion minutes. 

This increase of nearly 51 billion minutes is more than twice that achieved by all international carriers in the world, combined.

Moreover, if Skype’s traffic were added to the volume of international phone calls, international voice traffic would have grown 13 percent in 2012, in line with historical trends. 

This suggests that the "lost calling volume growth" has been displaced by Skype calling. 

Technology Adoption Rates Show Danger of Getting to Market "Too Early"

If you are familiar with the notion of "hype cycles," you will have some idea why important new technologies quite often take longer than expected to reach critical mass, often said to be the point where 10 percent of households or users have adopted the innovation.

Being late to get into a market can be dangerous, but being too early might be the more prevalent mistake. 

Though the tablet might be the fastest-growing consumer appliance of all time, most devices and appliances take quite a long time to reach ubiquity. 

Consider smart phones, which many rightly consider to be among the faster-growing devices of all time. IBM Simon, with its rudimentary touch screen, in 1993. It didn’t catch on. 

About 2002, personal digital assistants started to have the ability to make and receive phone calls. 

RIM shipped its first BlackBerry about that time. 

In late 2006 only 715,000 smart phones were sold, though, representing just six percent of U.S. mobile phone sales. Up to that point, the smart phone was spreading not much faster than personal computers had done, according to Technology Review.

Still, keep in mind that It took landline telephones about 45 years to get from five percent to 50 percent penetration among U.S. households, and mobile phones took around seven years to reach a similar proportion of consumers. Smart phones have gone from five percent to 40 percent in about four years. 

But it likewise took about 11 years for use of mobile phones to reach 10 percent penetration, so it took about 18 years for use of mobile phones to reach about half of people in the United States. 

Since it took about eight years for smart phone penetration to reach 10 percent of people, and then another seven years to reach half of users, it took about 13 years for smart phones to reach half of U.S. consumers. 

And that has been about the fastest adoption rate of any appliance, in the U.S. market. 

Global adoption of mobile phones in the developing world has been stunningly rapid, as well. 

In 1982, there were 4.6 billion people in the world, and not a single mobile-phone subscriber. 

Today, there are seven billion people in the world and six billion mobile cellular-phone subscriptions. In other words, the world has gone to about 86 percent penetration in about 30 years. 

From the standpoint of human progress, that is fast. From the standpoint of any single company, that is a long time. 

And that is worth keeping in mind. Most truly important consumer technologies take time to reach ubiquity. Would-be market leaders have plenty of time to misjudge market progress, and fail before “ubiquity” is attained.

Content Owners Will Decide Whether Apple Really Has "Cracked the Code" on Internet TV

Steve Jobs famously said shortly before his death that he had “cracked the code” on how to change the TV experience. 

But is it possible Jobs mostly had the insight that a combination of more convenient hardware (tablets or smart phones), easier navigation (no remotes), easier access (seamless integration of Internet and linear TV sources) and the ability to buy programs one at a time for 99 cents would create a dramatically new experience?

It’s hard to say. Perhaps we will understand as early as September 2013; perhaps we will have to wait longer. At least so far, content owners seem unwilling to consider licensing content show by show, as iTunes suppliers now license songs one by one. That suggests the wait for a disruptive TV assault, by Apple or anyone else, is going to a bit longer in coming.

No matter what innovations Apple can create in displays, interfaces and navigation or remote control substitutes, television still is about the content. And without access to a new way of buying programs, the other advances, though incrementally more pleasing, are unlikely to create a breakthrough.

So what we are left with, for the moment, is simply a glacially slow movement away from subscription TV services sold by cable and satellite, market share gains by telcos, but a slight and slow dip in overall market demand.

One might argue that high-definition TV and digital video recorders have been incremental improvements. The ability to display Internet sourced video is another incremental improvement.

Consumers also long ago also signaled a clear preference for flat screen technology and bigger screens. But some might argue 3D has flopped. Interactive TV proved to have almost no demand.

At the same time, Netflix and other streaming services are showing promise, though largely as an incremental complement to linear television. Mobile consumption is growing. Tablet consumption is growing faster.

But nothing so far suggests a major shift in television experience or content distribution is ready to begin in a big way.

The predictable changes we now expect to see are small market share gains by telcos, every quarter, at the expense of cable TV providers, with satellite provider share roughly stable.

That was the story in the second quarter of 2013, according to IHS. AT&T U-verse and Verizon FiOS (with some small additions by independent telcos) added a net 398,000 video accounts during the second quarter, up from 304,000 net adds in the second quarter of 2012.

The U.S. video subscription business as  while lost a net 352,000 subscribers in the second quarter, according to IHS.

In a market with nearly 95 million to 104 million subscribers, that really isn’t such a big deal. That’s a market shrinkage of about one-tenth of a percent, to three-tenths of one percent.

So we might be past the peak of multichannel video subscription rates, if not yet revenue. But the present rate of decline is not alarming, though indicative of the long term trend.

It might not matter so much which provider segments are growing, and which are shrinking. The most important single fact is that the overall market is very slowly shrinking.

That suggests content owners are not yet ready to abandon current distirbution models. And without major changes in licensing, it is doubtful Apple or any other firms can revolutionize television.

Baltimore to Explore Own Internet Access Network

Baltimore is hiring a consultant that would help the city develop a plan for expanding Internet service provider options for businesses and residents. For the moment, the only expectation is a study that provides options, such as creating greater incentives for any would-be ISPs to create a facilities-based new network.

Presumably, the study also will explore options for anchoring such a new metro network with fiber Baltimore could lay to support its own internal operations, or other initiatives to lure a few anchor tenants that could build on such a network. 

Baltimore was among cities that had bid to become a site for the first Google Fiber operation.
And Verizon has decided not to upgrade Baltimore with FiOS. 

In all likelihood, Baltimore will find it must hope for some sort of public-private partnership to "spot build" new facilities in Baltimore, as so far, the financial return for a full citywide build appear quite daunting. 

PCs are for Work, Other Than That, People Will Prefer Tablets, Smart Phones

Perhaps some executives in the PC industry actually believe they can build a PC that entices people to part with their smart phones or tablets. Some of us think that is a fool's errand. 

Some might say devices such as the Chromebook are designed for affordable browsing. Some of us would not agree. Browsing is what people prefer to do on other devices, when they are not working and producing large amounts of content. 

That probably has implications for the use of all the devices. A "work" device is not necessarily as "personal" a device as a smart phone, or as much fun as a tablet. Some devices (think of most devices in your kitchen or livingroom or bedroom) just have to work. You don't think about them too much. They aren't necessarily personal statements, as your clothing or jewelry or fragrance most likely are. 

And that's the issue with PCs. There's no such thing anymore as "web-centric" users. That's everybody, doing everything. 

When the PC was the only computing device, people might have been more attached to them. These days, the PC increasingly is something you use when you have to work. Most other things you'd prefer to do on a tablet or smart phone. 

That likely has implications for how much people are willing to spend on a work appliance, if they are spending their own money.