Bye bye Net Neutrality (and not because of regulators)

Time Warner to test Internet billing based on usage

By Yinka AdegokeWed Jan 16, 10:50 PM ET

Time Warner Cable Inc said on Wednesday it is planning a trial to bill high-speed Internet subscribers based on their amount of usage rather than a flat fee, the standard industry practice.

The second largest U.S. cable operator said it will test consumption-based billing with subscribers in Beaumont, Texas later this year as a part of a strategy to help reduce congestion of its network by a minority of consumers who pay the same monthly fee as light users.

The company believes the billing system will impact only heavy users, who account for around 5 percent of all customers but typically use more than half of the total network bandwidth, according to a company spokesman.

Slowing network congestion due to downloading of large media files such as video is a growing problem for Time Warner Cable. The company said the problem will worsen as video downloading becomes more popular.

But the move could prove controversial. Unlike with utility bills such as the phone or electricity, which have traditionally been based on usage, U.S. high-speed Internet subscribers have come to expect a fixed monthly charge. An Internet bill typically only varies based on the speed of the consumer's Internet access.

Time Warner Cable, which has 7.4 million residential Internet subscribers, is hoping the move will not confuse consumers if introduced nationwide and is planning a trial period.

"Largely, people won't notice the difference," said the Time Warner Cable spokesman. "We don't want customers to feel they're getting less for more." News of Time Warner Cable's plans was originally leaked on an online industry forum BroadbandReports.com.

Other cable operators may follow Time Warner Cable's lead and phone companies such as Verizon Communications Inc and AT&T Inc are likely to be watching the New York-based cable operator's plans.

As U.S. consumers have become more used to streaming and downloading digital media over the Web, their Internet service providers have started to come under pressure to be able to keep up with growing demand in a cost-effective manner.

Comcast Corp, the largest cable operator with around 13 million Internet subscribers, has been accused by consumer groups of blocking Web traffic moving across its networks, prompting a notice of inquiry by the Federal Communications Commission earlier this week.

Comcast denies it blocks any Internet traffic saying it uses bandwidth management technology to help improve the customer experience but which may slow down some file transfers.

(Editing by Lincoln Feast)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080117/media_nm/timewarner_internet_dc&printer=1;_ylt=AitprTX2GJdEBUQLAbdFWH8VkmwF

Experiencing the bubble

This is my experience trying to buy a webTV service.

21-Oct-07: I contacted the commercial department asking for more details of the service provided.

25-Oct-07: I contact the CEO (a quite known enterpreneur and Web2.0 guru). He immediately answered begging excuses and sending a copy to the commercial department urging to contact me.

07-Nov-07: As I got no answered I send an email to the contact the CEO provided me. I get an email from another commercial staff. two days later I get a phone call and we discuss the details and terms of service. He tells me he will send me all the details by mail.

09-Nov-07: I send an email asking for those details (I never trust a phone conversation, I need downwritten statements). Got the email, but lacking of details. I analyze the data provided and send him an email back asking for the rest of information as well as for some other details.

14-Nov-07: Got an aswer saying "I am not able to anwser, I need to check it with the technical service. I will send it to you asap".

21-Dec-07: No answer or any followup by this company.


Bad service or no interest on providing a service. Is this company just waiting for the right moment to be sold for a dizzy amount of honey money?

Conference on Network Neutrality: Implications for Europe

The Wissenschaftliches Institut für Infrastruktur und Kommunikationsdienste (WIK) is organizing an international conference in Bonn on the Network Neutrality issue. The conference will be held on the 3rd and 4th December.
The program looks very interesting as it gathers a wide range of subjects. Though it seems the issue of cultural industries and the impact of transnational consumption of contents will not be treated in the session addressing the economics of NN. It focus on carriers bandwith consumption.

Link to conference info: http://www.wik.org/content/netneutrality_main.htm

Homo Googelicus

This is the story of how I became an homo googelicus:

I used Google (remember? you did not need to call it Google search because it was only a search tool) for the first time back in 2001. I can't precisize the exact date, it comes when you first don't give importance to your addiction. At that time I was an user of Altavista. Why did I switched? cannot say. Now my only browser toolbar is the Gooble toolbar.

By early 2004 my personal dealer forward me an invitation to Gmail. First I used it as a personal mailbox along with my jobmail, but as time went by I started to use it as my mailhub, my virtual hard-drive and my chat.

In march 2006 I started to share my first GoogleDocs. It is now my main work tool.

That very same year I started to use Blogger as a communication tool for my client's projects. As I got familiar to it I enroled the Adsense and Adwords programs.

Then I started to use Google Reader as my hompage where I have all my sindicated contents. Afterwards, Google calendar came into my life I divorced my beloved agenda. The same happened with Google Maps. Why people use GPS?

For a while, I thought I had some live out of Google. I was a Youtube user. It did not last long.
For a year now, my personal domain belongs to Google.

I could go for hours like that, with many other appliances I use with Google, and others that I have never been capable of finding its real utility (Desktop, Orkut).

But, now I can say Google takes up to 80% of my matrix-plugged live. In the last three years not only I have seen how I used an increasing number of service, but the intensive use of them.

They have all my data, all my preferences, all my consumer profile, all my personal likes and dislikes. I belong to a community.

I strongly recommend this documentary on Google:




English version



Spanish version

Is the market going too fast?

Almost everyone in the online video Industry agrees that its future lays on the monetization of content. So, in the last months we have seen an explosion of new services offering new opportunities for publishers and advertisers.

[note: while I was writing the post when I have seen the last post by Dan Rayburn where he states that advertising is just getting started though the environment is evolving: "more niche competitors, the Viacom lawsuit, the big media companies entering the space (Hulu) and the problem with getting advertisers to spend money around UGC content."]

I think there are two axes of rapidly evolution of online video. Firstly, there is a ride to deliver the highest quality:

• A couple of days ago Brightcove "announced a new service for delivering broadcast-quality Internet TV. Extending their widely adopted Internet TV platform, the new service, Brightcove Show, will give content publishers the ability to deliver instant-on, broadcast-quality streaming video to their viewers".
• Youtube is planning to deliver content bases on the H.264 standard
  
• The players (Silverlight and Adobe) figth is about to begin.
• Etc...

Secondly, new ways to embed or to somehow include ads in videos. Not long ago, Google-Youtube announced they would embed ads, and now they point out their brand new Adsense Video Unit.

My question is, may be advertisers and publishers overwhelmed by such a rapidly growing diversity of solutions and offers? The point is that since the first moment you offer a solution to the potential advertising client, up to the moment you really start developing the project, your solution is already old-fashioned. For most clients this noise is tough to understand, to feel comfortable with your solution and, eventually, get on this roller coaster and enjoy. They are used to "burn the windows of distribution" step by step. That is, they invest for a communication campaign and then they want it to work for a certain period of time.

My concern is that technology capabilities and potentials are going at light speed while advertising and consumers video literacy have a 1.0 speed.

New site feeding the Internet Neutrality debate

A couple of weeks ago Michael Geist announced he was taking over www.neutrality.ca, a cornerstone of the Internet Neutrality debate. Now, another site is coming to town: "What is Net Neutrality?", a site enhanced the Canadian Research Alliance for Community Innovation and Networking (CRACIN). I am sure these innitiative will empower de debate and generate interesting contributions.

Is there anyone outside Canada concerned or interested in the subject? It would be reassured...

Net Neutrality questions (I)

Let's say it from the very beggining: Net Neutrality is good. Well, at least is "the least bad". But is it sacred?

The Net Neutrality debate has been developed around the pressure telcos to manage the bandwidth to maximize profit and many other reasons. Supporters of the Net Neutrality appeal to freedom and too other many arguments you may find out there (see recommended readings).

I have some questions rised up by the cultural diversity debate.

My first question would be: is there a right by States to tax audiovisual Internet sites profits to promote "national" content?

The point is: if I set up an enterprise in Canada to webcast or to sell audiovisual content through internet, I will (proudly) be obliged to pay my taxes to Canada Revenue. Whereas if I am a Canadian buying a film at amazon.com, Canada Revenue will not get a single centime from them.

And the same goes to large free-to-consume audiovisual sites. Joost or Youtube make large profits from around the world but all profits goes to the same place.

I am aware most people would argue that thanks to NN it is possible to make the same thing from anywhere else in the world so it is a free-trade and open market that might promote cultural diversity. But it is clear that the cultural domination comes from the USA audiovisual industry. So, the question is: could we implement to the Internet the same policy the CRTC applies to the Cable and Satellite industry? We could oblige Youtube to localize in Canada, so they pay the taxes they get from Canadian consumers, so we can reinvest in Canadian content, or…

Two elements to consider:

• The Net Neutrality is being undermined by the audiovisual industry through the rights management. We have recently seen the lock out of Pandora's site. But there are lots of others like Disney.com, blogtv.ca and BBC.co.uk (in the case of soccer matches, that affects me) which cannot be accessed from abroad.
• The Net Neutrality is already challenged in the gambling sector. Countries like Australia, Austria and France block internet gambling site to prevent their citizens to participate in what is a State monopole.

Recommended readings:

• Principles of NN (M Goldberg)
• No Tolls on The Internet, the Washington Post
• The Neutrality.ca is back (Thanks to Michael Geist)