GigaOM

Andy Kessler weaves an interest thread with his opinion piece in today’s Wall Street Journal. He points out that the mega success of IPod might have something to do with US deficit and the falling dollar. “A lower dollar means foreigners get a needless discount on our productive stuff — Pentiums and iPods, Windows XP and Oracle databases, and Cisco routers. They have to buy them anyway to run their economies (well, maybe not iPods) so why discount?,” he writes. Highly recommend reading this very well put together argument, even though it is hidden behind the WSJ subscription wall. Andy is at his wicked best! Here is a link to the piece on his website, which is much easier than dealing with WSJ pages. Continue »

Time Warner has bought 1.46 million shares or 3.1 % stake in Net2Phone, according to documents filed with SEC. The decision indicates that Time Warner and its AOL division might be getting serious about VoIP business. The timing of the announcement is certainly intriguing. Today Liberty Media, which is majority controlled by cable don, John Malone increased its stake in IDT Corp., a long distance and voice over IP company promoted by Howard Jonas, a former weenie-vendor turned telecom tycoon. Under the terms of the deal, Liberty Media swapped its interest in Net2Phone for IDT shares. Continue »

FCC released some data about broadband penetration in the US today. According to its news release, High-speed lines connecting homes and businesses to the Internet increased by 15% during the first half of 2004, from 28.2 million to 32.5 million lines, compared to a 20% increase, from 23.5 million to 28.2 million lines, during the second half of 2003. For the full twelve-month period ending June 30, 2004, high-speed lines increased by 38%. For the year ending June 30, 2004, high-speed lines for residential and small business subscribers increased by 46%. For that time frame, ADSL lines increased by 49%, while cable modem connections increased by 36%. Continue »

Xten SIP Softphone for Linux is now available and you can get it by writing to X-ten via email linuxbeta at xten.com. Continue »

Cingular and AT&T Wireless is going to have some hiccups, and despite the meshing being ahead of schedule, I expect some upheavals. Why do I say that? Well because of my visit to the Cingular store in downtown San Francisco this morning. First of all there were two sales people, who made me wait for about 20 minutes, though there were clearly no customers in the store. Aka, bad customer service which is going to become a norm as we see some consolidation in the market place. Here is my conversation with the sales dude who spent nearly 15 minutes selling a $49.99 headset.
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Yamaha has just released what could easily be the very first WiFi enabled piano. The new Mark IV series piano has a PDA-type Pocket Remote Controller, a wireless remote with dedicated buttons and a full-color LCD touch screen. In addition to the Pocket Remote, select models also feature the tablet-PC type Tablet Remote Controller, a portable 10.4” touch-screen LCD color control panel. Both remote controllers use the 802.11b to communicate with the piano. It also has a 80-gigabyte hard drive instead of the typical 16-megabyte flash memory found in previous models. Now if you want to be Elton John, just download the midi tracks and play along, impress the gals, and of course go ahead and wear that ostrich feathered magenta Fedora, you have been dying to buy. Continue »

UPDATE: Wall Street Journal is reporting that Cablevision is contemplating shutting down its Voom high-definition satellite service, and has shelved its plans to spin-off the division in a public offering. Voom, despite its tech-cred has been a bit of a money pit for Cablevision, and in third quarter alone the company lost $75 million and change. It has only 26,000 customers. WSJ says there is a good chance they might even sell it to someone like Echostar. Charlie Ergen, EchoStar’s chief executive, could be one of the likely buyers of Voom’s satellite, launched in 2003 and Thomas Eagan, an analyst with Oppenheimer & Co. told the Journal, that “Mr. Ergen might pay as little as $125 million, about half what it would cost to build and launch a new satellite.” Continue »

The Broadband Daily: It is quite possible to build a perfectly good unlicensed network and the key is exactly the same as building a good licensed cellular network – cell control. I’ve seen carriers try and throw spectrum at their network quality problems with laughable results. In the end, having the best network is all about the Benjamins. Either you spend your money on hardware or you spend it on spectrum. Either way, you spend it. Verizon Wireless is on top right now because they’ve spent it on both in an amount and ratio that is, if nothing else, better than that of their foes. Continue Reading…. Continue »