Comments on: TV Everywhere to Spark Antitrust Concerns?

By: 2010: The Year Comcast Embraces Convergence – GigaOM

2010: The Year Comcast Embraces Convergence – GigaOM — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:20:04 +0000

[...] network, is focused on reaping the benefits of mobile broadband. Along the way it will also use Xfinity, the NBC-Universal deal and interactive advertising as a means to forestall becoming a dumb pipe [...]

By: Jon

Jon — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 15:23:28 +0000

I’ve used comcast and directTV and they both suck! About a month ago I was able to find something that made it possible for me to get more channels than I had on cableTV and directTV put together. Also there is no monthly fee. Hope this helps! You can check it out here – http://budurl.com/frmtv4yourpc

By: Technically Philly » Comcast Roundup: ‘Major’ challenges with TV Everywhere persist, no baseball for elderly and More | Covering the Community of People Who Use Technology in Philadelphia.

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:32:28 +0000

[...] While some executives have brushed the concern aside, the question of antitrust implications for the Comcast and Time Warner Internet-video collusion is real, Gigaom reports. [...]

By: Tony Casson

Tony Casson — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:39:54 +0000

Right now I buy a package of content from Comcast which they distribute to me over their cable network to my home. They reserve a portion of the available bandwidth on their network for my cable broadband. Their next generation technology (Docsis 3.0) reserves a much larger portion of the available bandwidth for broadband. Now when they deliver these higher speeds to me, streamed content (Hulu, Netflix, etc) and downloaded content (iTunes, Amazon, etc) will be that much faster and easier to use. In fact I might ditch my content package altogether and go naked broadband. In order to compete with the wider array of content options available over broadband, Comcast is going to offer me the same package of content I bought from them, for use on any internet connection anywhere – it is at first a defensive measure for them to guard against my ditching their content package altogether. Now here is where it gets potentially interesting: As a TV Everywhere subscriber, why should Comcast bother to continue my content delivery over the portion of their network reserved for such content. Why wouldn’t they just send it to me over my broadband pipe. And as this is content that I have subscribed to, maybe the Ts and Cs f my subscription will say it can be prioritized over other traffic. So long net neutrality.

By: Paul Sweeting

Paul Sweeting — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 17:56:32 +0000

G–if that is indeed your real name, I think you missed the point. It doesn’t matter what the mechanism is. The issue for regulators will (or should) be that information from competitors must be pooled in one market (by whatever means) to maintain high prices in another.

By: eric susch

eric susch — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 17:37:26 +0000

I didn’t mean that customers wouldn’t understand the CONCEPT. I meant that customers aren’t going to understand how to navigate it all. How does TV Everywhere know if you are a subscriber or not? How do you navigate which tier or cable package you have? Will you see shows that won’t play for you because you don’t have that channel? What about blackout periods that depend on where you live and/or which channel the particular show or game is on?

Customers aren’t going to adopt something more complex and restrictive than what they have now. They’ll just go to Hulu and press play.

By: TV Everywhere to Spark Antitrust Concerns? (Paul Sweeting/GigaOM) | Your Complete Store

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 15:23:35 +0000

[...] Sweeting / GigaOM:TV Everywhere to Spark Antitrust Concerns? — NBC Universal General Counsel Rick Cotton, speaking at the Digital Media [...]

By: G

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 14:44:22 +0000

“Let’s say I want to catch up with a missed episode of “In Treatment” by watching it online. I go to a web portal — we’ll call it YooHoo ……. It now has access to information about my Comcast subscription.”

Paul – NO it does not work that way – Ever heard of billing system integration – shadow IDs, etc. etc- please learn (speak to people) who know how MSOs operate.

“I’m not a lawyer, let alone an expert on anti-trust law, but that seems to me to be a somewhat different case from what we have in the mobile phone industry” —–Thanks for the admission – and now change the title of your post above – to “TV Everywhere – I just don’t have clue how it will work”

By: Eric Foor

Eric Foor — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 00:10:27 +0000

I have Timewarner Cable (Roadrunner) and I think I get it. I pay for the service, not only do I get cable through cables, I get cable through internet. Bada bing bada boom, amirite?

By: Paid Content : paidContent Quick Hits For Saturday

Paid Content : paidContent Quick Hits For Saturday — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 23:19:38 +0000

[...] TV Everywhere may raise some eyebrows on anti-trust, though NBC chief counsel dismisses it. [Gigaom] Published Saturday, June 27, 2009 10:15 [...]

By: Paul Sweeting

Paul Sweeting — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 20:44:47 +0000

Steve–I agree. In my own reporting on the issue it was pretty clear that the mobile-phone HLR/VLR system is exactly the model the telcos and cable MSOs are thinking about for video. It took a long time to get that system working in mobile, though, and given what it’s done to keep roaming charges high, I’m not sure it’s something consumers ought to be looking forward to repeating. The other problem in this case is that, for the MVPDs, it isn’t really even about online video. At least in the case of mobile roaming there was concomitant consumer benefit in being about to use their cell phones outside of their provider’s network. Here what we’re talking about is protecting the value of MVPDs’ extremely high-margin basic video subscriptions by making cord-cutting less viable. I’m not a lawyer, let alone an expert on anti-trust law, but that seems to me to be a somewhat different case from what we have in the mobile phone industry, involving different trade-offs for consumers and thus likely to draw scrutiny–at a minimum–from regulators.

By: eric susch

eric susch — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 01:53:26 +0000

They’re trying to build a system that is more complex than what exists now. Consumers are never going to go for it. They probably won’t even understand it. It reminds me of the Divx DVD system that Circuit City tried years ago.

By: Tom Coseven

Tom Coseven — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 23:42:25 +0000

Paul, you might want to think about how mobile phone roaming has worked for years with HLR/VLR and AUC. Quite a lot of subscriber information shared between competitors, including many of the features you’ve paid for and even balances if you are a prepaid customer. The future IMS model that MSO’s and tecos have been planning is based on the mobile operator subscriber database model, including authentication. “Captive service roaming” is something the web world has never embraced, but it is definitely the way telcos and now MSO’s think.

By: Brett Glass

Brett Glass — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 21:34:00 +0000

There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with having a subscription video service. However, for cable companies to be able to require that you subscribe to their broadband service to view the content is an anticompetitive tie.

By: My Cable TV Sucks » Blog Archive » TV Everywhere to Spark Antitrust Concerns?

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 21:17:44 +0000

[...] June 26th, 2009. By Paul Sweeting. First Posted HERE at [...]

By: Niraj

Niraj — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 19:04:21 +0000

“Now let’s say I leave the house and want to access the same episode on my handheld device using Verizon Wireless’ V-Cast service. Now Verizon has to know something about my relationship, either with Comcast or with YooHoo — or both.”

Why would they have to know about that? I imagine this would work like ESPN360, where you have to sign up for an account from your home to prove your eligibility, but then after that you could login with the same credentials from anywhere. I don’t see why a third party would have to know that you were authorized to view the content since that would make the whole system vulnerable (as you mention, Verizon may decide not to allow access) and hard to scale since you’d have to make deals with every service provider. The only thing is you have to make sure to prevent abuse, such as sharing of the account.