The Dawsons, a family of five, created a Kickstarter project last month to raise $30,000 for a series of films aimed at children. The films, called “Clara Tales” were aimed to creating positive, family fare that would inspire kids to create their own work, complete projects associated with the videos or just provide some entertainment. The plan was to make five more and post them all on YouTube with accompanying educational activities.

Why pay for something if you can get it for free?

The first video, posted as part of the pleas for funds, is a well-done story that my own five-year-old loved. She and I watched it, but we didn’t contribute. And that’s part of the problem. Jan Dawson figures that one of the key reasons that the project failed — the family raised $4,727 in pledges — was that people who didn’t contribute would still benefit if others did. From our emailed conversation:

Not to get too nerdy about it, but it’s a classic public good / free rider problem – everybody benefits just the same whether they personally pay for it or not, as long as someone does and it still happens. … This is in stark contrast to some of Kickstarter’s huge success stories, which offered the actual paid product at a discount if you pledged over a certain amount – Kickstarter became simply a channel for pre-orders, and with a popular product that gets you a lot of funding.

He also said that the emotional toll of supporting and monitoring a Kickstarter project was hard. While listing the idea and getting the Kickstarter in place was easy, making the original video to show people what the family was doing, as well as asking friends, family and strangers for money wasn’t something the Dawsons were used to.

What made it hard was that putting yourself out there in this way and repeatedly begging people for money is emotionally draining. We sent countless numbers of emails to friends and family, posted repeated updates on Facebook and Twitter (as you saw) etc. Even though we knew lots of people wanted to pledge, they never quite seemed to get around to it, so that sort of reminding was key. (It’s also made me view our local NPR station’s pledge drives with a little more sympathy!)

Despite their pleas the original Kickstarter closed far short of their goal.

If at first you don’t succeed….

So the family went back to the drawing board, found ways to cut their production costs and came back with another Kickstarter project, this time for $3,000 instead of $30,000. Staying small helped, especially since they had managed to raise more than that the first time around. The second Kickstarter is funded and the family is working on producing more videos. Dawson said that backers from the first project collectively gave the family 90 percent of what they gave us the first time around. Many of the smaller pledges, especially from people the Dawson’s didn’t know, didn’t re-up for the second effort.

Some of the previous contributors pledged larger amounts (perhaps in hopes of seeing this come through) and another $700 or so came from new backers, some who were strangers to the Dawsons. The first project attracted 75 backers while the second raised more and had 69. The Dawsons managed to get some publicity for their efforts thanks to getting a few parenting blogs to pick up the project, but neither of them are some kind of Ze Frank or Louis CK- level of celebrity.

So a few possible lessons one can draw from the Dawsons’ experience is that funding a Kickstarter is possible for anyone — it just requires a willingness to ask people for money. Freeloaders exist on Kickstarter as they do everywhere, so offering an actual product or more tangible rewards might help someone doing a public project get the pledges he or she needs.

And finally, if the first project doesn’t work, maybe your second one will.

For more on the Kickstarter phenomenon see Om’s epic interview with Co-founder Perry Chen.

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According to my recent conversations with sources, a reading of Google’s blog and evasions by the search giant when I asked about its stance, Google’s not as into sharing as it once was. Soon after Google proposed its fiber to the home project in Kansas City, Kan. one of the product managers announced that other ISPs and services could build on top of the future network to deliver their own services.

Additionally, in its first blog posting, it stressed openness saying, “We’ll operate an “open access” network, giving users the choice of multiple service providers.”

But in the last few days I’ve heard from a few sources in the fiber community that Google has been continuing to back off its open promises, I asked a Google spokeswoman if Google was still committed to opening up its network. She told me, “We are committed to providing the best product for our customers,” and declined to comment further.

This change of heart isn’t entirely new, but with the fiber to the home project set to launch later this summer it’s worth trying to understand how far Google has come from its promises of two years ago. A blog post from June of last year shows it beginning to sidestep the question.

Q: Will Google’s infrastructure be open to other companies?
A: We plan to offer ultra high-speed Internet access directly to consumers at an affordable price. We look forward to sharing more information as we begin to develop more specific plans.

Why do we care if Google is open or not?

So far the “more information” appears to be that Google isn’t keen to share. But why is Google opening up its network such a big deal anyhow? Because fiber networks are designed to meet broadband needs for decades to come, new networks are a chance to change the competition paradigm in the U.S.

In many truly open networks, the mandate is that two or three fibers run to each premise – then access providers put equipment in at the patching point and tie in to their customers on dark fiber. This lets consumers buy Internet from one provider, TV from another and so on. Different broadband and TV providers can deliver service over different strands, which fosters true competition. The Amsterdam city network is set up this way.

But instead of having an open physical network provide competition, the U.S. went with competition from two providers — a cable operator and a telephone company. It worked for a while, but as telcos stop investing in DSL and cable providers start to become the only option for faster broadband, the market looks less competitive. It’s like saying a car competes with an electric bike (or in some cases a motorcycle).

But open fiber is more like offering service providers a road (here my analogy breaks down a bit), and they can deploy car services, bus services or whatever on top of it. And seeing the model in action in the U.S. would offer powerful data about how to build a truly competitive broadband infrastructure works.

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Mark Ansboury, the president of Gigabit Squared, chatted with me on Wednesday morning about the company and its plans to lower the cost of deploying and operating a broadband network. His goal is to bring gigabit speeds to as many places as possible, and along the way he may join firms like Google, Sonic.Net, Allied Fiber and several municipalities in changing the way broadband is deployed and operated in the U.S.

Bypassing red tape keeps projects in the black

For the Gig.U project, Ansboury is offering to spend up to $200 million helping build broadband in six selected communities. The money comes from a combination of vendor financing provided by companies such as Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Corning and others who are working with Gigabit Squared as well as Chicago investment bank Stern Brothers. Communities that apply are expected to contribute too, but instead of cash they will have to make commitments that will lower the cost and headache of deployment.

Communities should work to offer easy-access utility poles, making right-of-way access discussions fast and painless, and may even commit to becoming primary customers for broadband or helping Gigabit Squared sign up new customers. Google has said the municipality’s willingness to help lower its deployment costs as well as smooth the political process was one of the reasons Kansas City, Kan., was chosen as the place where it would deploy fiber.

So in that way, Gigabit Squared is taking a page from the search giant. However, it also plans to work with cities to develop programs that will take advantage of the network, which is something Chattanooga, the nation’s first gigabit network, is trying to do. Creating programs that use the network will help drive residents to use it and engender support among different members of the community, from teachers to public safety officials.

Ansboury is even happy to bring on local ISPs if they want to come to the table to help build networks, although he does expect the first six projects done with Gig.U will be owned and operated by Gigabit Squared. But he’s not averse to a municipality or other network provider taking over, he said. “We think of ourselves like a developer. We have a road map we’ve created to help deploy these networks. We lay out a path for communities to follow,” Ansboury said.

Can this new model work?

Currently Gigabit Squared employees have experience consulting on gigabit networks, but the company doesn’t operate one. For example, Ansboury was the former SVP and Chief Technology Officer of One Community, which helped build high-speed broadband networks in Ohio. Other executives at the company have a variety of roles in infrastructure development and finance, but not everyone has broadband experience, according to their bios.

Ansboury says the company is involved in some broadband stimulus grant efforts and may even make some investments in those networks, providing the private equity for those public-private partnerships. Like someone who has somehow managed to discover an entirely new way to lose weight, he seems excited to bring his models and theories to smaller cities around the country and put them to the test. Unlike Google or even Sonic.net, an ISP in California that’s deploying fiber on top of its existing DSL network, Ansboury is going big and getting there fast.

But, its unclear how much a city can promise under a model like this (or how much it will matter in the end for Gigabit’s Squared’s ROI). Google’s fiber project hit some delays while the city’s utility and Google came to terms on how and where Google would string its fiber on the poles. There is also always the possibility of messy citizen battles over ugly equipment or rights-of-way the city can’t really ignore. For example, residents in San Francisco have sued to stop the placement of AT&T’s fiber-to-the-curb termination cabinets.

An open network means anyone can access that gig

Ansboury says city involvement is just one element of cutting costs, although he declined to get into the specifics of the cost per home passed or the details of how GB2 would build its networks. He did say there are several elements that will enable Gigabit Squared to not only deploy a network for less but also sign customers and achieve a penetration rate that offers a return on Gigabit Squared’s investment. Part of that return might come from Gigabit Squared’s commitment to running “open” networks, by which Ansboury means he will resell capacity on the network to others.

“We realize that if we want to get high take rates and be hyperlocal, we have to think differently and part of that means you have to change that paradigm,” Ansboury said. “You have to be a triple-play provider with broadband video and voice but that’s not only it. With the emergence of over the top services and big bandwidth sucking applications we are creating an open access strategy that allows for a town to have a something like a digital economic development service model.”

He used the example of Netflix coming in and buying capacity to deliver its service to customers directly and confirmed that other ISPs could buy capacity on its fiber. The model looks like a last-mile network that might be as innovative as what Allied Fiber is trying to do nationally for the middle mile. Ansboury expects we will see the first network in the early part of next year as part of the Gig.U program. The Gig.U project communities have two application windows; one closes in July and the other in November, so interested communities should check it out.

As for why this effort matters, Blair Levin, the executive director of the Gig.U project, summed it up nicely in a chat with me on Wednesday. “The problem isn’t that we don’t have a gigabit everywhere. The problem is we don’t have it anywhere,” he said. “And if we need it, we’ll need it in university towns first so let’s get on with it. It’s too late when we discover we need it everywhere because then we are pure consumers of what everyone else [namely places with existing gigabit networks like the Netherlands, Hong Kong or North Korea] else is producing.”

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The Gig.U project, which was announced last July, is a broad-based group of over 30 research universities from across the United States that aims to bring superfast broadband to university towns via a public-private partnership model. So far it is working with private companies to build projects in Maine and Atlanta. Today’s news is that it will work with Gigabit Squared, a year-old company composed of people who helped bring gigabit networks to Chattanooga, Tenn. and Lafayette, La. to select and deploy fast broadband to 6 more communities. Gigabit Squared is providing the capital, although details of the financing model aren’t clear.

The lucky towns will be announced between November 2012 and March 2013. And the goal is to deliver competitively priced broadband that will help push the U.S. forward and allow developers and users on those networks to not worry about the limits of cable or DSL speeds. Much like Google’s fiber to the home effort, the Gig.U projects aim to see what people can do with unlimited broadband.

And like Google’s network and others, the Gigabit Squared network will be open, which means other service providers can buy capacity on the network to offer other products. The plan isn’t just to offer people fast service and big capacity, but also to build programs in the community that will take advantage of the network and help drive adoption. From the Gigabit Squared rleease:

“The Stimulus Funding was a great jumpstart to get broadband initiatives on track in the U.S. But it is just a starting point,” explains Mark Ansboury, president of Gigabit Squared. “In order to realize true economic revitalization, we’re urging our national and community leaders to think and act in more creative ways. And we’re backing those efforts with significant investment of our own.”

So maybe a hospital will set up a telehealth option, or a university can create online classrooms. Gigabit Squared says it will work with companies that include Corning, G4S, Juniper Networks, Alcatel Lucent, Calix, Ericsson, Level 3, Genexis, OnDemand, Baller Herbst. We’ll update the story with more information,

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For example, despite three new cables connecting India, built in the last three years, leasing capacity to deliver Internet goodies like Google still cost $175,000 per month per 10 Gbps wavelengths between London and Mumbai. That’s 22 percent lower than before but far higher than the roughly $100,000 per 10 Gbps wavelength cost of sending bits from Miami to Santiago.

These charges help determine the overall cost associated with sending web and data center traffic around the world. The key is that they are falling, which is good for data center operators, massive web companies, ISPs and mobile operators who have to pay for capacity to ensure their bits get to the end consumer. The problem is there are still massive disparities caused by a lack of competition. (for example, Australia’s bandwidth costs are higher because of a lack of competing cables terminating on the continent), corruption and regulatory issues.

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Brocade has been a proponent of the OpenFlow protocol for the last two years, and on Tuesday it laid out its product plans, including gear that will make it possible to run both a traditional network and an OpenFlow network on the same switches. This is a pretty significant feature, since a large complaint among users is that OpenFlow traffic and traditional Layer 2/3 traffic can’t run on the same network.

Keith Stewart, director of product management with Brocade, says many of the service provider customers are eager to use software-defined networks to deliver new services, but will still expect and need to run their traditional networks in parallel. Without a way to bridge both options, OpenFlow wasn’t appealing. So while Google made waves by turning the network between its data centers to an all-OpenFlow network, customers like AT&T have too many customers and such complex networks that such a shift doesn’t make sense.

I also got Brocade’s take on the evolution of the networking virtualization world. Many companies are launching products and companies in this space, but it’s still unclear how things will shape up. Stewart says he believes that customers will end up using different controllers for different applications, which means products from Big Switch could coexist with Nicira’s stuff or even fabrics from large vendors.

Brocade also introduced its VCS Fabric technology that will help shuttle virtual machines around a data center without manual configuration. This is a hot topic among the large vendors that see the need for some kind of configuration management tools for virtualized networks to help automate some of the provisioning. The server world has a variety of tools, including Puppet and Chef, but among vendors that include IBM, Cumulus Networks and now Brocade, the need for some kind of provisioning overlay is worth investing in. It’s still unclear what end users will want, though, since most folks deploying SDNs are fairly sophisticated and are comfortable solving problems with legions of smart engineers rather than software.

As for widespread adoption, it’s still a ways off and when it does come, the likelihood is that vendors will have to play nicely with others. “[T]he vertically integrated approach isn’t going to work here,” Stewart said.

So look for companies to create an ever-shifting web of partnerships and agreements between each other all carefully labeled as open thanks to their use of OpenFlow. Underneath, however, we’ll see that certain partnerships will offer more user-friendly pairings for a higher cost, while bare bones equipment and offerings will be cheap and dumb and perfect for giant webscale and cloud companies that have time and engineers. Does that mean networking will need its own version of OpenStack? We’ll discuss this and other SDN-related topics with Nicira, VMware and others at our Structure 2012 conference in June.

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FCC Chairman Julis Genachowski

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski reiterated his acceptance of broadband data caps and tiered pricing, at The Cable Show held today in Boston. In an interview with the National Cable and Telecommunications Association Chair (and a former FCC chairman himself) Michael Powell, Genachowski said he was in favor of business model innovation.

This is not a new stance for Genachowski, who back in 2010, specifically called out approval for usage-based broadband pricing as part of the network neutrality regulations. At the time he said:

“Our work has also demonstrated the importance of business innovation to promote network investment and efficient use of networks, including measures to match price to cost such as usage-based pricing.”

That’s remarkably close to what he said today when quizzed by Michael Powell. Cecilia Kang at The Washington Post quotes Genachowski as saying:

“Business model innovation is very important,” Genachowski said. “There was a point of view a couple of years ago that there was only one permissible pricing model for broadband. I didn’t agree.”

A bigger question is whether or not he agrees to practices that would exempt an ISP’s traffic from their own broadband cap, as Comcast is doing with its Xfinity service over the Xbox. And from a consumer point of view, a cap isn’t terrible in and of itself, but it can be a tool used to protect an ISP’s pay TV business or their profits absent robust competition in the market.

So even though Genachowski is in favor of new pricing models for broadband, it would be awesome if he started asking questions about how those caps are set and what impact they have on consumer behavior. Because it’s not like consumers have that much choice in their broadband provider.

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The service, which is backed by Virtucon Ventures out of Columbus, Ohio, debuted today with five projects and a goal of helping entrepreneurs raise capital for their businesses. (It’s not the only one, my colleague Bobbie has a profile on a European crowdfunding platform launching today called Seedrs.)

CEO Wil Schroter says while Fundable looks a lot like Kickstarter, its focus isn’t on creative projects (surprisingly for those in the tech world, most Kickstarter projects are related to film, literature and the arts). It wants to help companies raise money to build products or reach business goals. As part of this effort Schroter is cultivating relationships with distribution companies, retailers and other brands that want a pipeline for new products. Think of it as Kickstarter for sell outs.

“We want to be the LinkedIn to their Facebook,” Schroter says. “This money has already been out there, it’s just that getting to it has been painful. We’re taking inefficiencies out of the market.”

What Fundable is. And isn’t.

However the crowdsourced funding model isn’t for everyone. Schroter says the ideal customer in this case is a pre-product business that wants to use a rewards-based system, such as letting the pledgers donate money in exchange for the first production run or some special offer. For Kickstarter that might be a character named after a large donor in a soliciting film. When it comes to something like Fundable project StampTEG, which is making a small, mobile charging solution that generates USB power from any significant heat source, the rewards may have to get more clever.

Sometime later this year, or early next year, after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approves its application, Fundable will also be able to help companies raise up to $1 million in equity. This isn’t going to put the traditional venture-backed startup model of investing out of business, but broaden it. There are plenty of entrepreneurs with an idea for a mobile app or a device that can build a business from less than $1 million, as is clearly seen on Kickstarter or even Quirky, a similar platform designed primarily for projects.

The biggest problem with crowds is security.

But, as exciting as opening up a potentially vast amount of capital from the pockets of family and Facebook friends may be, there are a few glaring issues that arise with the crowdsourcing that most of the parties aren’t keen to deal with. Fraud is the big worry, but Schroter downplays it. He points out that the community can help determine if products aren’t on the up and up and points out that has already happened on on Kickstarter.

The Pebble watch on Kickstarter raised more than $10 million.

He also feels that the company’s limiting maximum pledge amounts to $10,000 will help people limit their losses. “That’s a lot of money, but no one will lose their house,” he said. His larger worry is unhappy pledges. What if people donate the cash and the product isn’t manufacturable? Or it just isn’t any good. For now much of the money going to these projects is small, but when things get to the scale of Kickstarter’s highly successful Pebble watch, for example, people are going to get mad if the product doesn’t come through.

Economic gamechanger or just a new way to raise cash? Does it matter?

But when anyone can raise money on these platforms it does have the potential to unleash billions in capital from customers and select friends and family in a scalable way. This will reduce friction, benefit entrepreneurs and provide an outlet for a new type of manufacturing to emerge. For an epic take on this topic check out Om’s interview with Perry Chen, a cofounder of Kickstarter.

Running a Kickstarter, or presumably a Fundable campaign, is a lot of work, but the bar is low enough that anyone with an idea can take some time and see if it gels with the audience. For every Pebble watch there will be a set number that fail. Judging from Kickstarter’s numbers from 2011 that about one in two, and as more people list (and contribute to projects) it’s unclear where that number will go.

Fundable plans to take a 5 percent fee from the final raise to fund the business, and Schroter declined to list how much money the idea has behind it or its backers.  Virtucon is one of the lab-style companies that throws a few ideas out and see what businesses stick. It lists supporting investors including Bessemer Ventures, Founders Fund, Dave Mcclure, First Round Capital, Charles River Ventures, SV Angel and others.

If Fundable succeeds, it may not only become a pipeline for retailers or consumer products companies looking for the next big projects, but it might be the next platform for early-stage financing for wide variety of business. It’s hard not to look at the evolution of crowdfunding in general and compare it to the emergence of eBay back in the late 90s. Within a few years hundreds of existing and new retailers found a new audience for their wares.

Yes, some of this was savvy people playing arbitrage games with people who didn’t understand or know enough to list their goods on the Internet, or a new type of storefront for existing shops but some legitimate businesses were created. Many view the emergence of crowdfunding platforms in a similar way. The question is whether this the new way to build and invest in startups or will it (as is more likely) join an established roster of existing options and open up entrepreneurialism to a slightly wider audience?

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At the close of its second day of trading in the public markets, the Wall Street consensus is that Facebook’s IPO was a flop. But it’s actually par for the course to see Wall Street and the tech media hype the heck out of something and then tear it apart at the first hint of failure. In this case the hint of failure comes from the failure of the Facebook IPO to “pop” or rise substantially on the first day of trading, giving those who got in on the IPO a quick potential profit.

While the real story of the Facebook IPO won’t be written for quite some time, here’s some historical perspective and guide to the blame game.

Glitches in the NASDAQ software on opening day, plus a last-minute bump in the size of the offering gave professional traders jitters that could have helped drive Facebook’s stock down to as low as $33 on Monday. The social network’s stock closed at $34.03 and continued to fall in after-hours trading.

But how much of the Wall Street narrative is worth heeding? From the point of view of Facebook, the issue was a success. Facebook walked away with a giant pile of cash, and so far doesn’t seem concerned about its stock price being off by more than 10 percent in the short-term. Mark Zuckerberg’s focus on the long term — which many tech denizens praise when they’re not talking about the hottest IPO since Google’s– is what we’re supposed to want from innovative executives (see Jeff Bezos as an example).

How ’bout some historical perspective?

Speaking of Google, Facebook’s IPO reminded me of the hyperbolic analysis that occurred when Google went public back in 2004. At the time Google, which pissed off Wall Street — not by wearing a hoodie to the IPO roadshow, but by cutting out the investment banks from the process — had to reduce its share price ahead of the IPO. Of course, once it went public Google’s share price never dipped below the opening day’s price of $85 (it still hasn’t actually) but analysts were still concerned with the search giant’s transgressions and its effect on the market. It also (somewhat ironically now) was called out for having a much higher valuation to its closest competitor, Yahoo.

For example, The Washington Post in 2004 quoted author Tom Taulli who was not impressed with Google’s IPO and said:

“Google is putting a nail in the coffin for technology IPOs. It will be difficult for the next six months to get technology offerings off the ground. We will see a shakeout in the IPO market for tech stocks. After all, if Google can’t get a good price and is having difficulty with its own IPO, it overshadows everybody.”

Today Taulli wrote about Facebook:

If anything, the deal was a sign of the peak of the social revolution — which might not even be as big as the first Internet era. Despite having more than 900 million monthly users, Facebook has only been able to post $4 billion in revenues for the past year. Google, on the other hand, has about $40 billion. Social platforms just are not ideal for monetization. As it stands today, most people go to Facebook to hang out and keep up with friends; it’s not a shopping experience

Facebook is played out and other blame games.

Added to the narrative of glitchy exchanges, greedy bankers (and Facebook execs) and the end of the “social era” was the sense that Facebook’s highest growth days were behind it and consumer investors missed out. Maybe it was because the entire IPO system is broken and rigged against smaller investors, maybe it was because of the government regulations that make a public offering such a pain. Maybe it was because there’s so much hedge fund and Russian oligarch money floating around.

As an observer of the financial and tech communities for years, the Facebook IPO was one of those spectacles from a media perspective that rivals the launch of a new iPad. And sometimes the build up to these events create something so anticipated that it’s difficult to live up to (I’m looking at you, iPad 3 most recent iPad launch!) Maybe Facebook’s best days are behind it. Maybe the last-minute increase in shares spooked hedgies who dumped shares today. Maybe there really is a larger narrative about the Health of Technology IPOs or the Future of American Financial Reform.

Or maybe we all just got worked up into a frenzy inside our technology and Wall Street bubbles and the rest of the U.S. just let us know that even with 900 million members, Facebook may be a real business, but it’s not all that. Silicon Valley may have viewed this as the IPO to end all IPOs (and the bankers were counting on that when they acceded to the higher share price at the last minute) but America didn’t — or maybe it just wants to hedge its bets and wait until the traders stop flipping stock and the hype dies down. After all, U.S. unemployment is 8.1 percent and there’s an election going on. Investors have bigger things to worry about.

For the real meaning behind Facebook’s IPO (and for a true reflection of its value as public company) we’re going to have to wait a while and let the hype subside. Of course, by then no one will want to read about it in the headlines.

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Comcast is also launching a true cloud TV service dubbed X1 that the cable provider was somewhat vague about, but it appears to be a joining of a customer’s Comcast services from DVR and Xfinity On-Demand shows to any other Comcast service. This enables the Dayview dashboard, but also things like integrated search across all of the Comcast offerings. The new X1 products (read more about it here) will launch in Boston with several major markets planned to follow this year, and will be available to new Xfinity Triple Play with HD/DVR service customers at no additional cost. The X1 cloud service will be available on all devices. Dayview will launch before the end of the year and is so far limited to TVs.

Comcast says it may one day use API calls or other means to open up this platform for other services such as webmail from other providers, which would make it far more powerful. At that point, Comcast would be doing the heavy lifting for consumers. It will have built both the backend and the user interface for a home network that delivers consumers exactly the sort of information they want and need, while recognizing that any true platform on the web has to be open to other players.

Imagine this with your preferred email service.

If Comcast does take a lesson from Sonos, X1 and products like Dayview could become a reason to subscribe in Comcast’s service area and would be pretty awesome reasons for customers outside its market to pay for some kind of over-the-top service. Already it has offered remote control apps for mobile devices, which is a good first step to being a user-oriented platform.

The iPhone X1 remote.

I know Comcast hasn’t been behaving all that well lately, but it’s hard to harsh on a company that is doing exactly what its supposed to on the innovation front with services like Dayview and its new TV in the cloud offering. So while I can’t condone the anticompetitive actions around its possible prioritization of traffic, I am happy to point out that Comcast was the first to deploy DOCSIS 3.0, with its faster speeds, to a wide audience as well as release cool stuff like this.

Now if it just takes it one step further to becoming a true platform, I’m not even sure Comcast would have to worry about losing subscribers on the pay TV side to Netflix. I’d pay for a service like Dayview if it played nicely with my other services around the web.

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