GigaOM

Google is one of the many investors who together have put $60 million into O3b Networks, a St. John, Jersey, Channel Islands-based startup that is looking to offer Internet services in the emerging world, especially areas that are far away from the sub-sea networks and major backbones. Apart from Google, other investors include HSBC Holdings, Allen & Co. and Liberty Global, according to the Wall Street Journal. It is not clear how much money Google invested in the company. The company lays out its reasons in a press release, but that I am skipping because it doesn’t really say anything.

One thing is clear: O3b Networks will need a lot more than $60 million. The project, the brainchild of Greg Wyler, is going to cost $650 million and will require 16 satellites; the service is due to start by the second half of 2010. Wyler apparently has a lot of telecom experience in Africa. Liberty Global, a company owned, in part, by legendary media mogul John Malone is going to help develop the project.

Given how many of the previous attempts have been non-starters — whether for economic reasons or simple technology constraints — the claims by this company are quite audacious. Here are some facts about their service: Continue Reading

A few months back, when everyone was speculating about the sale of Yahoo, we thought that perhaps AT&T would buy them. After all, Yahoo powered the AT&T portal, and for a long time got paid for it — at least until Ma Bell wised up and asked for a piece of the advertising revenue.

Well obviously that acquisition never materialized, but Ma Bell and Yahoo have just inked an agreement that is good news indeed for the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based search and online media company. As part of the deal, AT&T will offer Yahoo’s search engine as the default network to its broadband computer, Internet TV and mobile phone users.

Under the partnership, announced in January 2008, Yahoo!’s oneSearch will provide Web services relating to topics including news, finance, weather and access to its Flickr photos. The deal replaces a 2001 agreement where Yahoo! split revenue with AT&T when its customers signed up for broadband computer Internet services.

I’m sure we will soon find out the financial implications of this new deal. My suspicion is that it isn’t going to be fiscally meaningful for either party. Yahoo, regardless of how great some of its web services may be, is a laggard in what matters most: monetization. The deal is, however, a morale booster for the beleaguered firm — and could provide some lift to Yahoo’s traffic as well.

* AT&T, Yahoo alliance on the rocks
* Yahoo, saved by the Bell.

I promised I wouldn’t do more than two posts a day, but this one is such a doozy and so anti-consumer that I just couldn’t resist. Phone companies led by AT&T (same old company whose wireless network is breaking because of too many iPhones) wants FCC to allow them to send less information to the commission when it comes to things like customer complaints, network breakdowns and infrastructure-related investments. What’s weirder is that the great champion of phone companies, Kevin Martin, chairman of hte FCC, can’t wait to get this order out of the door and give a parting gift to his long-time friends.

“We need to update this for a level playing field with the marketplace of today,” Martin told The Washington Post. “On quality of service, for example, if that data is relevant for one carrier, then it should be relevant for all platforms.” In other words, instead of forcing cable companies to report this information and making them more accountable, too, he just wants to do away with any accountability for phone companies.

The order to remove all accountability is going to be passed today, according to The Washington Post, and with that we would have yet another proof that Federal Communications Commission doesn’t have consumer interests at heart. Its job should be to keep a tight leash on the carriers, spanking them with a wet bamboo cane every single time they do anything anti-consumer. Instead we have a toothless organization that serves everyone but the people. What do you guys think?

Unless you live in a part of the U.S. that has super-fast Internet or fiber connections, you’re pretty much stuck with buying your broadband connection from either a cable company or a phone operator. The download speed on either is a crapshoot. But while we wring our hands over the limits of our choices, the rest of the planet keeps getting faster speeds.

In Amsterdam, where they already have a fiber optic network, they’re now thinking about upgrading it to symmetrical speeds of up to 1 GB Gbps. On Sept. 10th, fiber optic network owners GlasvezelNet Amsterdam, BBned and InterNLnet will show off such speeds on a live fiber optic network in the Osdorp region. Nearly 40,000 households are connected to this network. Speeds like this are more than enough to offer, say, four parallel HD streams on one connection, something the three companies plan to show off as well.

Such speeds are going to become a reality in places around the planet soon enough, especially in places where fiber broadband is being deployed. Here in the U.S., meanwhile, market leaders such as AT&T and Comcast are proposing the implementation of caps, a move that will only serve to cause problems for innovators.

As the pending experiment in Amsterdam shows, broadband technology is improving, which allows broadband providers to offer faster speeds at lower prices. The problems are more of an analog nature. Today, for example, Broadband Stakeholder Group, the UK government’s advisory group on broadband, released a report that said that it would cost between £5.1 billion ($9 billion) and £28.8 billion ($50.8 billion) (depending on the technology used) to do a UK-wide fiber rollout. Why is the network so expensive? Not technology, but rather, according to the report: “The largest single cost component is the civil infrastructure (the cost of deploying and installing the fibre in new or existing ducts).”

What that means is that sooner or later, broadband providers are going to have to bite the bullet and upgrade to fiber-based networks. Sure the technology is going to get cheaper, but the fixed costs aren’t going to change anytime soon. So the longer they wait, the longer they’ll have to wait to make their money back.

Earlier today, I spent a delightful hour with Vinnie Mirchandani, a well respected analyst in the enterprise software industry, mostly because he knows how to figure out the impact of big technological trends on software. Accompanying him was George Gilbert, formerly an enterprise software analyst with Credit Suisse First Boston, a Wall Street firm.

While the conversation flitted from topic to topic, the main question they asked me was this: Can innovation survive against the backdrop of a broadband duopoly? Can we innovate when the plumbing of the network is controlled by only a handful of players, even when it comes to selling connections to corporations? Those are the very same questions that I have raised on numerous occasions, and you very well know that I am quite alarmed by new impositions such as silly bandwidth caps and attempts to do away with Net Neutrality.

The answer to that question isn’t that simple. However, as I told Vinnie, the incumbents are fighting a losing battle. It is obvious that Comcast’s 250 GB cap is a blatant attempt by the cable company to save its own video-on-demand franchise. It wants to make sure that video watchers buy video from Comcast (CMSCA), instead of Netflix (FLIX), Apple (APPL) or anyone else.

But Comcast has an indefensible position. Why? Because the innovators are going to figure out a way to beat those caps. Take Roku, which is making a special video player for Netflix. Tim Twerdhal, Roku’s VP of consumer products, told Chris Albrecht over on NewTeeVee, “We’ll be introducing same visual quality at lower bitrates in the future…There are lots of things going on with codecs and bitrates that make caps not as relevant as they may appear to be.” What will Comcast or any other incumbent do then? Lower their bandwidth caps even further? In all likelihood that is how they are going to react — a futile exercise, in my opinion.

Of course, you might have an entirely different opinion on the question. Will incumbents stifle innovation? Care to share with me?

When I checked out Google’s blog post Tuesday about its Free the Airwaves project, which aims to convince the FCC to approve the use of the white spaces between the spectrum vacated by analog television channels for broadband access, I saw it offered the ability to phone your Congressman. I thought that was kind of cool, so I clicked through to learn more.

I found myself at the master’s thesis of Fred Benenson — a VoIP-based program called Cause Caller that mixes IP telephony and activism. At the site you can enter your telephone number and Cause Caller makes a VoIP call to one of a randomized list of Congressional reps. So far 11 people have made calls on behalf of the Google campaign, which is exactly where things stood on Tuesday when Google provided the link. On the site Benenson said he funds the project himself, so I wondered if an influx of Google calls might bankrupt him, or if Google had volunteered to help offset costs. Continue Reading