GigaOM

As we reported on Tuesday, NebuAd has lost its CEO and, after facing Congressional scrutiny over privacy fears, the will to pursue ISP customers with its deep-packet inspection technology. But its UK rival, Phorm, apparently wants investors to believe it’s still in the game. While NebuAd told the Washington Post that it plans to get out of the business of selling its system to ISPs, Phorm is trying to make clear it’s not having any problems with its own plans to roll out advertising based on a consumer’s web surfing habits. A company spokeswoman says the company plans to could use its technology to branch out to track and offer ads on interactive television services as well — a type of offering we’d predicted.

The former adware company said this morning that its deal with BT is going ahead, while its deals with Virgin Media and TalkTalk will proceed later. From its filing with the AIM market on the London Stock Exchange: Continue Reading

Updated: Comcast says it has filed an appeal against the Federal Communications Commission’s Memorandum and Order on network management adopted August 1, 2008 and released August 20, 2008, in the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. This appeal is the latest chapter in ongoing traffic management saga that began with shocking revelations that Comcast was slowing down P2P traffic.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Comcast was going to appeal. Moreover, FCC’s order was legally toothless. Nevertheless, it did get the point across, though it doesn’t chastise other carriers for indulging similar behavior. Comcast has released the following statement attributed to David L. Cohen, Executive Vice President of Comcast Corporation: Continue Reading

Today Nortel named two of the customers deploying its new 40G optical long-haul network equipment; Bell Canada is widening the lanes of its network between Montreal, Toronto and New York, and Alaska Communications Systems is beefing up the potential bandwidth between Alaska and Oregon.

Once big reason for the upgrades at the core is the increase in fiber and other fat pipes closer to the consumers — in some cases directly to the home. Philippe Morin, president for Metro Ethernet Networks at Nortel, points out that those links are driving innovation and services such as HD video, which are prompting providers to upgrade their core networks.

Bell Canada and Alaska Communications join 21 other carriers that have taken up Nortel’s 40 G equipment since it was launched in April. Nortel competitors Ciena and Cisco are also gaining customers for long-haul equipment, but despite a brighter outlook for such sales, the low margins associated with the products won’t help Nortel’s troubled financials. Wall Street certainly isn’t impressed — Nortel’s stock has been trading below its $3.1 billion in cash (as of the end of June) several times in the last month.

After a few quarters of nonchalant statements that the sub-prime mortgage crisis and rising oil prices weren’t going to affect the tech stocks, the bloom is off the rose. The lowered sales forecasts and lackluster quarters are trickling in, and the trend for wireless companies is clear. This morning, networking equipment maker Ciena said in its earnings release that it expected lowered sales for the coming quarter. Gary Smith, Ciena president and CEO said:

“In addition to existing customer-specific challenges, we have recently begun to experience order delays from many of our Tier One service provider customers, which we attribute to their guarded approach to capital expenditures given the uncertain macroeconomic environment. While we’ve seen no project or order cancellations, sales cycles are lengthening and some deployments are slowing.”

Yesterday Qualcomm sent lower the shares of fellow chip maker Texas Instruments, as well as those of handset maker Nokia, after Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs said the replacement cycle for cell phones in developed countries was lengthening. If phone sales drop, chipmakers, handset makers from Motorola to Samsung, and carriers will lose. Worries from the carriers will also affect Ciena’s competitors, among them Cisco, Alcatel-Lucent and the troubled Nortel, which has been trading below its cash value intermittently throughout the last month.

Preparations for a downturn began earlier this year at Cisco, but it still reported record-breaking sales for its second quarter earlier this month, and CEO John Chambers said any economic downturn would be short lived. However, it did lower its revenue forecasts slightly for the second half of the year. With consumers tightening their belts, an industry that has grown to rely more heavily on the Average Jane and Joe forking over money for the latest gadget might find themselves doing a little belt-tightening of its own.

Cablevision has done a good job of withstanding the Verizon FiOS assault by rolling out really high speed Internet along with other services to its customer base in the tri-state region of the U.S. In order to keep nearly 2.4 million broadband customers of its Optimum Online service happy, Cablevision is going to offer them free Wi-Fi access starting today.

The Bethpage, N.Y.-based cable company says it has completed the initial phase of its Optimum Online Wi-Fi network that could cost as much as $300 million by the time it is complete. The company claims that it is already one of the largest consumer Wi-Fi networks in the business. That said, the network isn’t terribly fast — speed is going to be up to just 1.5 megabits per second. You may be able to use it for VoIP calls, but given my experience with most open Wi-Fi networks, don’t count on good quality. Continue Reading

Hollywood take note: Sony Pictures is the sixth (and final) major movie studio to pull up stakes in South Korea, where blazing fast, ubiquitous broadband has sucker-punched the market for DVD sales and rentals, NewTeeVee reports today. In Korea, where average broadband penetration rate by household hit 90.1 percent last year (and in Seoul reached 107.8 percent), nearly 50 percent of Internet users say they download movies, and the typical users is downloading about a movie a week. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, DVD sales have more than halved between 2008 and 2002, and rental shops feel to a third of their 2001 numbers by the end of 2007.

But here’s the real zinger: In the face of ubiquitous broadband, DVDs won’t be replaced by other physical formats or even VOD services, but by the cloud. At the center of the Korean downloading craze are web-based storage solutions — so-called “webhard” services — originally popularized by LG. Today, there are dozens of vendors, with some offering up to 1 Terabyte of storage space for free. The services are monetized through priority access points that guarantee higher speeds. Rather than fighting the trend, Korean film studios are joining the cloud and starting a webhard-based movie download service by the end of the year.

Get the full story at NewTeeVee