Carriers — GigaOM

Carriers

TV networks and advertisers alike have long been looking for ways to make ads more relevant to consumers prone to skipping, or simply ignoring advertising. This quest has become even more urgent with the advent of new advertising opportunities online that are Read More »

Cable providers could find customers defecting for other services, or possibly even cutting the cord if they don’t find ways to provide more value to their subscribers, according to a new survey from Strategy Analytics. As many as two-thirds of cable subscribers said they would … Read More »

 
 

Cable customers in Denver and Los Angeles didn’t have to miss last weekend’s Sugar Bowl after all: Time Warner Cable  and News Corp. announced a deal on Friday that allows the cable company to continue to carry the Fox network’s TV channels, after Fox … Read More »

Qualcomm’s MediaFLO mobile television network hasn’t met the chipmaker’s expectations, according to COO Len Lauer, who spoke with me at the Mobilize 09 event last week in San Francisco. He said of Qualcomm’s FLO network for broadcasting mobile television, “We’re not where we need to … Read More »

Oh, Canada: Your health care is universal, your forests are green, and your creative industries are against BitTorrent throttling. The Canadian Film & Television Production Association (CFTPA) and two other trade groups representing filmmakers and TV producers testified in support of net neutrality in … Read More »

Cablevision, the Bethpage, N.Y.-based cable operator, says it will only sell digital video services and say “sayonara” to analog television, so to speak. Existing analog cable customers will get analog simulcasts on television sets connected directly to Cablevision’s receivers. More than 91 percent of Cablevision’s … Read More »

Akamai, Limelight, Level 3 and more than a dozen other startups should be worried about Amazon’s move into the content deliver business. Amazon Web Services’ latest offering will cause price pressure in an already commoditized business. In an email to its customers today, Amazon … Read More »

The first time Paul Scanlan, co-founder of MobiTV, showed me his service at a friend’s barbeque in Sausalito, it was nothing but a herky-jerky video transmission of CNN on a Sprint handset. I had just moved back to San Francisco, and this was before the current … Read More »

While not so uncommon overseas, bandwidth caps and metered broadband are coming to the US market place. Time Warner is the first major cable company to announce its metered broadband strategy & prices for a small Texas market, in what can be described as draconian. … Read More »

Comcast is reportedly considering monthly caps on bandwidth usage and may charge customers who go over these limits. DSLreports writes that users would get to use up to 250 GB per month and be charged $15 for every 10 GB over the limit. When contacted … Read More »

For all of you too lazy to drive to the video store or too impatient to wait for your DVDs in the mail, 2008 is shaping up to be a banner year for you. The video-on-demand (VOD) space is heating up, which means you have … Read More »

The big news coming out of Time Warner this morning was that the company is finally selling off its cable division, the second largest in the country (our pal Stacey at GigaOM says its the beginning of Time Warner’s death by 1,000 cuts). But … Read More »

More Must Reads

Thanks to some generous support of their pal, FCC Commish Kevin Martin, and others at the state level, the big bets made by AT&T and Verizon on video — in the form of U-verse and FiOS, respectively — are slowly beginning to pay off. Last week, … Read More »

Comcast Doesn’t Admit to BitTorrent Blocking; in the wake of the Comcast/BitTorrent agreement, the cable company takes exception to statements made by the FCC chairman regarding its so-called network management practices. (Multichannel News) Veeple Joins the Clickable Video Fray; company uses Flash to recognize and embed … Read More »

Though the DirecTV VOD service doesn’t officially launch until the second quarter, it’s been available for beta testing for some time already. As we’ve written before, because of satellite’s one-way-only transmission, DirecTV will be using a combination of pre-selected movies beamed directly to set-top box … Read More »

Verizon knows that breaking up with your cable operator can be tough, so the company has asked the FCC for permission to do it for you. The FiOS TV provider is petitioning the commission to make switching your TV service similar to switching phone companies. … Read More »

“I think IPTV is the new TV,” Ralph de la Vega opened his keynote by saying. AT&T wants to connect people to everything in their lives — music, business, entertainment — and do it on the go, de la Vega explained. With countless iPhones visible … Read More »

With the federally mandated end to analog broadcast television due to go into effect in 2009, an FCC panel has voted unanimously to require cable companies to continue broadcasting local stations as an analog signal until 2012. According to FCC estimates, 40 million American … Read More »

Joost, despite an early lead when it comes to the P2P television is beginning to get some criticism about its video quality. A skeptical report on JoostTeam points out that the bit rate is about half that of video from DivX Stage6 or the … Read More »

Check it out folks, the mobile, non-carrier-guarded version of YouTube is here — and right on schedule for the June date that a YouTube spokesperson told us about a few months ago. You need a phone that supports streaming video and should probably have … Read More »

Are we ready for full length TV shows on cell phones? — If you watch a lot of mobile video over 3G, you’ll probably say heck no. Well, it’s coming anyway — NBC Universal and MobiTV say they’ll be offering full-length prime time shows … Read More »

Looking more like a web video sharing site than a mobile video sharing site, Zannel could become a popular bridge between the two platforms. Publishing to the site is as easy as publishing to YouTube or any other service, and sending content to your, … Read More »

What Blogger did for personal publishing, Decentral.tv wants to do for video. The San Francisco-based company, which has raised capital from well-known venture capitalists (the same gang that backed Skype), wants to turn its Kyte.tv (which we covered last week) offering into a platform … Read More »

Kyte.tv is a project we’ve been eagerly awaiting ever since Katie drummed up some details on it for GigaOM in January. Recent stories by VentureBeat and Light Reading are starting to bring the project into focus. We’ll try to get you some … Read More »

Paul detangles reports that a Google exec supposedly said Internet infrastructure won’t scale to deliver web TV, over on GigaOM. Given Google’s out-front stance on topics like network neutrality and its $1.65 billion purchase of YouTube — two things that would seem at odds with such … Read More »

YouTube sent the mobile industry in a tizzy last year by indicating it would move onto at cell phones this year. First it was a deal with Verizon Wireless in the U.S., and today European carrier Vodafone announced a similar deal to offer YouTube … Read More »

For all our wonderment about NewTeeVee, old TV is still a pretty good business, especially for cable giant Comcast. A required-reading profile of the company in Sunday’s New York Times notes that Wall Street believes in Comcast. Institutional bidders have made their move, sending its … Read More »

Everything you think you know about IPTV is wrong. That’s part of the message from Italy’s Fastweb, one of the world leaders in IPTV deployments. During a refreshingly honest conference call Wednesday hosted by RBC Capital Markets, Fastweb’s Paolo Agostinelli talked about what early-days … Read More »

Amidst all the hubbub about Internet-based TV, the cable industry was relatively quiet, though not silent, at this week’s CES. On the DVR front, it looks like Comcast and TiVo have made nice, probably since potential Comcast DVR customers kept calling up asking … Read More »

Katie’s got the report from CES on Verizon’s Vcast Mobile TV over on GigaOM. She pokes a few holes in the initial presentation — an unclear but probably steep price point, fuzzy plans for incorporating user-generated content, and Verizon President and COO Denny Strigl’s … Read More »

Co-written with Paul Kapustka. Bonjour, madames et monsieurs. Would you like a look at our menu of online video for the next 12 months? You may choose prix fixe or a la carte, whatever you wish. It’s a mixed-metaphor extravaganza! For hors d’ouvres, may we suggest … Read More »

Retail stores are where you sell things, right? Not in this century, they’re not! Verizon has opened two mall-front properties to showcase its FiOS IPTV offering “with little advertisement or fanfare,” says this AP story. FiOS is the fiber-to-the-home service Om reported on yesterday, saying … Read More »

Is building better video backbone technology a story that will play on Wall Street? That’s what BigBand Networks hopes, as the company filed for an IPO on Dec. 22. Previous reporting from Light Reading said BigBand may seek to raise $120 million or so; according … Read More »

Betting that the backbone is a business that’s going to get better, Level 3 added to its ante by purchasing the content delivery network business from Savvis today, for $135 million in cash. Om has more details and analysis on the GigaOM site. Whether … Read More »

Michael Calore of Wired News writes about a coworker who called their ISP, RCN, after having trouble sharing a file using BitTorrent. Instead of being told that RCN was blocking his ability to seed torrent transfers, he was scolded for being a copyright infringer. … Read More »

Not much is better than watching Will Ferrell, waist-high in a hot tub cracking himself up during an Saturday Night Live skit. I just watched the 2-minute long clip on Cingular’s video service, which Cingular and SNL officially announced today. While the content and concept … Read More »

As we reported last week, Philips Electronics says it has developed technology that will use digital fingerprinting to help online video sites restrict use of copyrighted content. Since then we caught up with Ronald Maandonks, CEO of Philips’ content identification division, for more details in … Read More »

That’s what Wade Roush, writing for the MIT Technology Review, argues in this piece about peer-to-peer technology. And not only should distributors get on board, but network operators may want to embrace it, too. Considering how much more efficiently it distributes large amounts … Read More »

As router king Cisco moves deeper into the video world, you can be sure of one thing: John Chambers and Co. will do all they can to help network owners and content providers battle pirated material. In fact, after his keynote speech Tuesday, Chambers told … Read More »

Is Time-Warner’s recent stock runup (today at 21 bucks and change, a 52-week high) covering up the struggles at the company’s AOL division? That’s the take of Alyce Lomax over at the Motley Fool, who notes that investors are more forgiving of flaws when share … Read More »

AP reports that the Netherlands has become the first country to switch to all-digital TV, ending free over-the-air broadcasting last night. Unlike the U.S., where the planned tranisition to DTV is sure to raise heated legal battles before its planned 2009 tranisition date, the … Read More »

Need some big-thinking reading material to catch up on the TV vs. the Web debate? Here’s a couple good primers, starting off with Steve Rubel on How TV Will Become the Ultimate Open Content Platform. Talking about how the ‘Net will affect TV, Rubel says: This … Read More »

By Alan Weinkrantz Because I live in San Antonio, I was able to sign up and become a trial customer of the AT&T U-verse IPTV service. I’ve been a trial customer for about six months, and the real tipping point for me really came when … Read More »

An interesting bit of look-ahead from ABI Reseach claims that by 2011, 55 percent of fiber-connected homes will get their video services from that link, up from the 4 percent that do so today.  While the number sounds good — 55 percent of anything is good, … Read More »

The Register reports BT is set to launch its long-awaited BT Vision over broadband service on Monday, December 4th. The package will include some 30 free channels, plus programming from such content providers as Disney, Channel 4, SonyBMG, the FA Partnership, and others. Subscribers will … Read More »

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