Anecdotal evidence suggests over-the-top video is a booming trend. But it takes technical skill, state-of-the-art broadband connections and the willingness to shell out money for both bandwidth and content subscriptions to fully integrate OTT into a household, much less consider trying to use it to cord cut. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The Department of Justice is looking into the power that cable providers have over how and where consumers can access television content via the Internet. It’s a step that acknowledges the vertical integration of cable as well as their control over the last mile. Read more »
Traditional cable is no longer about choice; it’s about access. As an access provider for content, cable has the widest depth of content right now, but it also costs the most. So how long can it keep content and customers? Read more »
While we in tech land tried to read the tea leaves of Apple CEO Tim Cook’s recent cryptic comments on the future of Apple TV, the media world saw the uncertainty around his statements as, “causing a boatload of angst and anticipation,” according to Variety. Read more »
Cable continues to crush telcos when it comes to stealing broadband customers, according to data out from the Leichtman Research Group. The analyst firm noted that the U.S. market added 1.3 million new subscribers for a total of nearly 80 million subscriptions. Read more »
The adoption of tablets, social media and new interfaces and the changing nature of the TV itself mean the digital living room will continue on its path of rapid change, thanks to new ways of creating, viewing, bundling, distributing and selling content. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
We’re on pace to send 1.3 zettabytes of data in 2016, about 4 times more than we send today according to data out from Cisco. To put that in perspective, that’s more than 38 million DVDs sent per hour. It’s a 1 followed by 21 zeros. Read more »
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski reiterated his acceptance of broadband data caps and tiered pricing at The Cable Show. That’s fine, but it would be awesome if he started asking questions about how those caps are set and what impact they have on consumer behavior. Read more »
Comcast has released two sweet additions to its home broadband service that allow users to turn their TV into big screen home and life dashboard. Using gesture and voice controls, Comcast’s new Dayview service gives customers on open window to their web services. Read more »
Comcast may have given users a break on Thursday by raising its monthly data cap to 300 GB, but Level 3, the backbone Internet provider and content delivery network, wants people to know that Comcast is still likely prioritizing its Xfinity traffic over others’. Read more »
Netflix isn’t satisfied with Comcast’s announcement that the broadband provider is going to raise its bandwidth cap from 250GB to 300GB per month. The real issue, the video service said, is Comcast’s unwillingness to count its own Xfinity.tv service as part of that cap. Read more »
Comcast plans to raise its broadband cap to 300 GB per month as it trials two new types of caps. The move is welcome one, but it neglects to address some of the net neutrality complaints that have arisen in the last few weeks about Comcast. Read more »
Comcast says it is planning to make sweeping changes to its data usage plans and will start by boosting the data cap from 250 GB/month to 300 GB/month. The change is in response to changing consumer usage behavior and shift to more cloud-oriented computing. Read more »
Comcast, once again, has some explaining to do. An engineer has conducted experiments that he says show the nation’s largest broadband provider is prioritizing traffic– something it’s not supposed to do under the conditions the government imposed when the cable company bought NBC-Universal. Read more »
We’re at a flashpoint in the evolution of television, and the battle lines are becoming more clear. What’s also becoming clear is that Comcast is playing to win. Here are seven things the nation’s largest cable company is doing to keep its pay TV customers. Read more »
Five months after it was announced, Comcast’s Xfinity TV subs finally have access to a key part of the TV Everywhere promise — WatchESPN, the ESPN gateway to live streaming sports and news. It’s iOS only for now, but Android is “coming soon.” Read more at paidContent »
With chief James Dolan mentioning unspecified software investments during Cablevision’s first-quarter earnings report Thursday morning, BTIG Research analyst Richard Greenfield believes the company is on the cusp of announcing a subscription video-on-demand service similar to Comcast’s Streampix. Read more at paidContent »
Comcast, the largest broadband provider in the US is getting bigger and bigger. During the first quarter of 2012, the company added 439,000 net new high-speed Internet customers to bring the final tally to 18.58 million and had broadband revenues of $2.32 billion. Read more »
Women at NBCU, NBCUniversal’s female-targeted ad sales, marketing and research initiative, is launching a new digital advisory board called Women@NBCU. Members include Google’s Marissa Mayer, Twitter’s Chloe Sladden and One Kings Lane’s Alison Pincus. Read more at paidContent »
Bernstein Research wonders if the decision by Providence Equity Partners to pull its minority stake out of Hulu is a signal that the entertainment conglomerates who own most of the streaming service — and who wish to uphold TV’s multichannel model — don’t want it to grow. Read more »
Congress, along with many in the content industry, are wondering about the fate of television in an Internet Age. I think the future is broadband, and I’d like to offer this chart from Sandvine, showing that the future is already here. Read more »
As government strives to keep up with the broadband age, the Senate held a hearing covering the future of television, but midway through I realized that the Senate has it all wrong. The future of TV isn’t found in deregulation, it’s found on the Internet. Read more »
“Content” is an industry that is going through a renaissance.Despite the current challenges and there are opportunities. All these threats and opportunities will be part of the discourse at paidContent 2012, which will be held on May 23, 2012, at the TimesCenter in New York City. Read more »
The Senate is investigating video competition during a hearing on Tuesday and public interest groups are using it as an opportunity to ask tough questions on broadband caps. I would love the Senate to demand answers on how caps can thwart the burgeoning industry. Read more »
Smartphone sales surged both in the U.S. and worldwide, carriers struggled to cope with the ever-increasing consumption of mobile data, and the fight for spectrum remained front and center in the first quarter. Our latest quarterly wrap-up analyzes these trends and more. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
A new study predicts $200 bills for the pay-TV portion of your cable bill by 2020. Here’s how the cable companies are using both a carrot and a stick to keep pay TV necessary in an IP age. Can government or consumers stop them? Read more »
Netflix has formed its own political action committee called Flixpac, and my sources indicate that the biggest issues it plans to tackle will be how to let folks share their movies on social networks and the more nuanced issues of broadband competition and network neutrality. Read more »
Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam is pitching a form of integrated wireless and wireline cable TV offering if the government approves its plans to buy $4 billion worth of spectrum from a variety of cable companies. But his plans don’t make sense as business or for consumers. Read more »
Comcast said content streamed over Microsoft’s Xbox won’t count against a user’s 250 GB usage cap, prompting outrage. But the reality of the situation is that the way Comcast is delivering its content over the Xbox means it’s in the right. Did net neutrality fail? Read more »
Niche broadband networks built to cover areas big ISPs didn’t are doing well in the U.K according to a study out by PointTopic. Such news is welcome to niche players in the U.S. such as Sonic.Net, but is this the best way to deploy networks? Read more »
Big data now touches everything from enterprises to smart-meter startups, while Hadoop is fast becoming the leading tool to analyze that data, and debates around privacy abound. GigaOM Pro analysts offer insights on what to consider when it comes to big data decisions for your business. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Fandango will be an online and mobile movie-ticket seller for Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) Movies, according to a new partnership between the two comp… Read more at paidContent »
The eighteen largest cable and telephone companies that account for 93 percent of the broadband market added 3 million net subscribers during 2011, according to data from Leichtman Research Group, a Durham, NH-based market research group. More revealing: AT&T’s dismal broadband performance. Read more »
With HBO’s new video teaser for the April 1 launch of its HBO Go service on Xbox Live, the big question is: Which of the top cable, satellit… Read more at paidContent »
This week, Major League Soccer introduced updated apps that let fans stream 230 live pro soccer games next season on iOS and Android mobile… Read more at paidContent »
Correction: A previous version of this story reported an increase of 343 million subs. We apologize for the error.
With the rise of Netflix… Read more at paidContent »
Cable giant Comcast plans to offer a smart thermostat and energy efficiency service to its Xfinity customers via startup EcoFactor. Read more »
An ambitious effort by the cable industry to create unified standards for targeted and interactive television advertising has failed, the vi… Read more at paidContent »
Comcast is rolling out a new streaming on-demand offering called Xfinity Streampix, which will bring more library content to subscribers that pay for its high-end double- and triple-play packages. That could give subscribers less of a reason to also pay for Netflix or Hulu Plus. Read more »
Regressive, telco industry-influenced state legislators are at it again, trying to kill communities’ right to determine their own broadband futures. Anti-community broadband bills are rearing their ugly heads in several states. Can SOPA-style protests help? Read more »
