The other night I watched “Corpse Bride.” The Tim Burton flick was streamed from Netflix via my Time Warner broadband subscription, though my Linksys router to my Roku box, and from there through an HDMI cable to my television. But I could have watched a different movie on my TV using Time Warner’s video-on-demand service, sent through the set-top box provided by my cable company.

A few years back I couldn’t get movies delivered on demand, unless it was through my cable provider. But now services like Netflix — or better yet, Amazon — provide me with high-definition versions of new releases streamed via my Roku box for about as much as it costs through Time Warner or as part of a trip to the closest Blockbuster. In other words, my PC has become — as it has for so many others — the gateway to much of my entertainment. And that trend is worrying service providers, which don’t want to see their customers switch from paying for a triple-play package of voice, video and data to just data. Continue »

Ivan Seidenberg, the CEO of Verizon, appeared on “The Charlie Rose Show” yesterday talking about the communication company’s plans for global growth, network neutrality and the role of government. For the record, Verizon plans to build out its wireless business internationally within the next 5-10 years, and about one-third of that growth will be through acquisitions. However according to Seidenberg, any buys will wait until pesky regulatory hurdles such as buying an individual wireless license on a per-country basis are taken care of by regional consolidation.

His position on network neutrality was in line with most carriers. He stressed that Verizon has every right to create and deliver content over its pipes. He also said the role of government was primarily to step back and let the capital markets do their thing, but that if it wanted to boost IT spending by mandating electronic health records, Verizon is cool with that.

But it was Seidenberg’s quote about the need for an executive to always be looking ahead that stuck with me. Continue »

Verizon today boosted its upload speeds across its FiOS fiber-to-the-home broadband packages, which leads me to wonder if upload speeds are the new download speeds in a saturated market for broadband. Om and I both have complained about anemic upload speeds, which are becoming more of a handicap in today’s world of video uploads and online backup. Given Verizon’s history as an innovator in broadband (spending $23 million billion on fiber is a bold move), and a renewed package of incentives out today to drive subscription rates (you get a netbook or a Flip camcorder with a triple-play subscription), upstream speeds may get more competitive. Continue »

The consumer love affair with Apple’s iPhone shows no signs of ending. Three days after launching the iPhone 3G S, the company sold more than a million units, Cupertino said today, on par with the number of iPhone 3Gs sold within the first three days of that device being launched. In comparison, it took some 74 days to sell a million of the original iPhones. Overall, Apple is expected to sell about 5 million phones in this quarter. Continue »

FCC acting chairman Michael Copps said yesterday afternoon that the agency would investigate exclusivity deals between carriers and handset makers, and “take action” if they were found to cause harm to consumers. While the largest cellular carriers are protesting the probe, consumer advocates are thrilled. However with two of the four largest U.S. carriers operating on a CDMA network and the other two operating on a GSM network, eliminating exclusivity would mean handset makers would have to build a minimum of two versions of each phone, not that the phones would be interchangeable on U.S. networks. Continue »

After a fourth-month delay, the DTV transition, which will enable several services to run on the 700 MHz spectrum that had long been used for analog TV, will kick off tomorrow. For the string of companies affected by the delay, it will be a sweet way to end the week. Verizon can finally begin its LTE deployment, Qualcomm can expand its MediaFLO service to new markets including San Francisco and Miami, and Cox Wireless can move ahead with its launch of 3G and 4G trials on the spectrum. Still, it’s estimated that 3 million Americans will be left in the dark because of the transition.

Twice in the last week, I’ve received images of  broadband speed tests from my colleagues that show how fast their networks are, especially on the upload side. I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of envy when I checked out Kevin’s symmetrical 20 Mbps FiOS connection and the 50/10 Mbps speeds offered by Jordan Golson’s Comcast service. In despair, I checked out my own speeds and noticed that instead of the 7 Mbps down that I pay for, I’m getting a range of between 12 Mbps and 13 Mbps down from my service provider, Time Warner Cable. I’m guessing my improved upload download speeds are related to getting some kind of boost for the first few seconds of the download.

However, my upload speeds are still miserable, at less than 512 kbps, and that’s what has me feeling like an outsider looking in when it comes to technology. Continue »