Thursday, May 30, 2002
New UK e-commerce minister
The UK now has a new e-commerce minister, Stephen Timms and we're told he's a strong believer in broadband.
Wednesday, May 29, 2002
Joltage first UK access point
Joltage, one of the new WiFi access companies, now have their first UK access point in Purton, a small Wiltshire village a mile west of Swindon.The Joltage service works by owners of broadband connections attaching WiFi kit to it and allowing roaming WiFi users in the local area to use their connection. The roaming WiFi users pays $25/month Joltage for the privilege and the base station owner gets paid for usage of each packet.
A seemingly neat arrangement, but currently there are two problems for Joltage. Firstly it is illegal in the UK to commercially exploit the 2.4GHz band that WiFi runs on. Secondarily, reselling ADSL is against the terms and conditions of service.
The idea behind Joltage has been running since October 2000 in the UK by a collective, consume.net, who freely share their bandwidth, making it completely legal, as neither of the problems above are triggered. Being a collective they don't have a marketing budget but do have huge amounts of enthusiasm to see the service succeed. I've been watching the progress of consume.net since early 2001 and have been impressed at the way they've continued to improve and expand the service.
Monday, May 27, 2002
Moxi sales on the move
I’ve written here in glowing terms about the theory and features of the Moxi Media Centre. Back in March Diego bought Moxi and they’ve now reported receiving a positive from the cable industry at the National Cable and Telecommunications
Association (NCTA) annual tradeshow in New Orleans. Motorola showed their Moxi based “Broadband Media Center’s”, the BMC8000 and 9000, which they are building under license.They also reported their first sale to Charter Communications, the fourth largest cable company in the US, who will be deploying them in Fall this year. I’m sure there’s no coincidence that Paul Allen owns large portions of both Diego and Charter. He may succeed where his old business partner, Bill Gates, failed, in becoming THE household entertainment device.
Swedish Minister calls for subsidies
A Swedish government Minister has called for government subsidies for broadband access bringing the price to E22-23/month.
Thursday, May 23, 2002
US Library of Congress to decide on Webcasting fees
After a challenge from US radio Webcasters to the level of fees they are being asked to pay for playing songs on their station (up to $1.40 per song heard by one thousand listeners). The Library of Congress, who decides these matters, has to deliver its final determination before 20 June.
Speculation on the future use of ITV Digital's frequency
Murmurs that the frequency that was/is used by ITV Digital in the UK could be sub-divided for wireless broadband access.
Wednesday, May 22, 2002
BBC Worldwide sign first interactive content deal
BBC Worldwide have just signed their first licensing deal for Interactive content with the Australian broadcaster ABC.
Microsoft announce Xbox Live
At E3, Microsoft announces details their online Multi-user broadband gaming network, "Xbox Live". At just short of $50/year it will initially offer an "Xbox Communicator" - a mike for in game chatting with remote players. Making clear their commitment to the Xbox over the next five years they've also pledged a further $2Bn support budget.
BT waive ADSL activation fee
BT's offer to wave the £65 activation fee for new ADSL users has been extended until August 2002 from the end of May.
Tuesday, May 21, 2002
Oftel give BT access to the hallowed 'Blue bill'
About eight years ago I remember when working on the product structure of the pre-launch of BT's Wireplay service (Multi-user gaming service - great idea, badly executed, later sold on). One of our suggestions involved placing various charging items on the regular or 'Blue bill' and BT were very clear that this was and would only be allowed to be billed for phone charges - although they very much wanted to use it.I was really surprised to see that Oftel recently gave BT the ability to charge their broadband services on the hallowed 'Blue bill'. Freeserve can clearly see the advantage of BT having this and have blown a gasket.
Monday, May 20, 2002
Korea now has 8.5m broadband users
The Korean government have just announced they've reached nearly 8.5 Million broadband users with Korea Telecom having nearly half of these. Estimates are 10M by the end of the year.
Thursday, May 16, 2002
ADSL complaints in the UK rise
There are reports of users complaining, quite hard, about the quality of service they are receiving from their ADSL provider in the UK. Sadly, some may say this is inevitable during the stampede leading up to 31.May.02 when the free install offer finishes.
SonicBlue given some breathing space
SonicBlue have been given a stay, until 3rd June, in the court order that will force them to put software in their device that will individually monitor the viewing habits of their customer. The initial demand was made following enormous pressure from the movie and TV media owners. Perhaps the judiciary has remembered, on reflection, that this is in the 'Land of the Free'.
Wednesday, May 15, 2002
NTL provide public IP addresses in Manchester
NTL have just given its broadband cable customers in Manchester public IP addresses to replace their private IP addresses. NTL state that this is to get around P2P and multi-player gaming problems.This may be the whole reason, or it may be a counter attack on BT. One of the big sales area for ADSL for BT is businesses, which isn't an area the cable companies have been aiming at up to now. Giving people public IP addresses could be a move towards this, as it will make it easier to run a server on their cable connection.
Tuesday, May 14, 2002
Nintendo announce broadband adaptor
The big Three (Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft) games platforms producers are all getting excited about broadband gaming. This week it’s Nintendo’s belated turn to announce the launch of their adaptor, due to be release in the Autumn at the cost of ~$35.
DSL speed test sites
As broadband services become more popular, the fear is that performance will reduce, as more users are jammed through pipes on the Internet side of the ISP that don’t grow as quickly (the Internet provision side is the expensive side for the ISP). If you're concerned that you're not getting the bandwidth you expected to get when you signed up for ADSL or your cable service or even dialup, here are couple of speed tests, the World of ADSL and ADSLGuide. If you do find it lower than you expected, contact your ISP, otherwise it will continue to get worse.
New Star Wars is double digital
During the inevitable press build up to the release of the new Star Wars film "Attack of the Clones", there are two interesting news items doing the rounds.The first is that this is the first ‘major’ film to have been totally shot digitally, but sadly most audiences will see it on film due to there only being eighty screens in the US that have digital projectors.
The other is that DV video cameras are being used to shoot the projection of the film in pre-release showings and theses copies are being distributed around the Internet well ahead of the public release, some say the furthest in advance of any film so far. Hardly surprising given the Star Wars/Geek crossover.
Freeserve and NTL broadband deal
UK ISP Freeserve has now struck a deal to sell cable provider, NTL's broadband product to their client base in an effort to try and make them less reliant on BT. This is a good thing that will start to get BT on their toes and not thinking they rule the broadband roost.
Friday, May 10, 2002
Liberty Media buys into OpenTV
John Malone's Liberty Media bought an interest in OpenTV yesterday, giving him 87% of the voting rights in the company. I feel this is the type of significant deal that gives the iTV the gravitas it needs.
BT build Openworld video offering
BT start to build their OpenWorld exclusive video content by bringing ADSL user an early showing of the Ant and Dec video - groan. For the lucky people who don't know who Ant and Dec are, they are a UK kids pop duo, who happen to have been picked to sing the World Cup song this year. I must admit I'm a bit confused by this, sure in the UK Ant and Dec are well know, but their audience is not the people who will be paying for DSL to be installed at home, so I can only assume BT are relying on children's pester-power to get the service taken up.
Wednesday, May 08, 2002
McDonald's to offer WiFi in Japan for World Cup
McDonald's and Softbank will be offering free Wireless Internet access (WiFi) from twenty of their restaurants in Japan for six months, to coincide with the World Cup.
Friday, May 03, 2002
TiVo announce AOL IM deal
TiVo have just announced a deal with one of their current investors, AOL, to include their instant messaging and live chat on to the Series2 TiVo. Interestingly TiVo/AOL users will be able to set their TiVo recording schedule via AOL - I thought it was pretty stunning that remote programming wasn't build in from the outset.
Thursday, May 02, 2002
Cricket to be webcast
In contrast to the football World Cup, all international cricket from India will be broadcast live on the Internet to registered users of wisden.com.
Sony buys part of Real Networks
Sony has bought 1% of Real Networks to demonstrate how they are getting closer together, in their attempt to fend off Microsoft taking control of digital music.
Audio webcasting goes silent
Yesterday the audio webcasting industry went silent for the day, as a protest to the recently recommended fee of 0.14 US cents per track played. Webcasters say they already finding it hard to survive and the additional financial burden of paying, what initially looks like a small amount of money, would add about an extra $9,000 to their monthly cost. Clearly the record companies don't see it that way and by 21.May, we will all find out what the final figure due will be as that's when the Librarian of Congress is required to set sound recording performance royalty rates for Web radio stations.
Wednesday, May 01, 2002
Telewest drop broadband pricing
Telewest are running a special broadband promotion in the UK. The 4.3m households that lie within Telewest a franchise will be able to get the first three months of the blueyonder service for £13.48 not the usual £25 charge.
World Cup streaming video pricing announced
The details of the online viewing of the Korean-held World Cup have now been announced. For a cost of $19.95 viewers will be able to watch four-minute video packages at up to 300k of each of the 64 matches and listen to bespoke commentaries in either English, French, Japanese, Korean, Spanish or German. They will be available two to three hours after the match finish, to keep the TV stations happy I suspect.
