Interviews with Digital Media Thought Leaders

The Wireless ISP Industry & Cellular Offloading
The Wireless ISP Industry & Cellular Offloading: Analysis and Forecast

This little-understood industry is at the threshold of moving into urban markets and transforming Internet access much like CATV changed television thirty years ago. Additionally, smartphones and tablet computers offer gigantic opportunities for Wireless ISPs to operate large area Wi-Fi networks enabling users to avoid the bandwidth limits and congestion of cellular systems. (August, 2011)

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Apple’s Textbook & Education Plans – Part 1

Podcast Audio | Posted by Phil Leigh on February 3, 2012

 
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philblueheadshotA couple of months hence shall mark the 100th anniversary of the Titanic disaster. In response, I’ve been reading several books including Charles Lightoller’s memoirs, purchased from the Kindle store for ninety-nine cents. Lightoller was the ship’s senior surviving officer. His story is so incredible that fiction editors would likely reject the plot as too improbable. As playwright Oscar Wilde put it, “(audiences) will believe the impossible, but never the improbable”. More to the point, the experience of reading the e-book on an iPad via Kindle’s App hints at the potential for Apple’s iTextbooks and iTunes- U initiatives.

Download six minute audio narration here.

At age thirteen Lightoller apprenticed aboard a four-masted “three-skysail yarder.” Being an unfamiliar term, I put my finger on “skysail” to summon iPad’s dictionary which described it as “a light sail above the royal”. The definition was not useful since I was also unfamiliar with the meaning of “royal” sails. Fortunately, iPad’s dictionary also provided links to Google and Wikipedia. The Wikipedia link connected to a full explanation including photographs and diagrams identifying all the sails of a clipper ship. Read more…

Internet Threat to Satellite TV

Podcast Audio | Posted by Phil Leigh on January 31, 2012

 
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philblueheadshotBefore “cord-cutting” became a popular term we predicted almost five years ago consumers would use the Internet to bypass conventional Cable TV. Later when Wall Street dismissed the practice as an urban myth in 2009, we concluded Cable operators may ultimately divest CATV service in order to concentrate on high-speed Internet.

Download 6-minute audio narration to iPod, iPhone, and iPad here.

Presently, “cord-cutting” is the Pay TV industry’s foremost concern. Netflix, Hulu, iTunes, and Amazon.com are pioneering alternate ways to acquire popular programming over the Net as opposed to Cable systems. Equally important is “Long Tail” content on YouTube and other Internet video sites.  “Long Tail” theory implies that while we share interest in popular content, we also have more narrowly defined interests shared with viewer-groups too small to justify mass market distribution. But the Internet shatters such limitations enabling video content to be made available for vanishingly small audiences. Arguably, cultural programming has already migrated to the Net. Read more…

Explaining the Wikipedia Blackout

Podcast Audio | Posted by Phil Leigh on January 19, 2012

 
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burger_jim“Gee, Granddad (or Granny), tells us again about the day the Wikipedia went dark!”

Today’s 18-minute audio interview is with Jim Burger who is a copyright attorney with Dow, Lohnes in Washington, D. C. He’s specialized in copyright law for thirty years and prior to Dow, Lohnes was on the legal staff at Apple.

Wikipedia turned out the lights yesterday to protest two bills in Congress. Proponents claim the bills need to be enacted in order to protect movies, recorded music, and other “intellectual property” from piracy. Opponents assert enactment of the bills will, (a) censor the Internet, (b) obstruct innovation, and (3) place expensive burdens on innocent third parties.

To download 18-minute audio interview to iPod, iPhone, or iPad, click here.

The House Bill is termed the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). The Senate Bill is called the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA). Most Internet-centric organizations object to the bills, but Wikipedia is the paragon for three reasons. Read more…

First Certified White Space Radio

Podcast Audio | Posted by Phil Leigh on January 6, 2012

 
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ktsToday’s sixteen minute audio interview is with William Koos, Jr. who is the Chief Executive Officer of KTS Wireless. For the past 30 years his company has been a specialty-maker of high performance radios for both military and commercial markets. Presently, KTS produces the only TV Band White Space transceiver certified by the Federal Communications Commission.

“Billy” discusses the earlier trials that KTS did with White Spaces under experimental licenses. He also shares his thoughts regarding how the White Spaces market will evolve in both the United States and abroad.

Download 16-minute audio interview to iPod, iPhone, and iPad here.

One of his conclusions is that municipal Wi-Fi markets will benefit considerably from TV Band White Spaces. He reasons that the FCC envisions White Space technology as encompassing the best of both licensed and unlicensed networks. While they will be able to provide the interference protection of licensed networks they simultaneously offer the innovative free-market access characteristic of licensed-exempt networks. Read more…

Future Unlicensed Wireless Networks

Podcast Audio | Posted by Phil Leigh on December 23, 2011

 
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liorToday’s nineteen minute audio interview is with Lior Shemesh who is the Chief Financial Officer of Israel-based Alvarion. His company is a maker of WiMax and WiFi equipment.

Future unlicensed wireless Internet access networks will use a variety of standards to provide large zones of coverage. Such standards will include WiMax, WiFi, and White Spaces. As users, we won’t know, or care, which standard is being used. All we’ll care about is how well and how fast we are connected wirelessly to the Internet within a wireless coverage zone.

Download 19 minute audio interview to iPod, iPhone, or iPad here.

Wi-Max discussions can be confusing because there are two standards. Read more…

Future Wi-Fi Networks

Podcast Audio | Posted by Phil Leigh on December 15, 2011

 
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roryToday’s podcast is a thirty minute audio interview with Rory Conaway who is the CEO of Triad Wireless Engineering. He is also the author of a constantly growing online book entitled Tales From the Tower which is an excellent source on The Wireless Internet.

Triad is a radio engineering consultancy with two basic services. One is to help equipment vendors and wireless operators bid for, and build, economical wireless communications systems, typically not involving cellular carriers. A second function is to advise equipment vendors on future designs.

Download thirty minute audio interview here.

Rory believes that unlicensed Wi-Fi networks are poised to handle a considerably larger-than-historical share of Internet traffic for four reasons.
Read more…

Let’s Retire the iPhone Smartphone

Podcast Audio | Posted by Phil Leigh on December 13, 2011

 
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philblueheadshot1The iPhone resembles a smartphone less than a BMW does a horseless carriage.

As noted five years ago in this Inside Digital Media video podcast, the device is more accurately labeled a “teleputer”. (The podcast is so old it was done in Windows Media Video). George Gilder originated the concept about twenty years ago when he envisioned a hand-held unit providing convenient wireless access to a global computer network. It was kind-of the evolutionary destination implied by a popular computer industry slogan at the time, to wit, “the network is the computer.”

Download five minute audio narration to iPhone, iPad, and iPod here.

Each day Gilder’s concept becomes increasingly obvious to a growing proportion of iPhone users.  Today everyone realizes telephone conversations are only one of many useful iPhone functions. More significantly, iPhone users are progressively learning that computer applications are becoming the unit’s raison d’etre. In short, the phone’s digital capabilities such as photography, geo-location, audio & video playback, and especially Internet access, are the defining characteristics. Applications like Skype and FaceTime portend an era when cellular telephony per se, becomes irrelevant to iPhone owners. Read more…

Two Years Before Time-Warner Cable

Podcast Audio | Posted by Phil Leigh on December 9, 2011

 
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philblueheadshotEarlier this week Holman Jenkins of the Wall Street Journal provided implications (1) about the ultimate potential of Wi-Fi and unlicensed networks and (2) that the Cable industry is not really “about” television anymore.

For example, he quoted Time-Warner Cable’s strategy chief, Peter Stern: “We’re basically a broadband (Internet) provider….As a convenience to our customers we (also) package and distribute television (programming)”.

Inside Digital Media subscribers got the word two years before Mr. Stern in our “Cable Operators Will Abandon TV” post and podcast on December 5, 2009. The viewpoint created a lot of flak at the time.

In short, we concluded cable operators would eventually abandon television service for two reasons. First, Internet services are much more profitable. Second, cable networks like ESPN will constantly pressure CATV operators to raise subscriber rates or accept lower profit margins.

Download two minute audio narration here.

We recommended that CATV managements begin to focus on providing increasingly reliable and lightning-fast Internet while preparing for the day when it would be wise to divest or spin-off the pay television service. Unlike you, Peter Stern was not an Inside Digital Media subscriber. Read more…