Wireless ISPs Echo Radio Common Carriers
Posted on June 21, 2011
Prior to the advent of cellular telephony about thirty years ago, a limited form of mobile telephone service was provided by two categories of FCC-authorized common carriers. First, and most familiar, were the telephone companies dominated by Bell. But there was a second class – almost forgotten today – termed Radio Common Carrier (RCC).
To download seven minute audio narration to iPhone, iPad, or iPod, click here.
RCCs were small operators who were not permitted to offer landline service. Typically the businesses evolved as a branch of even older family-owned companies involved in telephone answering or two-way radio dispatch services. At the dawn of cellular telephony radio paging was their main revenue source because the available frequencies could accommodate thousands of paging units, but each channel could handle only a single simultaneous telephone conversation. In the pre-cellular era, mobile telephone service was much like the party-lines common in rural areas during the 1930s and 40s. Read more…
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Third Internet Pipe
Posted on June 20, 2011
Earlier this month, the CEO of Time-Warner Cable publicly recognized the primacy of Internet access over traditional video services. Glen Britt said, “People are telling us that if they are down to their last dollar, they’ll drop broadband last.” Consequently, he anticipates a future marketing emphasis on “Single Play” Internet access as higher priced “Triple Play” bundled Internet-TV-Voice packages become less attractive to subscribers.
Download four minute audio narration to iPhone, iPad, or iPod.
Yet it appears Britt wants to implement “Single Play” in a manner failing to save consumers money. For example, he predicted consumption-based pricing which means the more Over-the-Top (OTT) video subscribers watch, the more they will pay. Additionally, he wants to charge subscribers a premium for OTT-videos merely to have them available for mobile devices. Representing consumer interests, David Pogue of The New York Times laments metered pricing “is one crazy, scary development” that could strangle the promise of cloud computing in the cradle. Read more…
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All Media Shall Become Interactive
Posted on June 13, 2011
Today we interact with Internet media nearly as routinely we checked our wristwatches to read time-of-day fifteen years ago. While the conversion might seem radical to consumers from 1996, the advent of portable connected devices such as smartphones and tablet computers implies an even more fundamental change in the future. In short, all media shall become interactive – not just Internet media.
Download audio narration to iPhone, iPad, and iPod — ten minutes.
The underlying force is a previously latent demand from sponsors for more effective advertising. As John Wanamaker put it about a century ago “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Yet during the past decade, Google AdWords introduced a new paradigm. The service generates more than $25 billion annually by only charging sponsors for ads that are actually used by the consumer. At Google, advertising is targetable, accountable, and can be convincingly tracked. It is only a matter of time before sponsors will demand the same of all their advertising campaigns in whatever medium, whenever possible.
Significantly, app-enabled mobile devices are empowering traditional media to adapt to such a transformation because the portable units are evolving into cognitive prosthetics. Much as experienced amputees routinely use mechanical prosthetics as artificial limb extensions, habitual smartphone and tablet owners are starting to use the devices as convenient intelligence aids. They help users gain more information that would otherwise be unavailable, or difficult to obtain. For example smartphones can find price comparisons merely by scanning bar codes and other implanted signals off shelf merchandise labels. Specifically, a price-comparison app reads the barcode or embedded signal to (1) identify the merchandise and (2) display a website where up-to-date prices for the item from all merchants are complied. Read more…
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Towerstream First Quarter Financial Results
Posted on May 19, 2011
Towerstream’s financial results merit inspection for two reasons.
First, it is one of the few publicly-traded Wireless ISPs. Consequently, it may provide insight into the potential financial performance of other operators who – being privately owned – keep their numbers to themselves.
Second, as the accompanying diagram illustrates, Towerstream is building a massive Wi-Fi network in Manhattan designed to provide Internet access for iPhones, iPads, and similar devices. Since cellular carriers now impose data limits and use restrictions on such devices, Wi-Fi offload may ultimately become a mainstream alternative that is only now incipient. If the concept is replicated in other major markets and proves successful, it could imply many years of continued growth.
Download audio narration to iPhone, iPad, and iPod — eleven minutes.
Third, Wireless ISPs may well be at a similar stage of industrial evolution as the CATV industry of forty years ago and ultimately exhibit similar financial metrics. Read more…
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Should Apple Acquire Time-Warner Cable?
Posted on January 31, 2011
Actually this is a 2011 prediction by blogger, author, and PBS TV personality, Mark Stephens who is better known by his pen name Robert X. Cringely. Consider the following points.
First, Apple’s future is hugely dependent upon an unfettered Internet. Yet ISP service is dominated by the CATV and telephone industries which have powerful economic reasons to discourage Internet growth. The telephone companies still make tons of money from circuit-switched landline telephone subscribers. Similarly, CATV operators generate the bulk of revenues from conventional Pay TV services.
To listen to audio narration click here now (six minutes).
As computing devices from smartphones to desktops get steadily more powerful consumers increasingly want to use them for high bandwidth applications including the consumption and distribution of Digital Media. The trend crashes head-long into conventional telco and CATV services. For example, inexpensive and versatile services like Skype could obsolete circuit-switched telephony overnight if ISP holding companies adopted the spirit of net neutrality. Instead they respond by providing a more limited-feature form of proprietary IP telephony whose principal advantage is greater bandwidth allocation. Read more…
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First Billion Dollar eBook
Posted on October 25, 2010
Today’s interview is with Randy Ingermanson who is a “deranged physicist and award winning author”. He also maintains a blog and monthly e-zine about advanced fiction writing. His Ph.D. is from Berkeley where Robert Oppenheimer led development of the atomic bomb and taught a generation or so before Randy arrived. As a high school graduate Randy was named a Presidential Scholar along with others who were among the top 500 in either the SAT or ACT tests.
His stories are at the “intersection of Science Avenue and Faith Boulevard”. Representative novels include Double Vision, Transgression, Premonition, Retribution, and The Fifth Man. Two books won Christy Awards for Futuristic Fiction.
Download audio interview here (25 minutes).
Recently, Randy pondered “what it would take” for an author to make a billion dollars from a book. He concluded if such a goal were possible, it would likely be an e-book for two reasons. First, author royalties on e-books are about ten times greater than for traditional books. Second, authors can better market e-book titles than conventional ones. Read more…
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Missing Notes at iTunes-10
Posted on September 1, 2010
In the movie Amadeus, Mozart eagerly asks the Austrian Emperor for his opinion of the composer’s new opera, The Marriage of Figaro. At first the Emperor is evasive but upon Mozart’s insistence he responds that “there are too many notes.” An offended Wolfgang sarcastically asks “which ones should I exclude?”
Download audio narration to iPod, iPad, and iPhone here.
Evidently somebody in authority decided the tenth version of iTunes that Apple released today would also benefit from a mystifying exclusion. It’s “Ping” social networking is probably the most significant innovation to promote artists and record labels in the last decade. New release popularity was suffering because digital music forced a decline in radio, the chief recorded music promotional vehicle of the past sixty years. As radio’s successor, Ping permits 160 million iTunes users to spontaneously join affinity groups enabling them to discover new music and artists from one another. They can share recommendations within invitation-only groups, or among people with similar tastes from anywhere in open groups. Read more…
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Ideal e-Book Reading Device
Posted on July 27, 2010
It’s increasingly evident that book publishing is undergoing a fundamental transformation. First, for two-and-a-half years Amazon.com pioneered the e-book market toward critical mass, largely keeping industry statistics to themselves. Second, the March iPad launch accelerated matters by initiating an irrevocable chain reaction that has only just begun. Cascading new developments seem to materialize monthly, if not faster.
For example, by unit volume June e-book sales at Amazon.com were eighty-percent greater than hard covers. Earlier this month notable authors such as Pat Conroy and Philip Roth contracted with powerful agents to publish their pre-Internet-era novels as e-books. The arrangement circumvents traditional publishers and increases author royalties. Simultaneously e-book reading devices are proliferating and prices are dropping. Visiting a typical Barnes & Noble store symbolically underscores the magnitude of change. As the leading terrestrial book chain few companies could be more dependent upon physical book sales. Nonetheless, each store now normally exhibits the Nook electronic reader prominently at the entrance. Read more…
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