alteraxion > Digital Entertainment Convergence | Consulting, Venture Capital, Strategic Intelligence.

Goodbye to a flat rate for broadband?

The email forward of a recent BBC News article elicited such vociferous commentary that I thought it worthwhile to post the article here.

What was that? Less broadband is good for you?

The incredibly stupid things that companies do when they cannot get their business right (ie. make money) is to try to find ways to 'squeeze' more money out of their existing customers... A sure way to antagonise even more customers and make sure that fewer take up their offerings.

The fact that UK consumers responded overwhelmingly negatively to NTL's attempt to introduce a tiered service should be a wake up call to all telecom sales and marketing departments to stay well away from such initiatives...

Networked Entertainment: Next Big Boom?

According to research firm In-Stat/MDR there are 9.2 million home networks in Canada and the U.S. In a study called “Digital Domicile 2003: Home Networking Goes Hollywood” the research firm predicted that networked entertainment products will drive the next big growth spurt - a trend which would triple the number of home networks to 28 million by the end of 2007.

Against Web Gated Communities on Cable

Keeping the Net neutral A coalition of big-name tech companies -- Microsoft, Amazon, eBay and others -- wants the feds to make sure that cable companies don't ruin the broadband Internet.
By Farhad Manjoo [08/12/03]

An interesting and important article at Salon.com over the future of the 'open' Internet as more people begin to use their cable provider for broadband access.

ESPN does Web Video Services. Please...

ESPN Plans New Moves for Web Video Services  (Reuters)
Sports network ESPN has new moves in store to expand its high-speed Internet video service "Motion," a sports news and highlight feature that is one of the most successful uses of video on the Web, the head of ESPN.com said on Friday.

 

I cannot believe that these people make such a big deal about this.  You download their application which they say is about 4MB and a couple of days later you find that the application folder on your hard drive contains over 200MB of movies.  Whatever happened to streaming?  To add insult to injury, the ESPN movies are full of ads.

Video over DSL: broadband gets entertaining

Read the full article at Europemedia.net

Pay-per-view movies and special events are already offered by most cable TV companies. Vendors claim carriers could find their way into this business by DSL. The chances are high that they are right, and that carriers could make extra turnover with comparably little investment.