Are Cable Companies Looking To 'Emulate' Web Video Sites, Or Destroy Them?

from the face-value? dept

A piece in BusinessWeek says that cable TV companies are "pushing to become more Web-like" by expanding their online video offerings and making their core TV product work more like the web than the traditional channel-delineated system. On the face of it, this is a good thing, since we've long argued that the TV channel is an outdated concept, and should be seen as being like a web bookmark more than anything. But the article largely glosses over one key point in the cable companies' push to grow their online video efforts: they want exclusivity. So instead of throwing things open and using an ad-supported model, like Hulu, they want to take TV shows and video content, and lock it up inside a walled garden for paying customers. That's not "web-like", it's exactly the same as their current business model. Of course, even if these plans don't work out, they've got another way to try and profit from online video: by introducing capped broadband plans that will charge customers based on how much traffic they use. Time Warner's CEO is quoted in BW as saying "we really need to look at what consumers want." It's hard to imagine they want capped broadband, and they want video locked up behind paywalls. The popularity of the likes of YouTube and Hulu indicate they want something very different from what the cable operators have in mind.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Cox Gets Aggressive With Traffic Shaping

from the taunting-the-fcc dept

In a move that's basically baiting the FCC and Congress to see if they will act, Cox has announced that it's going to experiment with rather aggressive traffic shaping, granting priority to bits that it feels have a great priority. Why Cox gets to describe what gets a priority and what doesn't seems pretty questionable. Cox is also the company that implemented a three strikes policy on file sharing without telling anyone.

To be honest, this seems like a really tone deaf move by Cox -- and I'd imagine that plenty of telcos and cable companies are pissed off about Cox calling extra attention to the topic right now. There's been plenty of talk of new net neutrality regulations in Congress, and with Cox putting the issue so squarely on the table, it's as if they're begging for such regulations (or at least to be slapped down by the FCC). You would think they would at least wait until it wasn't an issue getting so much attention before drawing extra scrutiny and daring regulators to act.

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No One Can Find ISPs Who Have Agreed To RIAA's 3 Strikes Plan

from the keep-looking dept

It's been a few weeks since the WSJ announced that the RIAA was supposedly dropping its lawsuit strategy, in favor of a backroom deal with ISPs, negotiated under dubious circumstances by NY's Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, whereby those ISPs would start cutting off connections from those accused (not found guilty) of file sharing. However, since then, we've heard from a variety of ISPs who don't like the plan, and Wired went on a wild goose chase trying to find a single major ISP that has agreed to the plan and came up empty. Of course, most of them refused to comment. The only one who said anything straight up was Verizon -- who had earlier confirmed that it had no interest in doing a deal with the RIAA. The big cable companies and AT&T have shown some interest in the past -- but now refuse to admit that an agreement has been worked out.

The big question is why?

If this is such a great deal for consumers, as Cuomo and the RIAA insist, then why wouldn't an ISP want to step right up and proudly admit to such a deal? Obviously, it's because they know that such a deal is a sham, based on no legal reasoning, that will harm their position in the market and piss off customers. The RIAA will likely claim that no deals have been announced because the details haven't been finalized -- but again, that makes no sense. We've been questioning from the beginning why these negotiations haven't been more open. And with record labels like Warner Music and EMI insisting that they want to be seen as more open and willing to hold a "conversation" with critics, the fact that no one will talk openly about this backroom deal shows what a bunch of liars they are again. They don't want an open conversation. They want the government and ISPs to protect their business model, and they've convinced Andrew Cuomo to fall for it.

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Another Broadband Tech Exec Says There's No Bandwidth Crunch

from the move-along-now dept

We've pointed out in the past that whenever you hear warnings about a coming broadband crunch, it almost always comes from consultants and politicians. If it comes directly from companies, it's inevitably from the CEO or lobbyists. Yet, when you talk to execs who actually are technologists (even at telcos) they're quite willing to admit that the whole broadband crunch issue is something of a myth. All you need to do is regular upgrades to the network, and most recognize that there's no risk to a network getting overwhelmed. The latest to add their voice to this crew is cable company Cox's VP of technology, who admits that the company's latest upgrades mean that there shouldn't be any bandwidth problems for at least a decade. Yet, how much do you want to bet we'll be hearing that we're running out of bandwidth from a politician or a lobbyist well before a decade is up?

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Cox To Enter The Mobile Phone Business... For Real

from the didn't-expect-that dept

It's no secret that the various cable companies have been interested in offering some sort of mobile phone service. A few years ago, the biggest cable companies (Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Cox) teamed up with Sprint to offer mobile phone service under their own brands, building on Sprint's experience in allowing others to offer their own branded mobile phone service (known in the business as being a mobile virtual network operator -- or MVNO). Of course, since then, a ton of MVNO efforts have failed (remember ESPN's own mobile phone service?) and the cable companies never actually moved forward with offering service on Sprint's network. There was some thought that the cable companies were still interested in something in the mobile space, and Comcast and Time Warner are a part of Sprint's WiMax offering, but clearly Cox had decided to go its own way by that point.

Even so, it's quite surprising to find out that Cox is entering the mobile phone business for real -- as in building its own network. The company has apparently been acquiring spectrum to serve its market, and negotiating with handset providers. The article is a little unclear, but it sounds like there may still be a roaming agreement with Sprint, since the article claims the phones will work on both Cox's network and Sprint's -- suggesting Cox is working on an EVDO network. However, the company also claims that it's looking at using LTE as its "4G" technology. LTE is the technology chosen by pretty much everyone else in the US but Sprint, which is betting on WiMax.

Cox claims that its mobile service will be highly integrated with the other aspects of its business, including letting people watch TV on their handsets, control their DVRs from the handsets and automatically synchronize phone address books with home computer address books. It's good to see them thinking about real integration between services, because that's still pretty rare, but those services are all going to need to work pretty well together to make it really convincing for most people. Either way, you could see this as the epilogue to the death of MVNOs. While we've already seen that most MVNO plans went nowhere, it's quite a statement when a company is now choosing to build its own damn network rather than just piggybacking on someone else's.

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Verizon Gets Smacked Down For Its VoIP Patent Suing Spree

from the so-much-for-whacking-cable-competitors dept

Verizon was one of the last players to the VoIP party. Cable companies had been offering VoIP for years, and then Vonage, AT&T and a variety of other startups really built the market before Verizon even bothered to enter the space with an overpriced, uninspiring "me too" product that the market made clear it didn't want. Yet, somehow, Verizon was able to get some patents on the technology, despite a ton of rather clear prior art that showed Verizon's patents should never have been granted.

So, with those patents, Verizon began suing -- and it started with the lame duck in the VoIP space: Vonage. The company has been struggling for a variety of reasons, and a bunch of patent holders swept in to sue the firm that actually made VoIP a viable product in the market. Vonage came under massive pressure from shareholders to get rid of these lawsuits, so it settled rather than deal with a lengthy court room battle.

Verizon interpreted this as a validation of its patents and set off to find others to sue. Its next target was Cox Cable for its digital telephony solution. The plan was clear. After beating Cox, it would turn its legal guns on the big boys like Comcast and Time Warner. Except, it appears the courts have tossed a wrench into those plans by siding with Cox in pointing out that the company doesn't violate Verizon's patents. While Verizon will most likely appeal, this should be seen as a pretty big win for Time Warner Cable and Comcast, who may not even have to defend themselves against Verizon's questionable patent claims at all.

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Cox Lies To Customers; Says DMCA Requires Disconnects For File Sharing

from the that's-flat-out-false dept

While there's been a big push among the entertainment industry to get ISPs to adopt a "three strikes" policy that would have ISPs disconnect internet access to users accused of unauthorized file sharing, with them losing their account permanently after the third time. This is highly problematic for a variety of reasons, starting with the rather flimsy evidence that the entertainment industry relies on, combined with the idea that the accused are considered guilty with no process of appeal. Furthermore, there's no clear reason why an ISP should act as a copyright cop for the entertainment industry. In fact, many ISPs trashed such proposals, and told the entertainment industry where to shove them. More recently, the EU Parliament rejected such laws mandating three strikes policies, noting that they were clear violations of individuals' freedom.

One of the reasons that the entertainment industry had been focusing on Europe, Australia and Canada for such programs was that it seemed that US ISPs had made it clear that they would never adopt such a three strikes policy. Think again. Apparently cable giant, Cox, has quietly adopted a three strikes policy and is kicking users off the internet if they're accused of file sharing.

Even worse, the company is lying to customers about it, claiming that the DMCA requires them to do so:

Under the DMCA, we have the responsibility to temporarily disable your Internet access, until such time as you take the necessary steps to remove the infringing files and to prevent further distribution of copyrighted material.

This is a complete fabrication. The DMCA has no such requirement. What's really odd is that Cox had built up a reputation as being the customer friendly broadband ISP that took customer service very seriously. Yet, here they are, cutting users off, lying to them about why and relying on the entertainment industry's weak evidence to harm its customers. It's a shame. In the meantime, we'll extend an earlier challenge to Cox. Will it accept a three strikes policy of its own? If it cuts off users three times and the evidence is shown to be false, will it provide free internet access to that user?

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Latest Study Confirms Cox Traffic Shaping; Comcast Misleading Again

from the sounds-familiar dept

A bunch of folks have been submitting various news reports claiming the "news" that Cox is traffic shaping just like Comcast is -- but that's hardly news. We had a story about that last November. What is a bit more interesting out of the same study (though, not very surprising) is the news that Comcast has been less than forthright in explaining what it's doing. While Comcast denied any traffic shaping for the longest time, when it finally 'fessed up (just a bit) it said that it only used traffic shaping during peak hours. However, the research suggests otherwise. After testing a bunch of users at various times, this new study found no noticeable difference in blockages based on time.

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Dear ABC, You Don't Compete With TiVo By Making A Product Worse

from the just-a-suggestion dept

About a year and a half ago, an executive at Disney-owned ABC-TV talked about how the network was experimenting with ways to block people from fast forwarding through commercials. The exec in question even claimed that commercial-skipping wasn't even a very important feature for most DVR-owners. Despite the widespread criticism of this statement, it appears that ABC is now preparing to test that theory. In association with cable company Cox, it's testing a new video-on-demand feature that won't let viewers fast forward through commercials. We'll be the first to say it: this is dumb. While it may make a few more people watch commercials, it won't make them happy about it. And, given just how many other options there are these days, the end result might be that people just choose not to watch such ABC programming at all, let alone the commercials.

Yet various ABC executives seem to think that by offering this product, they can stop people from buying DVRs. Anne Sweeney, the president of the Disney-ABC television group, claims: "You don't need TiVo if you have fast-forward-disabled video on demand. It gives you the same opportunity to catch up to your favorite shows." Not quite. First of all, you're limited to shows on ABC. Second, who knows if the additional features are as useful. Finally, one of the nice things about TiVo (oh, right!) is that it lets you watch a 30-minute show in 22-minutes, since you can skip the commercials (whoops). So, yes, many people will still want a TiVo because ABC is forcing the fast forward option to be disabled.

Then there's Ray Cole, who owns some ABC affiliates. He says: "As network and affiliates, we both have an interest in slowing down the explosive growth of DVRs. This is about combating DVRs. As we developed this at every stage, there was an agreement that however we put this together, disabling the fast-forward function was key." I'm curious as to how Mr. Cole thinks offering a product that does much less and deliberately takes away a key feature will "slow down" the "explosive growth of DVRs." You don't compete by offering a worse product. You compete by offering a better product. Taking away one of the key selling points of a product is not exactly a major selling point.

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Drunk Off Patent Success Against Vonage, Verizon Moves On To Cox

from the who's-next dept

Having successfully sued Vonage over VoIP patents, despite an inferior product and plenty of prior art, it appears that Verizon is seeing who else it can sue for VoIP patent infringement. First on the list is cable provider Cox, who offers VoIP to its customers, just like most cable providers these days. A successful lawsuit against Cox would almost definitely mean additional lawsuits against all the other cable providers, who have also been much more successful than Verizon in actually offering a VoIP service that customers find useful. Of course, in this day and age, it seems that rather than improve the product, the answer is to sue everyone else for patent infringement. Just like the Founding Fathers intended.

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Why Are ISPs Trying To Sell Cars And Homes?

from the diversification? dept

We all know that various broadband ISPs are trying to get away from being "just dumb pipes," by providing "value added services" that most people ignore, such as customizable home pages and email, but we had no idea that broadband providers like Time Warner and Cox are both pushing their own car selling websites as well. Plus, it appears that Cablevision is doing something similar with home sales. It seems likely that all of these companies are merely putting their brand on someone else's car lead generation service, but it really does seem like an odd service for these ISPs to be offering. While broadband providers eventually are going to have to get comfortable with the whole notion of being a dumb pipe, you'd still think that if they want to offer additional value added services, they'd at least work on things that actually were somewhat related to the broadband they were providing.

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Cox Jamming Traffic Just Like Comcast

from the always-good-to-be-second... dept

You didn't think Comcast was the only company jamming certain types of traffic, did you? With all the heat on Comcast, it's no surprise that others are being discovered as well. For example, people are now noticing that cable provider Cox is using a very similar method to jam bittorrent uploads. It's too bad to hear this from a cable company that prided itself on actually being consumer friendly. Perhaps that means that Cox will actually admit to what it's doing, unlike Comcast. Of course, it also probably helps Cox that it wasn't the first one called out on this. Just like Sony took all the heat for the rootkit, even though the same rootkit was also found on CDs from other labels, it's likely that Comcast will take most of the heat for its bittorrent jamming.

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