Category: Broadband

Anything that uses or touches broadband

Netflix Switching to Web Delivery

Netflix, the online DVD rental firm has plans to deliver films via the internet by 2005: “Our strategy is to get huge in DVDs and then expand into downloads,” Reed Hastings, Netflix Chief Executive, said to Reuters.

Netflix’s business model currently operates around the postal service – users browse the Netflix site, selecting titles they wish to view. DVD’s are then delivered to the company’s 1.9 million subscribers by post. Cutting out the postal service will pay for online delivery and allow Netflix to invest in more content. Hastings estimates that a download service will have 5 million subscribers by 2006.

Netflix currently charge US$20 (€17) a month for their postal-delivery service, and are proposing a US$22 (€18.50) per month charge for their download offering.

Netflix don’t want to download to computers, instead using a broadband connection direct to the TV set-top box – rather like Blockbuster’s unique VOD service in the UK.

Competition is going to be fierce – more movie download services are in the pipeline and Netflix will have to go up against strongly-backed groups like Movielink and CinemaNow. Movielink was formed by five major studios: MGM Studios, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal Studios and Warner Bros. CinemaNow counts Microsoft and Blockbuster amongst their investors.

Netflix

CinemaNow

MovieLink

George Bush: Universal Broadband by 2007

Although George Bush didn’t say how it would be achieved, he announced in an address he was giving in Mexico that all Americans should have broadband internet access by 2007, as it is essential for the country’s economic growth. This new call for universal coverage echoes similar announcements made in other countries giving deadlines for complete broadband access.

Many have drawn a parallel between this announcement and Al Gore’s “information superhighway” calls in 2000. America has its work cut out for it: there are currently 20.6 million homes with broadband access, out of a total of 101 million. Many remote rural areas will be difficult to bring broadband access to, and so the solution will have to take many forms: cable, satellite, DSL and wireless.

It’s not clear who will pay for it either: the Universal Service Fund subsidizes telephone access to rural areas and for those who can’t afford it, but it is yet to be decided whether or not the fund should cover internet access for citizens.

MSN on the announcement

Pay As You Go Broadband

In answer to BT’s new UK£19.99 broadband product, capped at 1gb but “burstable”, Tiscali have launched a competing product aimed at customers wanting to dip their toes in broadband internet access.

Bandwidth is set at 512Kb/s and has an option of either 1Gb of data per month, or 50 hours online. Customers who go over their basic allowance either pay 2p per minute or 2p per Mb extra, depending whether they are on the 1Gb or 50 hour package.

The new packages that are appearing from suppliers look like good value at first, but we thought we’d check what you’re really getting. We dug out our HP48G+ and calculated that you could get nearly 10Gb down the pipe on the 50 hour package, but then it does limit you to less than two hours a day online. Further frightening calculations revealed that certain DigLif staff spend at least 120 hours a month online, and so for “heavy” users uncapped products currently retailing at UK£29.99 are best.

Tiscali’s Broadband Offerings

TiVo Consumes StrangeBerry

TiVo has announced that it has acquired a company called StrangeBerry. The stock-for-stock deal actually took place on 12 January but the details have only just emerged due to a recent SEC-filing by TiVo. No real details have been released by TiVo as to why they have bought it, but in the filing TiVo describe it as

a small Palo Alto based technology company specializing in using home network and broadband technologies to create new entertainment experiences on television

Very little is known about StrangeBerry and the products they have been working on since its inception in April 2002. What is know is there are only a handful (five) of signed deals with companies like Coke & Fox to place promotional videos on TiVo’s and given TiVo has over one million paid up users, handling this would require a highly scalable solution. StrangeBerry could bring these skills.

Time will tell – but it sounds interesting.

TiVO SEC filing

TiVo announcment about StrangeBerry

TiVo Claim Patent Infringment by EchoStar

PVR pioneer, TiVo, has filed a patent infringement suit against US satellite TV provider, EchoStar. They are claiming that EchoStar are using technology that violates their patent, “multimedia time warping system”, that enables viewers to “store selected television broadcast programs while the user is simultaneously watching or reviewing another program” that they filed for in 1998 and were granted in 2001.

The headline is clear, TiVo start to see the PVR world become accepted by the general public and want to start gaining income from their patents – they have 40 awarded and a further 100 applications pending. It is also in TiVo business plan to increase their income from patents and reduce their reliance on selling boxes.

We wonder if there is another, less immediately obvious, intention. One of TiVo’s largest customers is US satellite TV provider DirecTV, who were recently taken over by Rupert Murdoch and amongst the many companies that Mr Murdoch has as interest in is NDS. NDS market a PVT, the XTV PVR, which could be a major threat to TiVo and their continuing relationship as a supplier to DirecTV – unless DirecTV know legal action would following the changing of suppliers.

EchoStar PVR

NDS XTV PVR

Denham leads by Broadband example

Another UK local community is setting up their own wireless network – and hats off to them.

96 households in Denham, Buckinghamshire had already registered their interest with BT in ADSL-enabling their local exchange but as BT the minimum required that had been set was 450, they fell well short.

Not seeing this as the end of the boad; two of them decided to set up Denham Broadband to provide wireless access around the area. Subscribers will receive ADSL-like speeds via a small, rooftop antenna, all for an estimated setup cost of 150 UKP plus 30UKP a month.

It’s going to be interesting to see if this people-power action will mean that other will go to these lengths to live The Broadband Dream.

The figures in the UK still don’t look great. In the current BT ADSL Demand Tracker only five of the 2323 listed have been converted, and of these 2323, more than ¾ of these exchanges haven’t even had a trigger level set yet.

At the end of the table, they’ve been kind enough to not order it the by number of households signed in an exchange. To some of these people where none of their neighbours are interested in ADSL like the Bod in Onich (North west of Glasgow, Scotland), The Broadband Dream must feel a long way off.

I tell you what would be interesting – installing a large number of Denham Broadband-type community networks across the country, as consume.net have been discussing for a long while.

Then sell the subscribers SIP phones (normal phone handsets that can use the Internet to carry the calls) and give them the benefit of making close-to-free phone calls to other subscribers. If enough people and especially businesses subscribed, it could start to hit BT’s cashflow.