Digital-Lifestyles

Networking

  • Tony Greenberg, Ramp^Rate – The IBC Digital Lifestyles Interview

    This is the fourth in a series of eight articles with some of the people involved with the Digital Lifestyles conference day at IBC2004.

    We interviewed Tony Greenberg, CEO of Ramp^Rate, an IT sourcing advisor designed to help companies select the most appropriate vendors for services such as email, hosting and security.

    Ramp^Rate uses its Service Provider Intelligence Index to rate vendors and marry them up with customers using an unbiased, purely data-driven methodology.

    Tony started Ramp^Rate as a response to the problem of huge sums of money wasted every year because of poor sourcing decisions.

    Amongst many highlights in his career, Tony ran sales and marketing at Raindance, was senior vice president at Digital Entertainment Network and was a senior executive at Exodus.

    Some of our readers may not be familiar with Ramp^Rate – and it’s a rather different company from those we usually cover – could you give us some background on what you do?

    Simply put, RampRate helps companies make great decisions, fast. Part of what we do is help some of the biggest entertainment and technology companies in the world understand where all these next-generation media platforms are going, and how it affects their businesses. We do a lot of research and consulting with a lot of companies you’ve heard about, companies who are looking at delivering digital media of various sorts over wireless, mobile, the web and so on.

    And the other part of what we do is help those companies and many others save a lot of money when it comes to running all the information technology that helps them function. Companies spend billions of dollars on IT services, and they’ll only spend more in this increasingly technological world. But we believe, and prove it every day, that companies spend way too much money on their IT services. So we help them save a lot of money.

    We do that by using what we call the SPY Index, which stands for Service Provider Intelligence Index. We help companies buy sophisticated and complex IT services – everything from outsourcing everything related to a computer in your business all the way down to simpler services such as digital rights management, e-commerce gateways, bandwidth, applications outsource management, anything that has to do with a monthly recurring service.

    The SPY Index is a bit of a magic black box, but it’s basically a huge database filled with information about hundreds of IT services deals and other information we’ve collected over the past several years. We take a client’s needs, punch those into the Spy Index, and find out which of about 200 vendors we are associated with would be a good match for the services they need, at a price that is almost always far below what they’re paying now.

    A vendor can be a big company such as IBM or EDS or a lesser-known smaller company such as a payment-processing house. RampRate learns everything about the vendor, puts all the key information into the SPY Index, then uses that to radically speed up the process of picking the right vendor for a given client. Saving time saves companies a lot of money, and our SPY Index gives them hard numbers that let them know what real market prices are for the services they want. They can get a great decision, much quicker than ever before, and know that it’s the best deal available on the market.

    We can do this because we have an unusual structure. We use an agency model, which means the vendor and the client share the cost of our services. That’s a different approach than many consultants take. In a more typical relationship, a company like Microsoft, Disney or Sony would give a consultant a retainer. The consultant in turn would source the products and services that they need, then would be paid a uniform transaction fee from each of those vendors that was chosen. The consultant then would repay the retainer to the client. So in essence it may cost the client essentially nothing, but they likely are paying far more for the services they actually get.

    Our first allegiance is always to the client, but we know our approach allows everyone to win within a shared “ecosystem” of clients, vendors and us, as their intermediary. The vendors save money because we bring really good clients to them who are ready to do deals. The clients save money because we’re able to bring them the best deal out there, from a vendor who meets their specific needs for service quality, reliability, financial stability and other factors.

    We manage hundreds of millions of dollars of transactions for companies large and small, and we have strong client work in the areas of publishing and media with clients like Primedia and Microsoft and a lot of online properties such as iFilm, ESPN Motion and the National Hockey League.

    Can you tell us how you actually got to Ramp^Rate?

    As a kid, I built a chain of retail stores in the fashion eyewear business and had several peripheral businesses in the manufacturing and distribution arena.

    In manufacturing eyewear we designed, we customised eyewear and we created a unique proposition different from many stores worldwide. We also had a direct order/direct mail company – and we even did infomercials.

    I sold those companies in 1995, moved to Colorado for a couple of years and regrouped. The Internet started to happen and I moved out to Silicon Valley, kind of paving a new frontier – and I was brought in to run many of marketing functions for Exodus Communications.

    At Exodus, we had a few dozen people, and we turned that into what became the largest Internet hosting company for major brands in the world. From the streaming perspective, we developed the first streaming core for all the big broadcasters from Broadcast.com to Real Networks to Akamai to Yahoo. We went public with a US$37 billion valuation, and were sold to Cable and Wireless and then on to Savvis.After that, I have invested in a few dozen companies and then moved to Raindance (RNDC), which is now public in the web-based conference-calling space, where I ran sales, marketing and business development.

    Then I went to run business development at Digital Entertainment Network, where we raised US$88 million from Microsoft, Michael Dell, Enron, Intel and NBC. The network paved a new frontier in digital-media distribution, not only creating short-form programming but aligning distribution deals with most of the major portals for video on demand.

    After working with a venture firm for a bit of time, we re-launched RampRate based on correcting billions of dollars of bad mistakes on IT-service decisions. We have had a concentrated emphasis in the digital-media space, especially from streaming, and now moving into IT sourcing. Most of our deals are between US$5 million and US$100 million – but we do everything down to very simple core functions like streaming media, collocation, digital-rights management and even some telecom.

    We have another unit of the company that is run by Michael Hoch. He was formally research director of Aberdeen, a leading research firm in digital media, and he now runs our operations and research. The research group uses the SPY Index to identify trends, especially in digital media.

    We have analysed more than 300 companies against all their competitors. We use the data resulting from transactions to help companies go to market quicker, better and cheaper with their products and services. We work with everyone from large software companies to large media companies on a research and go-to-market basis. It is a very substantive part of our business – about 25 percent of our overall revenues.

    Can you tell me a little about your IBC session and what you are going to be discussing there?

    There are some enormous chasms in digital-media distribution in terms of business models that “stop.” Business models stop when they lack what I call the “point of inflection,” where they can successful, based on economies of scale or possibilities in distribution.

    For instance, what are the limitations of Cable VOD in regional markets? How many concurrent users can be had? Well, that’s a bandwidth issue, it’s a numbers issue.

    When companies go to market with things of this nature they must make decisions from an economic standpoint: how much they are willing to invest in the distribution, their loss, and the internal rate of return on the project as they move forward into this new space.

    As long as they are clear what the investment is, and what their customer-acquisition cost is, that’s great. You just have to know where you are going.Data-driven decisions, which is what we provide our clients, are really where it’s at, where we focus our energies. What’s efficient and what’s not in the marketplace for IP distribution? What is the faceoff between Cable TV and broadcast affiliates and networks? What are the efficient scales? How does wireless relate to those and how does Microsoft relate to all points in between?

    I guess some of the areas that I find interesting are, who is your natural partner and who is your natural enemy in the digital-media food chain? Answering those questions will define the business models that will be successful. You can prognosticate what their cost will be in distribution all the way out three, four, even five years. It is pretty easy because you have a strong trend of costs and transactions gleaned from our database. We have everything from a data standpoint, so the trends are based on solid, real-world numbers that we know are correct.

    That is quite a bit of ground you are covering there!

    There are three distinct areas in the media business: creation, distribution and consumption. Almost any time any company has tried to delve into two as opposed to one they have been wholly and fully and holistically unsuccessful.

    If media companies feel that, in bypassing a distribution channel such as Blockbuster, they can increase their relationship with their customer and take more profits off the table, then they are wholly and fully wrong.

    I will help them try, but at the end of the day, the food chain has been established for content creation, content distribution and content consumption, and you can’t be in all those businesses.

    Tell me what you are doing with ESPN and with NHL?

    We have managed the sourcing for ESPN Motion. We have managed the procurement for the video-on-demand service for an online content e-commerce project for the NHL. We have testimonials on our website from those counterparts that would indicate the types of things that we did for those firms.

    Are services like Video on demand and content on demand reaching mass market? What do you personally define as mass market for these services?

    Anywhere an economic model exists to create profitability in a regional marketplace.

    Are we getting there?

    That would align with models that would throw dollars into the three channels discussed – content creation, distribution and consumption.

    If I were to make a blanket statement, it is very clear that sponsored and/or branded content will pave the way as opposed to a subscription model. I believe that things like USDTV or MovieBeam, which are using the broadcast signal, offer a unique perspective and a unique revenue model for broadcasters and broadcasting affiliates alike.

    In addition, the augmentation of satellite radio and distribution advertising will create another channel. A lot of these things will be bundled and pushed towards what I call Enron conversion. Who has the most to gain and who has the most to lose? You can either charge the consumer 10 bucks or you bundle it for telco to have a long-term sustainable contract with the vendor.

    When you are talking about a place where you have cable or DSL, telephone, VoIP, VOD and cell phone – the telco, whether it be wireless or hardwired, really are looking to make about US$200 per household per month minimum. That’s US$2400 dollars a year or US$4800 dollars for two years which is the average churn rate for a lot of those services.

    Well if there is US$48 to gain for a large telco and there is US$10 a month to be gained by a content provider, I guarantee that telco is going to be willing to pay for those services to bundle it in, to support conversion for long-term subscriber revenue into their base.

    Playing the long game?

    You have to. You can either play the short nickel or the long dime and ecommercing content these days is so very expensive because of on-line fraud and other issues. Unless you have a very meaty, highly valuable product or service, you could be eating up 15 percent to 45 percent of your actual revenue just in transaction costs.

    Protecting the content is expensive too.

    Well, that is important. We have to be more aggressive in the way we bundle, the way we package, as media companies. If I were speaking from their perspective regarding peer-to-peer services and increased distribution, which is the most valuable aspect, I’d say what they are getting for free is important, so they should really pay for the peer services.

    Do you think that free to air digital TV services are going to be big in the USA?

    It is hard to prognosticate where USDTV is going – all I know is that they are on loan to the spectrum, and the broadcast affiliates will have to adopt the model, with everybody and their brother starting to stick their feet in the water of trying to own something that lives in the living room.

    The TiVo or PVR as we know it goes away, the cable box may integrate directly into the media centre which may look like a remote control, it may look like a light switch, it may look like a knob on your car, it may look like a cell phone.

    All those things will be tried, but ultimately between hard-drive space and functionality, it doesn’t take a whole heck of a lot to put a new box next to your stereo or to integrate it into a unified system with your five-speaker digital surround sound system.

    I can plug a cheap S-video cable from my laptop into my TV and VCR, and by doing that I enable every form of digital media that I can get on my system directly through the television at a very high resolution.

    We are already there, it is a manufacturing thing and will be driven by the size of market.

    Producing content and delivering it to many platforms is obviously expensive. What sort of efficiencies can content producers adopt to spend less money on re-purposing content?

    Stop trying to deliver it themselves and rely on service providers enabling them to grow and create efficiencies in their business. Stop trying to create and distribute your content. Rely on people who do that for a living and use a sourcing advisor like RampRate.

    So no need to bark if you’ve got a dog?

    That’s right – everybody wants to do everything and they think they are controlling some secret sauce, but there’s no secret sauce. What they need to control is the quality of their content, because it is still a hit-based business. You get enough people to watch it, they will pay for it with their eyes through advertising or with their pocket book, through subscriptions and the like.

    What’s next? What are you looking at next for your business that you can tell us about?

    For us, we are very excited about the fluid marketplace that the SPY Index helps create, but really we are more excited about the fact that every business model has been tried and tested, and that data and operations have been put together to enable distribution and file-format and -protocol conversion.

    Basically, there are services and web services that enable the conversion of these file types into deliverable media to all devices. It’s getting really simple to stick a content router or a box that reformats things and distributes to everything from your TV to your PC to your wireless headset to just about anything. WiFi and WiMax enable it, and it becomes the new operating system for distribution. We are very excited that there is a fluid connection within that digital-media chain.

    We are going to pave new products and services, and whole new service providers, that will enable a fluid distribution through one single point. That’s exciting to us.

    What keeps you awake at night? What is frightening you?

    What’s frightening to me? I guess from this standpoint how powerful the telcos become three years from now.

    Do you think that there will be another break up of the telcos in the US again?

    I don’t know what the breakup would mean. I just think that they had been able to hold their product models extraordinarily steady until the big bandwidth started to appear. This music-download stuff is also scary as heck to me. It is very expensive to deliver; you have to have a product that will support the profit or the losses that it takes. It really feels that movies and video, long term, go the way of branding and sponsoring similar to television; the economic models are really tersely negotiated and are grave at best for a profitable enterprise over the coming two or three years.

    So you think that the downloaded music business model is going to decay in another three years?

    It’s the red herring of the business!

    It is about transport cost and storage cost. The reality is, if you look at Moore’s Law and you do a calculation, 85 percent of all the music that people want to listen to will sit on one disc by the end of next year. Storage is so much cheaper than transport. You’ll take that drive and put it in your car. Why is Netflix working? Because they didn’t try to send it over the Internet.

    Tony is a panellist in the ‘Future Business Models – Who Pays for What?‘ session between 16:00 and 17:30 at the IBC conference on Sunday, 12th September in Amsterdam. Register for IBC here

    Ramp^Rate

  • The BBC’s Digital Olympic Coverage

    BBC Sport have released details of the scale of their coverage for the 2004 Olympics, covering more than 1,200 hours of television and 200 hours of radio. Digital television and broadband internet means that the BBC will be able to broadcast much more Olympic footage than in previous years – so this year you might not miss out on the canoeing after all.

    The Olympic Games generally create about 3000 hours of television – the BBC will broadcast 250 hours on its two main channels, and another 1,000 hours will be shown on digital TV.

    Digital services will include constantly updated results and medal tables, and a scheduling tool so that viewers can see if the softball finals and table tennis events are on at the same time.

    BBC Sport will be showing live and on-demand coverage of events on their web site for UK residential broadband customers. The service will feature the same streams carried on interactive channels, so users will be able to watch five events simultaneously.

    The BBC Sport player can sit on your desktop whilst you’re working with your computer, and the site even includes other activities that you can enjoy whilst the video player is running. The Flash games provided are a nice touch and have a lovely SNES feel to them – I managed to out swim the calamari in 12.1 seconds, but the B and N keys on my keyboard will never be the same.

    Watch the Olympics live online

  • BT’s First Public Wireless Broadband Network

    After a successful wireless broadband trial in Northern Ireland, BT intend to launch their first public access there by the end of the year. The company has signed a UK£500,000 (€757,000) deal with Alvarion to provide 5.8 GHz BreezeAccess VL equipment for the rollout, and is a partnership with the Northern Ireland Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment.

    BT embarked on four trials in each of the regions of the UK, and has been investigating wireless as part of its strategy for 100% broadband coverage by the end of 2005. As there are 565 exchanges in the UK for which ADSL is not commercially viable, wireless access is essential to providing Broadband access to people in sparsely populated, remote areas.

    According to BT, 73% of people trialling the service were extremely or very satisfied with the results, with 89% wishing to subscribe on a permanent basis.

    “Radio broadband provides another innovative way for BT to provide ADSL-equivalent services in areas where our wireline infrastructure cannot reach,” said Chet Patel, General Manager of Internet Access products at BT. “Feedback from the trials was incredibly positive both in terms of ease of use, and suitability for the job. Based on this, we’re confident that the product will begin to meet the needs of more remote broadband users, where we are able to deploy this technology.”

    “After 10 years of field deployments, wireless broadband is now a mainstream access technology,” said Zvi Slonimsky, CEO of Alvarion. “In the near future, the proliferation of WiMAX-Certified systems will usher in the era of mass-market radio broadband equipment, delivering both economical and performance benefits to everyone from operators to end users. Alvarion continues to be at the forefront of innovation, and our leadership position is confirmed by our relationships with the likes of BT, not to mention our strong and diverse customer base.”

    Alvarion

  • NTL Add PhotoBox to Broadband Plus

    The problem with supplying a straight broadband service is that once price, speed and stability have all equalised, there is nothing to distinguish you from your competitors. When service providers appear virtually identical, customer churn increases as subscribers can be tempted away in large numbers by simple offers and discounts.

    Service providers are trying to combat this by providing value added services to make them distinct from each other – such as NTL’s new inclusion of PhotoBox in its Broadband Plus subscription. NTL are hoping to take advantage of the huge popularity of digital photography, coupled with the practical requirement that broadband is essential to make use of a digital printing service.

    Broadband Plus costs an extra UK£3.99 per month on top their usual broadband bill, and NTL claim that it provides an extra UK£35 worth of value added services to subscribers.

    NTL’s research indicates that a third of consumers in the UK take more than 48 digital pictures every month – and half of those consumers will keep 12 or more of those images. Proportionately few digital pictures are then made into prints as online services are not main stream and domestic photo quality printers aren’t quite what consumers would regards as photo quality.

    PhotoBox is a well-established service for printing and storing digital photographs, and NTL customers will be eligible for 15 free photographic prints per month plus 200 mb of online picture album storage. This will allow subscribers to store about 1,000 print quality images. Prints from online services are considerably superior to inkjet prints and are produced on photographic paper for accuracy and longevity.

    Aizad Hussain, managing director of NTL’s residential service said: “The introduction of PhotoBox ensures that NTL Broadband Plus customers have easy access to one of the UK’s finest online digital photography services at no extra cost.”

    Broadband Plus costs an extra UK£3.99 per month on top their usual broadband bill, and NTL claim that it provides an extra UK£35 worth of value added services to subscribers.

    PhotoBox

    NTL Broadband Plus

  • Grand Haven, Michigan is the First US WiFi City

    Many US cities are racing towards complete WiFi internet coverage, but Grand Haven, Michigan got there on Saturday with complete end-to-end high speed wireless internet access.

    The WifFi deployment by Ottawa Wireless Inc is the first full and complete city-wide WiFi deployment in the US. So they only have 12,000 residents, but they receive more than two million visitors each year.

    Mayor Roger Bergman said in his announcement: “As the first WiFi city in America, Grand Haven has truly lived up to its name in the Internet era, as we now allow anyone anywhere to connect to the Internet and roam the city and waterways in a completely secure computing environment. The city-wide WiFi service provided by Ottawa Wireless is already enhancing the quality of life for residents and tourists and enabling the city to provide new services.”

    The service uses several hundred 802.11a, b and g transceivers to cover the six square miles of the city, and even extends 15 miles into Lake Michigan – handy for checking weather forecasts if you’re out fishing. One local web designer has relocated to his office to his boat for the summer – he’ll be fine as long as he stays under 55 mph. The new network even incorporates a VoIP service for cheap voice calls.

    Ottawa Wireless’ CEO Tyler van Howelingen commented on the structure of the project: “Grand Haven demonstrates how the public and private sectors can work together to provide an entire city and everyone within its limits with more affordable, easy-to-access Internet service. This is a proud moment for Grand Haven, and the benefits of anytime-anywhere Internet access are being enjoyed by every facet of our town, from tourists, boaters, and residents to businesses and municipal agencies. Already with more than 300 customers, this WiFi service is having a dramatic impact on the way people work, play and communicate around town. Its benefits are many, as it enables new public security services, attracts businesses, boosts tourism, and supports education.”

    The service is subsidized by some of the hotels and marinas in the area, who also offer it free to their guests. Normally the service is US$19.99 (€16.57) for 256 kbps.

    Grand Haven

    Press Release

  • BT Offer a VoIP Service With Some Savings

    After last week’s launch of Communicator, a voice over IP service that offered calls that bafflingly cost the same as fixed-line calls, BT have announced another VoIP service for broadband users. This time, calls are cheaper.

    Broadband Voice allows subscribers to make voice calls via a handset, but using their broadband line. Now you know what those two little splitters they sent you in the post are really for.

    Calls are cheaper, but still of good quality. The price structure is like reasonably simple. Rental is UK£14 (€21) per month, and allows subscribers to make free calls to other Broadband Voice subscribers.

    Daytime calls to UK numbers are UK£0.03 per minute, and international calls are considerably cheaper. Rather like Skype’s new service, you can ring any phone.

    For an extra UK£6.50 (€9.78) a month, calls under an hour to UK landlines at evening and weekends are free.

    Good to see that BT are finally passing some of the benefits to VoIP over to consumers, but to be honest the service could be a bit cheaper.

    BT Broadband Voice

  • Ken Rutkowski – the IBC Digital Lifestyles Interviews

    The second in a series of eight articles with some of the people involved with the Digital Lifestyles conference day at IBC2004.

    We interviewed Ken Rutkowski, the force behind Ken Radio, on the media platforms available to today’s consumers, and what’s exciting him.

    Fraser Lovatt: It is possible that some of the visitors to Digital Lifestyles might not know about Ken Radio. Do you want to tell me a bit about yourself and what you are up to at the moment?
    Ken Rutkowski: Well, Ken Radio is the largest piece of listened to content on the web with over 186,000 listeners every single day. What we do is we look at technology on a global level. Where most shows on TV or on Radio are generally very localised, we try to do away the whole US-centric concept and say “Hey, technology is global” and see how it impacts people. So we are trying to really see what is happening – like we say: other sites might break the news – we’re here to fix it.

    By really bringing together a team of global observers that can dissect what is happening and then interpret it properly. So we are probably the only place where people can go to really find out what is going on at a global level. We are pretty proud of that.

    What are you up to at the moment? What is your current project?
    My broadcast business is radically different to what my personal business is. My personal business is a company called RefreshIQ.com What we do is we help technology companies have better interface with media companies. So we basically bring technology to Hollywood and Hollywood to technology. We allow companies like Microsoft to have better relationships with the Studios. We help companies like Nokia have better relationship with media companies.

    Microsoft have recently set up their own internal group for this, haven’t?
    Absolutely and that’s kind of a contradiction. Think about this – I don’t know – when you go to war you generally have to be on the ground where war is waged. For example World War II was waged in Europe initially – you went to Europe to fight the war. Well the war right now is in Hollywood and when you set up a shop in Redmond you are mixing with words.

    The contradiction is they are playing war but they are not playing in the right place. We are here to help them actually understand the strategy and place their troops in the right place.

    Recent social and technological developments are creating the concept of a digital lifestyle and we’ve seen an explosion in the number of media platforms that are out in the wild. How many media platforms do you think that people have space for in their lives? The reason I ask this question is because I was looking in my bag earlier on and I had more media platforms in that bag than my entire household had up until about 1995.
    Let’s be realistic – what is the dream? The dream is to have one. That’s really the goal.

    You know, I picked a brand new Nokia 7610, I think, and I’m finally seeing a convergence happening. Where I have my standard phone, it holds 18,000 of my contacts, shows me video, it’s a 1 mega pixel camera, it will have software to allow me to play MP3s – and now with some of the technology coming up, like Nokia’s visual radio, it can allow me to actually get some data from radio that’s fine.

    Obviously it is not a high-quality camera, it is not a high-end MP3 player, it is a good phone and it’s got some decent video – and it’s moving in the right direction.

    One device is sufficient and if the phone can be it – and I think it is going to move in that direction dominate that market.

    I would like to see one device. Now you are asking the question – how many devices can people tolerate? Well I think that toleration is something that is based upon the actual time parameter. What do I mean by that? We uses to tolerate in XT or AT computer which weighed about 65 pounds with a monochrome screen that would go out every once in a while that had a fan that sounded like an aircraft carrier and it processed real slow. We tolerated it because that was accepted during that time.

    Now we have flat screen monitors, we have three gigahertz processors. Right now people can’t accept having a wallet, a phone and a third device – being an MP3 player or a digital camera. The minute we start going over four, to a PDA or going to a GPS, I think we have gone too far.

    We use the tolerance limit anything over – you are overboard. Now again let’s talk about that Utopian world that I want to be living in and have one – and I’m happy.

    We have seen that today’s platforms mean that there is some exciting content appearing. For example the quiz came called “Come and Have a Go”. It’s live broadcast and it uses the Java mobile phone application tool for the people at home so they can get involved. What other content are you excited about?
     Well I think the location based technology stuff that we see proliferating right now throughout Japan is so damned exciting, you know we are able to locate my children and we see this even coming in the States and I know the UK has is too.

    Using RFIDS? WiFi child tracking at Lego Billund?
    No – let’s take it in another direction. What I find is heinous is that with cheating spouses, their husbands or wives can go out and buy a cheap phone and they put it in their spouses car. They put it in the car and turn it on and they are able to track to see where their spouse is. You know it is getting to a point where it is so inexpensive to do forms of surveillance.

    Swatch, the watch making company has a watch that uses location-based GPS, so the parents can easily identify where their children are on a computer screen. You know technology is coming up right now where there is location based technology for cattle. In Montana they are using this – even in Mongolia they are using it for horses right now, where they can track where horses are. That’s cool stuff. It is so inexpensive.

    We have RFIDS – sure the technology has been around for 20 years – giant retailers are starting to see how these ideas make sense. We are not going to have to go around and take everything out of our carts have it scanned, put it into a bag and walk out – we can just drag the cart out and be told exactly what we owe and we are done.

    That is cool. Now a Java application at a phone – that is mundane.

    But we have a Java application which ties together a broadcast programme and provides a new type of content.
    Let’s take it this way. My TV is my TV.

    My television might have more additions to it being for interactivity – polling, voting, e-commerce and all that – that’s my TV – don’t give me television on my phone. My radio is my radio. Now if I want to use my phone as a radio – I can tolerate that because it is a device that I need to have portable with me because I am conditioned to have a portable with me. If I can get information like Nokia’s Visual Radio is doing, that’s cool, because I’m conditioned to take radio on the go. I’m not conditioned to take television on the go. I don’t want people to be watching TV on the go. We have a society that is suffering from the inability to collaborate right now. Add another one?

    What about creating types of content that could never exist before?
    I had the opportunity to see this really cool web cam technology that allows me to use my GPS – GSM phone and my camera on my phone to be a live streaming web cam. I could call my son and I could say “Look what daddy’s looking at right now? I’m looking at the Statue of Liberty”. He is able to go to a web page and see what his Dad is looking at right now. That’s cool.

    Also, I think Microsoft’s Media Centre really is going to be exciting. It finally takes your pictures, your CDs, your DVDs, your music, your television and aggregates it into one platform and you finally get to use the TV as a true collaborative tool.

    What is exciting is taking existing models like television. I hate to use these 1990 terms but time shifting is becoming to reality. The word “TiVo” is becoming part of the English language – you don’t tape TV shows any more you “TiVo”.

    It is coming out to where even in Movies “I TiVo’d that”. We have seen it in Sex in the City. There was whole episode around her TiVo was better than her boyfriend because it was consistent and reliable. It is so amazing to start seeing this technology become part of our lives. We are becoming dependent upon it.

    For example – I’m in Washington DC, I live in Los Angeles, and I am able to go to my own special web page to make sure I have taped my favourite shows because when I get back to Los Angeles I get excited to watch my shows on my time without commercials. That is so damned exciting. I get home – technology has transformed my life.

    So we have TV – we have location based technology devices that are coming out. I actually think where portable media players are going is really hot.

    We can take all of our media with us in any environment – I am sitting in a hotel room right now and I am able to link to my server at home which is actually quite easy. I call it KIDMA. If it’s kidma, meaning my kids or my grandmother can do it, that right there just passed the test. These new devices are kidma – they are easy and simple – so I could sit down and listen to all my music sitting in Los Angeles right now right here in Washington DC. I don’t feel like I am away from home now.

    The last thing which I get really excited about is the unified messaging technology that is coming out. Are you familiar with this?

    Email, SMS etc together in one place?
    Let’s take it a little further than that. I now can have the universal phone number – one phone number – and I can travel throughout the world and I can always be reached by that phone number in multiple ways.

    There was a company about ten years ago called Wildfire, and there are better ones that allow me to have my own number and it follows me. So right now if somebody calls my number and I’m in Sydney, Australia it will find me and ring me on whatever mobile device I’m on or hotel phone in Sydney. If I’m not there, I am sleeping or I’m taking a shower when someone leaves that voicemail it will be emailed to me.

    Unified messaging is so hot and we are starting to see some of the voice over IP companies bring services out.

    So tell a little bit about your IBC session that’s coming up.
    We’re going to really explore the idea of the platforms that are going to enable these devices.

    This is important because anyone can paint a great picture – but tell me about the paint, the canvas and even the talent to make the picture. We are going to show how everything is put together so the technology on the consumer end will work. Interactive television is extremely dynamic and powerful, it is worth billions of dollars in the ad market. An interesting report came out recently from Jupiter Media Metric showing that the stereo-typical 18 – 34 male who everyone thought was playing video games would rather watch Survivor or rather watch television than play video games.

    This is exciting – this is what the networks have been saying is true – well the numbers came out yesterday proving it. So that means television has the opportunity not just to become compelling but even generate more revenue. We are going to talk about how television, mobile devices and whatever the next generation media platform is, portable music player, or how they are going to empower the consumer to spend more money and be utilised even more.

    How are established content businesses going to make money out of all these platforms then? Where is the business model? We have got lots of media companies out there like the BBC with huge media libraries and lots of resources to be able to create compelling media, but it can be argued that but there is no proven way to get the cash out of the consumer at the other end.
    Well I would disagree with that – let’s look at a couple of ways.

    One, we know that companies like Apple’s iTunes, Rhapsody or Harmony by real networks – even Microsoft MSN music – they’re generating money. iTunes is reporting some really decent sales not just on the music side that works.
    Now let’s take music to the next level and look at fan based sites. Sites that you subscribe to you’re like David Bowie you now are part of David Bowie’s community which will include music, video, emails, chat – people will pay money for that.

    Those advanced services that we were talking about earlier like location based technology and phones that might cost two or three dollars a month extra. People are not just willing, they are paying it. We don’t want to use Japan as a good example because their culture is radically different than in the West, but they prove that advanced technology services are worth paying for.

    The next is the simple idea of advanced tools for television. Premium channels like HBO and Showtime. HBO has more Emmys than any one single Network right now. We are seeing people paying for premium content on television, which means that the trickle down concept always applies. If they pay for it on television once true broadband – we are not talking about a megabit, we are talking about 5/10 megabits – people will pay for premium content because it will feel like it’s television, coming through a TV.

    So when you say it’s not there, it is there, it is in unique situations, but it is going to build and I see the money opportunities.

    I think this is probably one of the most exciting times – and I didn’t even say that through the dot com times – one of the most exciting times to be part of this brand new industry.

    What about the little media start-ups who are going to be faster moving, more technologically savvy – how are they going to capitalise on convergence?
    Think about this idea – News Corporation’s Lucy Hood, who is running it on the technology side, creating content in one minute. Mini series for mobile phones – you are creating content with a cast, with screen writers to create one minute episodics on the phone. They’re going in a direction saying “Let’s look at the money and seize this opportunity”.

    Again, you know my position regarding taking television to a phone, I don’t think it is going to work but we are seeing News Corp trying it out, we are seeing companies playing an HD. HD is going to be explosive.

    HD is a brand new environment for consumers once HD televisions drops down in price, which they will soon.

    So these studios can use tools like Final Cut Pro, even some of the cheap Avid systems to produce HD at a fraction of the cost of two years ago. That’s compelling.

    What do you think of iTunes/Motorola deal?
    They’re making a slimmed down version of its iTunes jukebox software that cell phone makers like Motorola will install in its wireless devices, to be rolled out in 2005.

    That is the right direction. You know, again, back to your second question – how many devices will people be able to tolerate – if you could make my phone do everything – including being a functional music player, because I am conditioned to take music on the go, cool. It sounds like a good start. It’s a good catalyst. I don’t think it is going to be the win-all but it is the tweak to allow it to happen.

    We have got content running on different hardware and software platforms and quite often consumers can’t move content from one platform to another because of incompatible DRM systems. How long do you think that is going to last?
    Well you know the irony is most consumers don’t know about the limitations of that content.

    They are going to find out pretty soon.
    They are absolutely going to find out and once they find out they are going to start questioning the ideas – a 99 cent track that I could only have at 128k, only on four different devices, and not at the same time but individually? They are going to say “Well, wait a second a CD is a better value. I got the content at 320k, I can rip it and I can move it to any device”.

    I have a feeling the labels will start questioning the value or the cost for certain DRM content. For example, if you want a 328k piece of content with unlimited DRM it is going to cost you three bucks, or maybe making it 99 cents with DRM. The labels have talked about this. I think the labels are going to have to change once the consumers are more educated.

    I relish that day because what is going on is horrible, especially when you know the true value of that piece of media that you downloaded. It is extremely limited in its mobility because of its DRM. It pisses me off.

    Ken Radio


    Ken is chairing ‘Understanding the Range of Platforms – A Multitude of Destinations’ session between 14:00 and 15:30 at the IBC conference on Sunday, 12th September in Amsterdam. Register for IBC here

  • ICANN Adds IPv6 to Root Servers

    ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has added IPv6 to its root servers – meaning that every object on the planet can now have its own IP address. Vinton Cerf from ICANN confirmed the news at their annual conference in Malaysia.

    Every device needs a unique internet protocol address to be able to connect to the internet – this applies to computers, phones, printers, web cameras, your robot dog, everything. IPv4 is limited to only 4.3 billion addresses, and already two thirds of them have been assigned.

    “This is a big, big step,” Cerf said. He’s not joking: IPv6 can potentially accommodate 2^128 (2 to the power of 128) unique addresses. To give it some scale, that would allow 100 million IP addresses per square meter of the Earth’s surface. I guess engineers really do think ahead. Though my nanobot army might use them all up fairly quickly.

    IPv4 will continue to run alongside v6 for about 20 years to ensure ease of migration and stability, so don’t throw that old Ethernet card away yet.

    ICANN

  • BBC May Launch Broadband Service

    The BBC had planning meetings to explore the possibility of providing a cheap broadband service to UK homes. Ashley Highfield told the Guardian newspaper: “A few people have come together to see if we could put a low-end connected PC into the market. Could we do it? I don’t know, but we would have to be clear about why.”

    This is something that’s obviously been on Ashley Highfield’s mind as he hinted at a service in response to a question from our own Simon Perry at the FT New Media and Broadcasting conference back in March.

    Mr Highfield is determined to overcome the UK’s perceived “digital divide” by perhaps offering a low-cost terminal and connection, in a similar fashion to the successful Freeview service.

    Highfield also has plans for a new BBC search engine, to help break up the American dominance of the search engine field. With all major search engines owned by American organisations, a British internet search funded by the license fee was welcomed by the Graf report.

    BBC

    The Guardian

  • Wanadoo Broadband Home Gateway

    Wanadoo, owned by France Télécom, will launch a broadband gateway for home subscribers in August, featuring a unit called Livebox.

    Livebox is essentially a router, and its initial selling point will be to allow home users to set up a wireless network easily – but the box has other uses lurking inside. For example, the UK£80 (€120) box is Bluetooth enabled and will soon offer a phone service that will compete with BT’s own Bluephone.

    Wanadoo will offer VoIP calls using Livebox from next year and once the local loop is unbundled then they’ll be able to offer fatter broadband pipes – and then video on demand. Subscribers will then be able to watch TV on demand on PCs around their home, wirelessly. Livebox is not a set top box, so will not be muscling in too far on Sky+ territory.

    BT are still doing their “yes we are, no we’re not” dance with regards to being a broadband content provider, and have talked down their broadcasting ambitions in the last couple of weeks.

    Wanadoo