May 2014

Report: Average US Broadband Prices Are Below World Average of $76.61

Affordable access to broadband telecommunications networks and services has become practically essential in today’s world, whether you live in the US or a developing-world country. So which countries have the cheapest residential broadband service rates and where is stand-alone residential broadband access most expensive?

Point Topic’s “Broadband tariff country scorecard -- Q1 2014” tells the tale. Point Topic market researchers converted monthly stand-alone residential broadband subscription rates spanning 90 countries -- including copper, cable and fiber networks -- to US dollars and adjusted them for Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) in order to make something of an “apples-to-apples” comparison. Monthly residential broadband subscription rates as of 1Q proved to be lowest in France, Romania and Japan and highest in Bolivia and Peru, they found. For Q1 2014, Point Topic found the global average monthly charge for residential broadband services was $76.61. The average bandwidth provided by residential services was 55 Mbps, meaning the global average cost per megabit was $1.39. The US ranked 43rd of the 90 countries surveyed in Point Topic’s market research and analysis, ranking just behind Colombia and one place ahead of Greece. Monthly US broadband subscription rates did fall below the global average of $76.61, however.

NCTA Panel -- Comcast/TWC Good for Industry

Consolidation will help make the industry as a whole more competitive and will give cable operators a leg up on new technologies, according to Comcast Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts and Charter Communications CEO Tom Rutledge at the Cable Show 2014 General Session.

Comcast agreed on Feb. 13 to acquire Time Warner Cable, in a deal worth about $69 billion that will boost the combined company’s reach to just under 30% of the television households across the country. Now, Comcast agreed to divest about 4 million customers to Charter in a trio of deals worth about $20 billion. The deals, which include the outright sale of 1.4 million TWC subscribers to Charter, a swap between Comcast and Charter involving systems with 1.6 million customers and the spin-off of an additional 2.5 million customers into a separate publicly traded company managed by and 33% owned by Charter, will effectively double the Connecticut-based company’s owned and managed systems to about 8.2 million customers. In a briefly tense moment at the session when moderator, CNBC on-air editor John Fortt, reminded Rutledge of his past criticism of the deal and asked why the Charter CEO believes it is a good one now. Rutledge quickly wiped an annoyed look off his face, telling the moderator that this deal is different.

The Winner of Apple-Samsung Patent Fight? Their Rivals

As Apple and Samsung squabble in court over who copied whose phone features, the companies' grip over the smartphone industry is slipping.

The two companies account for nearly all smartphone hardware profits. But they are losing market share to Chinese rivals with lower-priced phones, particularly in developing nations. Two years ago, Apple and Samsung accounted for more than 55% of world-wide smartphones shipments, according to research firm Strategy Analytics. In the first quarter, that fell to 47%. Samsung said that quarterly operating profit at its mobile division fell from a year earlier for the first time since 2010. Apple's annual profit fell last year for the first time in more than a decade.

Smartphone 'kill switch' bill mugged by telecom industry

[Commentary] In truth, I wouldn't know a smartphone "kill switch" from a typewriter shift key. But I do know strong special interest influence when I smell it. I'm not saying that every state senator who voted against a bill to require kill switches as theft deterrents on new smartphones got bought off by the telecommunications industry. But surely some did. And they know who they are. Well, maybe they don't. Denial is a common human characteristic, especially in legislative halls packed by lobbyists with access to campaign money.

Of course, it's never the money that influences. It's the merits of the argument. Right! The telecom industry, during the previous two election cycles, contributed nearly $1.4 million to California state senators, according to Maplight, a nonpartisan organization that tracks political money. Of that, $700,000 came from AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile. Legislators in both houses -- Assembly as well as Senate -- received nearly $2 million from the telecom lobby during the 2012 election cycle alone.

The 21st Century Is Calling, With Wi-Fi Hot Spots

In the era of smartphones, pay phones look increasingly dumb. Dumb, that is, to everyone but advertisers and pay phone operators, who are happy to place thousands of small billboards at consumer eye level.

That bleak landscape may change significantly. The franchises under which 9,133 phones are operated in 7,302 enclosures on city streets will expire in October. To replace and augment these enclosures, the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio envisions as many as 10,000 “public communications structures.” These kiosks would provide free Wi-Fi service around the clock and at least enough standard telephone service to permit anyone to place a free call to 911 or 311.

“Making these pay phones digitized, 21st-century Wi-Fi hot spots is going to be incredibly exciting for so many New Yorkers who otherwise have a hard time getting access,” said Maya Wiley, counsel to the mayor. She said the new structures had the potential to “level the playing field” for New Yorkers who cannot afford to subscribe to a broadband Internet service at home.

Viacom Blocks Online Access to CableOne Subscribers

Viacom has turned up the heat in its carriage disputes with several small operators, blocking its website content from Cable One subscribers, in apparent retaliation for the operator’s decision to not carry its networks.

Cable One dropped 15 Viacom networks on April 1, including Nickelodeon, MTV, Comedy Central and Spike, over what it claimed were unreasonable fee increases. The Phoenix-based operator, which has about 730,000 customers in 19 states, replaced the Viacom channels with BBC America, Sprout, The Blaze, Hallmark Channel, National Geographic, Investigation Discovery, TV One and SundanceTV. While Viacom did not offer specifics, Cable One broadband customers are basically blocked from accessing free content on Viacom websites that are available to all other broadband subscribers. According to some people familiar with the companies, Cable One subscribers could be harder hit because there are few broadband alternatives in its markets – only a small portion of its footprint is overlapped by AT&T U-Verse and Mediacom.

Yes, Silicon Valley, Sometimes You Need More Bureaucracy

At many tech start-ups, the role of the human resource department is to compete in the talent war for engineers and provide a Ping-Pong table, a keg and free burritos. Other personnel functions, like providing parental leave and channels to report misbehavior, go ignored.

The Stanford Project on Emerging Companies, a longitudinal study of 200 Silicon Valley start-ups during the first dot-com boom, found that tech entrepreneurs gave little thought to human resources. Nearly half of the companies left it up to employees to shape the culture and perform traditional human resource tasks. Only 6.6 percent had the type of formal personnel management seen at typical companies. Bureaucratic H.R. is “loathed” by engineers because it adds costs and slows decision-making, the leaders of the study, James N. Baron and Michael T. Hannan, wrote in a paper in California Management Review. Yet a human resource department is essential. The two found that companies with bureaucratic personnel departments were nearly 40 percent less likely to fail than the norm, and nearly 40 percent more likely to go public -- data that would strike many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs as heresy.

“In the new economy, as in the old one, it turns out that organization building is not a secondary diversion from the ‘real’ work of launching a high-tech start-up,” they wrote. “It might well prove to be the main event.”

OTT's Key to Multicultural Nets

Multicultural programmers gave pay TV distributors credit for trying to serve diverse audiences, but said the hurdles to obtaining carriage made it inevitable that those content providers will seek over-the-top avenues to reach more viewers.

Tom Mohler, CEO of Olympusat Holdings, which distributes some 67 channels, many of them Spanish-language HD outlets, said he thought there would be rising activity in the Hispanic-programming over-the-top arena. Hispanics in the US average age in the 24-27 range and are heavy users of smartphones, he said, making them prime targets for mobile video products. Getting Spanish-language content on pay TV also means buying other programming before getting to the international tiers, which is a barrier, and operators have bandwidth constraints that OTT services don’t have. Mohler and fellow panelists Alex Alonso, VP of marketing at mun2, and Timothy Boell, senior VP of content distribution and marketing at Asia TV USA Ltd. (Zee TV Americas), complimented Michelle Webb, executive director of content strategy and acquisition at Verizon’s FiOS 1 Local Channels, for the way FiOS presents international programming. But the content providers in general said the pay TV category only rates about a “C” grade in terms of meeting multicultural audiences’ desires for content serving their communities in their languages.

WGA Members OK New AMPTP Contract

The Writers Guild of America, East and West, representing writers in television, new media, broadcast news and film, said its members have voted overwhelmingly to approve a new, three-year contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. The vote was 98.5% in favor, 1,175 out of 1,193 valid votes, said WGA. According to WGA, the contract, which covers May 2, 2014 through May 1, 2017, includes boosts to minimum compensation rates, more money for the guild's pension plan, new minimums for subscription VOD, increased residuals for ad-supported streaming, boosted minimum pay for hour basic cable shows, and a new provision limiting the options and exclusivity requirements on episodic TV show writers.

Why Facebook's New 'Anonymous Login' Matters

Facebook is moving one step closer to becoming your all-access pass to the Internet. CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company plans to offer “Anonymous Login.” Don’t get confused: That doesn’t mean you can log in to Facebook anonymously. It means you can use your Facebook account to log-in to other sites and apps anonymously. Facebook the data broker will still know every service their users are signed up for, making them even more valuable to advertisers who want to target particular groups. By giving users the power of anonymity for services outside of Facebook, the company makes itself more valuable as the broker who grants access to those users, about which it knows so much. In other words, anonymous login is not really anonymous. Facebook still knows who you are, and can tie you to your behavior on those third party sites, say if law enforcement comes calling.

Benton

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