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Phone companies are losing the high-speed Internet game. In the second quarter, the landline phone industry lost broadband subscribers for the first time, as cable companies continued to pile on new household and small-business customers, thanks to the higher speeds they offer in most areas.
The flow of subscribers from phone companies to cable providers could lead to a de facto monopoly on broadband in many areas of the country, say industry watchers. That could mean a lack of choice and higher prices. Phone lines, designed to carry conversations, and often decades old, are poorly suited to carry Internet signals compared to the heavily shielded cables that carry TV signals. That means cable companies find it much easier and cheaper to provide fast Internet service compared with DSL that phone companies provide in most areas. Cable providers now offer download speeds of 100 megabits per second in many areas, about 20 times faster than DSL. The country's largest Internet service provider is cable company Comcast, with 18.7 million subscribers, followed by AT&T, with 16.4 million.
Phone companies see first broadband loss
The Games of the XXX Olympiad were the best ever for NBC, as more than 219 million viewers tuned in over the 17 days, making the London Olympics the most-watched TV event in U.S. history, according to Nielsen.
The 219.4 million viewers were up 2% over the 215 million that watched the Beijing Games in 2008. NBC averaged 31.1 million viewers over the two-week event, the most for any non-U.S. Summer Olympics since 1976 (Montreal), beating Beijing by 12% and Athens (2004) by 26%.
There were a total of 159.3 million video streams, 110% over Beijing. Of those 159.3 million, 64.4 million were live. Those 159.3 million streams made up 20.4 million hours (13.6 million of them live), which more than doubled Beijing. The NBC Olympics Live Extra and NBC Olympics apps were downloaded over 8 million times.
London Olympics: 2012 Games Most-Watched TV Event in U.S. History
Canada's Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium (COBMC) is reporting record viewing levels for both the Closing Ceremony of the 2012 London Olympic Games, which attracted some 7.5 million Canadian viewers, and the whole Olympics, portions of which were viewed by 31.9 million, or about 95% of the population. The closing ceremonies attracted some 5.1 million viewers on CTV alone. The COBMC, which is 80% owned by CTV, and 20% by Rogers Media, also reported that Canadian watched a total of 662 million hours of coverage, with the average viewer consuming some 21 hours. On the digital side, an additional 3.4 million hours of content was viewed at CTVOlympics.ca and RDSolympiques.ca and that the CTV Olympics London 2012 and RDS olympiques pour Londres 2012 apps were downloaded 1.1 million times.
London Olympics: Canadian Viewership Hits Records
Broadband health care networks improve the quality and reduce the cost of delivering care in rural areas, according to a Federal Communications Commission staff report evaluating the Commission’s Rural Health Care Pilot Program.
The report details the benefits of the Pilot program, as well as the lessons learned from the Pilot, which supports 50 active projects in 38 states. The five largest projects are statewide networks in California, Colorado, Oregon, South Carolina and West Virginia, which are on target to connect over 800 health care providers. Broadband networks of rural and urban providers save lives by providing rural Americans with instant access to specialized services that are not available in rural areas, saving time that is critical in stroke care and other emergencies. High-speed broadband networks capable of supporting telemedicine and telehealth applications also provide rural patients access to more routine telehealth consultations with medical specialists, efficiently transit health records, and facilitate training of nurses and doctors. But rural health care providers operate on thin margins, and may not be able to afford broadband communications without assistance from the FCC’s Rural Health Care program, the report says. The FCC launched the Pilot in 2006 to explore how best to help rural health care providers harness the power of broadband to improve care.
Broadband Health Care Networks Improve Quality of Care for Rural Americans, Reduce Costs and Help Save Lives
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) offered tips to business executives about how to avoid ending up like Google, which agreed to a record $22.5 million settlement over privacy violations last week.
In a blog post, senior FTC attorney Leslie Fair urged executives to carefully scrutinize the details of their privacy policies to ensure they match their companies actual operations. She said companies also need to remember that if they agree to join a self-regulatory group, they have to follow the group's policies. "Membership in self-regulatory programs is your call, but once you advertise your adherence to an industry code, live up to its terms," she wrote. Fair said companies should ensure that their executive, lawyers and technology teams are communicating effectively so that everyone understands what it is really happening behind the scenes at the company. "Your information technology staff needs to run a strong lead-off with smooth baton passes to your marketing execs and legal advisors," Fair wrote in the Olympics-themed post. "But victory depends on a solid anchor leg from top management committed to crossing the finish line in front."
FTC cautions companies to avoid Google's fate Track afield: What the FTC's Google case means for your company (FTC)
Fox has launched Spanish-language broadcast television network MundoFox, as promised, on no fewer than 50 affiliates (21 of them full-power stations) throughout the country.
For prime time, MundoFox is stripping novelas Los Exitosos Perez, a series about newscasters in love, and El Capo at 8 p.m. and 9 p.m., respectively. Game show Minuto para Ganar (Minute to Win It) will lead in at 7 p.m., with Noticias MundoFox at 6:30. It is not easy to run a Spanish-language TV station in the U.S. MundoFox will be competing with market share leader Univision (and when you read "market share leader," think "70 percent at the very least") and Telemundo, which takes up most of the market not dominated by Univision. The tiny sliver left over is split among Estrella TV, Azteca America, LATV and other even smaller networks. NBC reached deep into its pockets to win Spanish-language broadcast bids for the Olympics and the World Cup as it gears up to compete with Univision; MundoFox will need a similarly bold strategy if it's going to get the attention of U.S. Hispanics, increasingly targeted not just by Spanish-language media, but by savvy companies in the general market who have seen the breathtaking statistics on Hispanic youth and growth over the next few years.
Fox Launches Hispanic-Targeted Broadcaster MundoFox
Most of the beachfront real estate covering the Romney-Ryan ticket has been snapped up by domain speculators.
Paulryan.com, VPPaulRyan.com, RomneyRyan.com, and RomneyRyan2012 are all waiting for bidders — presumably from the campaign or an allied group. Romney-Ryan.com even has a price tag on domain registration site GoDaddy — it’s available for $49,880 as of this writing. One exception is PaulRyanVP.com, which was registered on Friday night by Ohio University sophomore Matt McKnight, right when he heard that Ryan was the likely pick. He was prepared to do the same no matter whom the campaign chose, as a way of protecting the domain from potential abusers. “I’m sitting on it so no one else can get their hands on it,” he said. McKnight says he’s a big supporter of the ticket and not looking to cash in on the domain; he says he would transfer it to the campaign if asked. “It would be cool to get some VIP tickets to a rally,” he said.
Paul Ryan is Not Master of His Domain Names
As the presidential campaign enters its final three months, most voters say they already know what they need to know to form a clear impression of the candidates. But fewer say this about Mitt Romney than about President Barack Obama. Indeed, the latest Pew Research Center knowledge survey finds that while voters know many key things about the candidates and their issue positions, voters are less familiar with Romney than with Obama.
What Voters Know about Campaign 2012
BBC Sport online registered a record 55 million visits from devices around the world during the Olympic Games.
Some 37 million were from within the UK, the BBC said. The figure includes both mobile and computer access. On 1 August, when cyclist Bradley Wiggins won his gold medal in the men's time trial, there was more traffic to the BBC website than during the entire FIFA World Cup in 2010. There were also 106 million requests for online video during the games. This was up from 32 million during the Beijing Olympics. Nearly two million people downloaded the BBC's Olympics smartphone app on both Apple's iOS and Google's Android platforms.
Olympics bring 55 million visits to BBC Sport online
On the closing day of the 2012 Summer Olympics, we’re looking back at all of the memorable moments of the London Games: the wins, the losses, the drama, and above all, the Tweets.
No matter the sport, Twitter was your front row seat for all the action. We saw more than 150 million Tweets about the Olympics over the past 16 days. Let’s take a look at some of the big trends within that massive conversation. The biggest moments of competition, as measured by Tweets per minute, were:
- Usain Bolt (@UsainBolt) of Jamaica wins gold in the 200m sprint: 80,000+ TPM
- Bolt wins gold in the 100m sprint: 74,000+ TPM
- Andy Murray (@andy_murray) of Great Britain wins gold in the men’s tennis singles: 57,000+ TPM
- Jamaica wins gold and sets the world record in the men’s 4x100 relay: 52,000+ TPM
- Team USA beats Spain to win gold in men’s basketball: 41,000+ TPM
The biggest tweeting moments that came during the heat of competition (not at a medal-winning conclusion) included Kobe Bryant’s dunk towards the end of the USA-Spain basketball game, and Hope Solo’s (@HopeSolo) land-diving save in the women’s USA-Japan soccer match.
Olympic and Twitter records