GigaOm

Will cable operators, CDNs and ISPs make or break the future of online streaming video?

[Commentary] For consumers staring at their screen wondering why “House of Cards” is not streaming in HD or why the live season finale of “True Detective” on HBO GO is displaying a “buffering, please standby” message, there are often more questions than answers and a slew of potential culprits.

As frustrating as things can be now, there are some future scenarios where the situation could get worse.

Since launching Qwilt in 2011, I’ve seen online video grow to be one of the hardest challenges network operators face today. We’ve reached the point in the evolution of online streaming where more open and transparent interaction among ecosystem members is in order. To this end, an industry forum may be a suitable vehicle to allow all members of the ecosystem, regardless of their size and role, to have a seat at the table.

This forum, a video streaming alliance, would be charged with creating an open architecture for interconnection so members can know what to expect from each other in terms of operations, quality, security and privacy. Mutual goals of transparency, open architecture and quality of service will almost certainly emerge as themes to get the industry alliance off the ground.

[Maor is CEO of Qwilt]

T-Mobile is quickly closing in on No. 3 Sprint

Counterpoint Technology Market Research reported that T-Mobile was the third-largest US purchaser of smartphones in the first quarter, overtaking Sprint.

T-Mobile bought 6 million smartphones for itself and its mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) during the period, according to Counterpoint analyst Neil Shah, outpacing Sprint’s 5 million units. T-Mobile recently posted its best quarter ever, adding 2.4 million subscribers to claim the lion’s share of the US market’s core subscriber growth.

T-Mobile has made big strides with its infrastructure lately, too: it launched voice-over-LTE in Seattle on three handsets, and has been using a technology dubbed 4×2 MIMO to improve signal strength and connection speeds on its LTE network.

Google is working with Ruckus Wireless to build a Wi-Fi network in the cloud

Google is working with Wi-Fi equipment maker Ruckus Wireless to build a large-scale Wi-Fi network in the cloud off of which any business could hang its wireless routers, according to a source familiar with the project who asked not to be named.

Google has been working closely with Ruckus, trialing a new software-based wireless controller that virtualizes the management functions of the Wi-Fi network in the cloud, according to a source. The end result would be a nationwide -- or even global -- network that any business could join and any Google customer could access. The source also confirmed earlier reports that:

  • Google will offer the service to businesses for free as long as they agree to join its public network, though businesses will have to supply their own broadband connections.
  • Hotspot 2.0 will have a big role to play in the network, connecting smartphones and tablets automatically and securely to any Google-powered access point, much like they would connect to their mobile carrier’s 3G of 4G network.
  • Google will be able to provide analytics to businesses about consumers that use networks, separating out location-specific information from the data collected by the virtual network as a whole.

If a high-quality site like Metafilter can be crushed by Google, what hope do other sites have?

For long-time web users, the layoffs announcement from Metafilter -- a pioneering online community that has been around since 1999 -- was a little like hearing that an old friend is in hospital with a fatal illness: founder Matt Haughey said that due to a dramatic decline in traffic and related advertising revenue, the site has had to lay off several of its moderators and is essentially on financial life-support.

And the name at the center of this drama likely won’t come as much of a surprise: Google. Haughey describes how traffic to the site suddenly cratered in mid-2012, with visits falling by more than 40 percent. At around the same time, Google was rolling out an update to its indexing algorithm -- an update known as Panda -- which was designed to promote high-quality content and down-grade spam sites, as well as those using a variety of search-engine optimization or SEO tricks.

As with most things involving Google and its algorithms, what happened to Metafilter is almost impossible to diagnose, because the search giant’s methods -- and the motivation for any changes -- are a black box. Haughey theorizes that the change occurred around the Panda update and was exacerbated by subsequent updates, but Search Engine Land founder and Google expert Danny Sullivan pointed out that the dramatic drop-off in traffic doesn’t really line up with any of the company’s major algorithm tweaks.

FreedomPop joins the ranks of carriers offering limited “unlimited” data plans

Since it launched two years ago, FreedomPop has been moving beyond its original freemium mobile broadband concept. It moved away from iPhone sleeves and mobile hotspots to start selling smartphones and voice services.

Now FreedomPop is adopting what has become an old standby among budget mobile carriers: The unlimited data plan that really isn’t unlimited. FreedomPop launched a new $20-a-month smartphone plan called Unlimited Everything for its new line of LTE phones. It comes with all-you-can eat voice and text and 1 GB of LTE data. Once that gigabyte of 4G data is used up, speeds are throttled back to 3G levels for the remainder of the billing period. It’s a format many other smartphone driven mobile virtual network operators like Straight Talk and H20 Wireless and even major carriers like T-Mobile have adopted.

What a Comcast wireless service could mean

[Commentary] Comcast is expanding its network of Wi-Fi hotspots in an effort to “kneecap wireless providers” such as AT&T and Verizon.

While Comcast has yet to announce any specific plans, it recently wrote in a Federal Communications Commission filing that it could build “a ubiquitous Wi-Fi network” that could connect users via Wi-Fi whenever possible, falling back to a cellular network only when necessary. The strategy could enable Comcast to deliver wireless services at a fraction of the price of traditional cellular network operators.

A huge looming question, then, is how Comcast would launch a mobile service: Would it partner with an existing carrier to launch a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), or would it buy its way into the market via acquisition?

With audio recognition, Facebook can help automatically check in to your favorite music, movies and TV

Since the dawning of its Open Graph back in 2011, Facebook has been encouraging users to not only provide status updates but to check in to locations, activities, entertainment and even feelings.

Now an update to Facebook’s apps, rolling out soon, enables users to take advantage of their microphones and automatically check in to TV shows, movies and music. The optional feature, when enabled, will listen to noise around the user -- meaning that it can actually identify media while statuses are written -- and detect media from a catalog of movies, TV and music.

When shared, friends can access a 30-second preview for music, a link to the Facebook page for movies and a listing of the episode name and number for television shows. A representative from Facebook said that the company has partnered with media companies to provide the information for 150 live TV channels as well as up-to-date listings on new movies and music.

Latest stats show Comcast/TWC merger will cap 79% of broadband subscribers

As the government discusses the pending Comcast acquisition of Time Warner Cable, the latest broadband adoption stats from Leichtman Research Group show that if the deal goes through, 79 percent of US broadband subscribers will find themselves under a data cap.

Because Time Warner Cable, the third largest broadband provider in the US, didn’t have a cap, the acquisition by Comcast would notably change the number of people who will go from unlimited broadband to those who have a cap or pay more the more they download.

Change your passwords, eBay urges customers as it reveals large-scale data breach

EBay users are being advised to change their passwords after hackers compromised some employees’ log-in credentials to break into the eBay corporate network.

The company said in a statement that the hackers broke into a database including “encrypted passwords and other non-financial data” and had not got their hands on any financial or credit card information, but best practice dictates users should change their passwords anyway.

The stolen information may include customer names, phone numbers, dates of births, email addresses, physical addresses, and encrypted passwords. The breach took place between late February and early March but was not detected until recently. PayPal data is not affected, being stored in a different (and fully encrypted) system.

Google cheated ad partners, says lawsuit, but case points to dirty tricks campaign

Someone claiming to be an ex-Google employee suggested in April that the company conspires to steal revenues from its partners who host Google-provided ads on their websites.

Now, a prominent Seattle-based lawyer who used to work for Microsoft is using those accusations as the basis for a nationwide class action lawsuit against Google. A company called Re-Post filed a class action complaint in San Francisco on behalf of other websites that are allegedly getting shortchanged by Google.

The complaint suggests this is part of a pattern: Google conspires to cheat those who use its AdSense program, which lets websites host ads provided by Google and share in the profits. Under the alleged scheme, Google waits until a few days before an AdSense partner is due to receive a quarterly pay-out, and then cites a policy violation in order to terminate their account. Terminating an account in this way lets Google keep all the money.

Critics of Google can find plenty to gnash their teeth about: from its repeated privacy flubs to its illegal pharma ads to its growing influence in Washington.

But a lawsuit claiming that Google is blatantly cheating and shutting down its AdSense partners, which contribute a good part of Google’s revenue, just doesn’t make much sense. Rather, this new lawsuit over ads, along with another improbable class action filed against Google in April, suggests that someone is running what amounts to a legal smear campaign.

The problem with Apple’s peering is that we don’t know if it’s a problem or not

[Commentary] Apple is reportedly building its own content delivery network and is in the process of signing peering agreements with the big Internet service providers (ISPs), according to Dan Rayburn, an industry consultant and analyst.

Rayburn uses Apple’s apparent willingness to sign peering agreements with ISPs as a way to argue that Netflix’s complaints about having to pay Comcast an interconnection fee are dubious.

But what’s dubious is not Netflix’s complaints over paid peering agreement or Apple’s willingness to enter into these agreements. Instead, the bigger issue is the secretive nature of how content is exchanged on the Internet at a time when a number of the significant content and broadband players are consolidating. Not only are these deals secretive, but they happen in markets that aren’t competitive.

Both edge providers and ISPs consolidating their power -- Google’s YouTube potentially buying Twitch, which is a growing source of traffic (about 1.35 percent of total bandwidth according to Sandvine) is an example of this consolidation on the edge provider side.

Meanwhile, while AT&T’s Dish deal or Comcast’s proposal to buy Time Warner Cable shrinks the overall ISP market -- fewer players are at the negotiating table.

Betting on live and over-the-top

[Commentary] At its core, there is no great mystery (or great strategic vision) behind AT&T’s acquisition of DirecTV. As more services are delivered via IP over broadband networks, previously distinct business such as voice, media delivery, home automation and data, are becoming much less distinct. No matter their industry of origin, service providers of all stripes increasingly are all in the same business (or collection of businesses).

So the real battle has become one simply of subscriber bases and customer lock-in rather than the value or margins of any one service. Eventually, every service provider will be delivering everything to everyone.

The tools for managing and monetizing live-event streaming are getting better and more scalable, at a time when advertisers are increasingly focused on live, DVR-proof programming. Live events are also likely to be critical to the growth of the mobile video business, particularly as more spectrum becomes available after 2015 and technologies like multicasting develop.

Consumers may be wary of paying data charges to watch on-demand content they could watch at other times on non-metered platforms. But for most consumers, live events still need to be watched live, and they’ll pay for the ability to watch them.

[Sweeting is Principal, Concurrent Media Strategies]

Apple and Samsung struggle to find patent peace, even after Google truce

Apple and Google declared a dramatic peace in their global battle over smartphone patents, but there’s little indication the pact will end legal hostilities between Apple and its Korean rival, Samsung. Instead, the two companies traded insults in a new court filing that was supposed to describe their efforts to settle a long-running patent case in California.

In the filing, Apple complains that Samsung’s head lawyer, John Quinn, described the iPhone maker as a “jihadist” to the media, and that Quinn had also described the patent case as “Apple’s Vietnam.” Apple also points to a new Vanity Fair article that claims Samsung systemically filches others’ intellectual property part of its business model. Samsung, meanwhile, claims in the filing that Apple is demanding improper concessions before settlement talks even begin -- specifically, that Apple insists that Samsung not bring up the talks in unrelated legal proceedings.

“Only Apple,” says Samsung, “seeks to impose an obstacle to this resolution through a unilateral condition precedent to further [Alternative Dispute Resolution].”

Self-published e-book site Smashwords expands to more libraries in deal with Overdrive

Digital self-publishing site Smashwords is making its e-books available to more libraries through a partnership with Overdrive, the country’s largest digital library distributor.

Through the partnership, Overdrive library clients -- the company works with about 28,000 libraries and schools worldwide -- will be able to purchase about 200,000 e-books by 88,000 Smashwords authors and lend them out to their patrons.

Smashwords is not a stranger to libraries: It already has deals with distributors Baker & Taylor Axis 360 and 3M Cloud Library, as well as with regional library systems like Colorado’s Douglas County.

Because so many libraries work with Overdrive, however, and because Overdrive supports Kindle e-readers while its competitors do not, this partnership has the potential to bring Smashwords authors’ titles in front of more readers globally. Two hundred thousand titles is a lot and most libraries won’t be purchasing nearly all of them. For libraries that want to purchase titles and aren’t sure where to start, Smashwords and Overdrive are creating curated collections of Smashwords’ bestselling titles.

What does AT&T buying DirecTV mean for consumers? A whole lot of bundling

We won’t see the first AT&T-DirecTV wireless-broadband-satellite service package until the summer of 2015 -- assuming the deal goes through. But what would such a bundle look like?

AT&T wants to tie together as many of the two companies’ products and services as possible. Most significantly, AT&T wants to tie the video distribution network more closely to the broadband network.

AT&T doesn’t just want consumers to buy their satellite TV and Internet from the same provider, it may require it -- or at least make it much more costly to separate them.

AT&T said it would continue to offer stand-alone DSL and U-Verse connections at guaranteed prices for three years after the deal’s close. The same goes for DirecTV service.

Now is the time to stand up and defend net neutrality

[Commentary] We don’t usually venture into politics here at GigaOm. Now we are making an exception to that rule because of a grave threat to the very foundation of technology-driven innovation.

The founding principle of GigaOm has always been that broadband is a transformative factor that enables innovation and brings about positive change for industries and societies alike. And while we have expanded our focus over the years to cover emerging technologies in fields like mobile, cloud computing, media, data and science, broadband has always been a key enabler of those technologies.

Without the transformative power of broadband, there would be no Amazon Web Services, no Netflix, no iOS and no Android, no Facebook, no Bitcoin and no Internet of Things. There would be no Teslas as we know them today, Pandora would stream no music and we wouldn’t be able to share our photos and videos over Instagram and Vine.

But broadband isn’t just about speed. It’s also about providing equal access, about enabling small startups to compete with the big guys and in turn become the next YouTube, Instagram or Twitter. It’s about a diversity of voices and opinions that can be found via search engines or social networks.

That’s why it is so important to have strong net neutrality protections that prevent access providers, many of which have their own competing business offerings and a monopoly over the eyeballs of end users, from discriminating against network traffic.

AT&T’s GigaPower plans turn privacy into a luxury that few would choose

If you sign up for AT&T’s GigaPower fiber-to-the-home Internet service in Austin (TX), you can expect to pay more than twice the advertised rate on plans that include video to keep your privacy and web surfing history intact.

AT&T’s GigaPower service, which currently delivers 300 Mbps to homes and will eventually get upgraded to a gigabit, launched last December in Austin. It did so with two different pricing plans, one that cost $99 a month for typical service, and another that cost $70 a month provided users agreed to let AT&T monitor their packets to see where on the web the user has been. In turn, AT&T would sell ads targeted to that customer based on his or her habits. But the $29 more a month to keep your privacy isn’t actually $29 a month.

As you add video service, the price differential between choosing privacy and letting AT&T snoop rose to $62 a month for an equivalent package and included a $49 one-time fee (see the screenshot below). Keeping your web history out of Ma Bell’s hands would have cost almost $800 the first year you signed up at the high-end and $531 at the low-end of ordering only Internet (there’s a $99 activation fee and a $7 monthly gateway box fee).

Judge denies Gmail search warrant

A federal judge in Silicon Valley took the unusual step of rejecting a routine e-mail search request, and suggested that Google and the government take steps to halt the now-routine practice in which tech companies hand over the entirety of their customer’s cloud-based computer accounts.

“The Technorati are … everywhere,” wrote US Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal. “And yet too few understand, or even suspect, the essential role played by many of these workers and their employers in facilitating most government access to private citizen’s data.”

The words introduced a six-page decision in which Judge Grewal refused to issue an order that would have forced Google to hand over the email account of a government employee suspected of corruption. Judge Grewal ordered the details of the investigation, including the name of the suspect, to be redacted but stated that the refusal order should be published.

Judge Grewal’s unusual order is also the latest flare-up in what the Washington Post styled the “Magistrate’s rebellion,” in which federal judges in multiple states have begun to balk about the scope of the search warrants that law enforcement agencies routinely demand.

Is it really a tech bubble, or is it something else?

[Commentary] 1999 had a gold rush mentality, a sense of broader mania. This time around you see more of a gross entitlement; and that’s what is different about the Bay Area.

The difference is the scale and scope of everything happening. Back then people would show up, hoping that they could merely participate in this tech-Internet thing. Now, many (if not most) show up expecting millions even if their companies fail. Just sit in a cafe -- any cafe in San Francisco -- and you hear stuff that makes you want to poke your eyes out. Founders, instead of trying to forge relationships, are getting into a pattern of expecting funding without much effort. After all, if it doesn’t work out, no harm done and there is an acqui-hire around the corner. There is an expectation that even if they don’t build an interesting product, they deserve a nice exit for trying anyway: which is troubling as far as I am concerned.

Nowadays, the babble is sourced from blogs; news blogs, expert blogs, investor blogs and founder blogs. The mainstream is once again back chasing the story. The reason why there is a boom in technology media today is because it is THE story. Technology is now part of the social fabric; it is what is causing dislocation. It is the cause of fear amongst all of us. The digitization of our society is a challenge that is both legislative and philosophical. And that is why we are seeing a greater demand for those who cover this industry.

Hijacking net neutrality

[Commentary] Quick, what do Amazon, Netflix, Microsoft, Yahoo, Cogent, Level 3, Google, Facebook and Vonnage all have in common? Among other things, they all pump a lot of data onto last-mile broadband networks and they could all afford to pay for a fast lane, if necessary.

Well, allowing discriminatory network management would be a grave threat to Netflix’s and Google’s bottom lines in any case. For all the hue and cry over the prospect of fast lanes on the Internet for the few and “dirt roads” for the rest, the truth is, no one wants to pay for a fast lane, even if they are able to. It’s bad for business. Regardless of what happens with the vote, however, it’s really the whole net neutrality debate that’s gone off the rails.

As evident from the Netflix, et. al. letter, the debate has devolved into an argument between the big and the bigger over the price of throughput. And Chairman Wheeler has allowed the FCC to get trapped into refereeing among the vested commercial interests rather than promoting and protecting the public interest (more or less the definition of regulatory capture).

It’s hard to see what the public interest is in the rate that Amazon or Netflix is able to negotiate with Comcast for a fast lane. I’ve been skeptical that reclassification is the way to go because it could provoke such a monumental political fight that anything useful happening on the net neutrality front could be delayed for years. But if the only alternative is to limit the public’s interest in the most important communications network of our time to refereeing between Netflix and Comcast, perhaps it’s time to take on the fight.

[Sweeting is Principal, Concurrent Media Strategies]

NTT Docomo starts experimenting with potential 5G technologies

Japanese mobile giant NTT Docomo plans to conduct experimental trials of new high-bandwidth network technologies that could deliver up to 10 Gbps over a wireless link and connect millions of new devices to the mobile network.

The hope is these new radio technologies could become part of the emerging 5G standard. Docomo is working with network vendors Ericsson, Nokia, Alcatel-Lucent, Samsung, NEC and Fujitsu to conduct lab trials at the carrier’s R&D center in Yokosuka, followed by outdoor trials.

NTT Docomo is exploring a part of the electromagnetic band that has been previously deemed useless for mobile use: the vast swaths of wireless spectrum above 6 GHz. By bringing together huge numbers of frequencies and using big antenna arrays, carriers could introduce reams of new capacity into their networks, but there’s also a question of whether they can use that capacity in truly mobile networks or just transmit it only to devices that stay put.

Why GigaOm thinks it’s time to reinvent the Internet

[Commentary] One of the founding principles of GigaOm is that connectivity is the lifeblood of the tech industry, and over the years we’ve tried to shape our coverage as much around that topic as possible.

It has become increasingly clear to us that the Internet is under siege from for-profit business interests, aging and outdated laws and policies, and the ever-growing demands that we place on its infrastructure.

We thought it was time to take a look at the current state of the Internet and outline our proposals for how we think the Internet -- including everything from last-mile broadband to wireless spectrum to movies and TV -- might be reinvented if it were being conceived in 2014, knowing what we now know about its evolution and the world’s reaction to its expansion.

We have five pieces to this special report:

  1. Stacey Higginbotham on next-generation broadband
  2. Kevin Fitchard on the future of wireless networks
  3. Janko Roettgers on content business models and the Internet
  4. David Meyer on how privacy could be reinvented on the Internet
  5. Jeff Roberts on how governments can more wisely regulate networks

Reinventing the Internet: How do we build a better network?

[Commentary] There are plenty of people concerned that wireline and wireless network routing, as it is now, might not work for much longer.

Between battles of peering, concerns over network neutrality, the changing shape of content and even concerns about network resiliency and privacy more people are looking at the current Internet and dreaming of a change that takes into account the growing dependence society has on the Internet. While, the projects below are not a complete list, they illustrate some of the big trends in how people with a stake in the Internet are thinking about making it better for the long haul and future network demands.

  • Push everything to the edge: there is a dilemma for network architects: can pushing files out to the edge continue to solve problems as demand increases for fat content like video, but also when we’re building connected homes and cities that benefit from a more mesh-network structure where devices talk to each other as well as the public Internet?
  • Peer to peer: the Internet isn’t just for serving content. It has always been a two-way communications mechanism, but in the last few years consumers have, well, consumed, more traffic than they have created online. That’s changing as more people put up videos, network their homes and communities start to use networks for sharing video content, sending medical files or other high-bandwidth applications. In some cases, while the data can be small, it tends to be sensitive to latency and distance, so sending it back to a central server doesn’t make sense.
  • Named-data networks: here are a class of projects around the world and research networks that envision taking this concept to the network itself. Instead of talking to servers to get an address for a URL or device, nodes on the network are given a name and content is stored everywhere. The way content is given a name and the levels of encryption involved help define the different types of these networks.

Reinventing the Internet: Here’s how to make online life more secure and trustworthy

[Commentary] Personal online security benefits everyone; well, almost everyone. Putting these measures in place wouldn’t be easy, and it would be unpopular in some quarters, but I think it would certainly be worth trying:

  • Responsible disclosure: A neutral body such as the International Telecommunication Union should administer the disclosure scheme, monitoring compliance around the initial quiet-tap-on-the-shoulder stage and ensuring the transparency of subsequent public disclosures.
  • Audit everything: This scheme should be funded by all countries and administered by the ITU or perhaps a standards-setting body like the IETF or the W3C. It should not be expensive, particularly when taking into consideration the public costs of dealing with attacks.
  • Encrypt everything: The W3C’s HTTP Working Group is already trying to ensure that open web use will become encrypted by default. The IETF and others are also now focused on improving the usability of online security and on encouraging standards-setters to think about security from the start.
  • Informed consent: The difference between opting in and out is vast. Shifting from an opt-out to an opt-in model would certainly add friction to sign-up and update processes, and it would require a standardized template that people broadly understand, but it’s the only honest way to process people’s data.
  • Privacy-friendly principles and evolutionary rules: The core principles should ideally be enshrined in a global Internet bill of rights, respected by countries and translated into national law as closely as possible. And here’s the overarching principle that should set the tone for the rest: the rights people enjoy offline should apply just as much online