Broadband & Internet
Ofcom’s broadband speed report: interesting, but what’s it for?
I have just read the press release and the correpsonding BBC article on Ofcom’s broadband speed report, published today. The research itself is worthy and interesting, but:
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ECTA’s High Speed 2010 conference: Refreshing but still no resolution in sight
I’m no fan of conferences where everyone agrees and leaves with pretty much the same opinions they had when they arrived. In my opinion, such love-ins do the attendees a disservice and have played no small part in driving the telecoms industry down numerous dead-ends over the years. That’s why I found yesterday’s European Competitive Telecommunications Association (ECTA) conference so refreshing.
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UK subscription music revenues to hit £350 million in five years? Surely not
If ever there was a perfect example of a new business model failing to achieve in the real world what looked so good on paper it is the subscription model of music consumption. Gaining access to all of the world’s music for the price of an album (plus a few extra bells and whistles) is a business model that has all the credentials to succeed but has so far failed to deliver. Read more »
Saudicom raises questions about desire for change in KSA
Two days of presentations and panel discussions at SaudiCom clearly demonstrated that there are lots of great ideas about how the world (or the telecoms market in KSA) could be a better place. Black Swan theories, co-opetition, partnership, new business models and all that highly worthy jazz abounded. But I think anybody could be forgiven for taking it all with a large pinch of salt.
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Fixed broadband in Africa is finally turning the corner
Broadband in Africa always faced hurdles, ranging from very low PC penetration to lack of sufficient international bandwidth. Many of these problems remain, but some of the thorniest ones are being remedied. Read more »
Google plan highlights rather than closes gaps between web and TV
Google’s plans for its Smart TV product are finally out of the box. Some of the things it announced for truly lived up to the considerable pre-launch hype, and it was certainly the shot in the arm for TV that it promised to be. Read more »
Evidence builds that stronger legal action against file sharing is turning round the fortunes of the music industry
The world is just emerging from one of the worst recessions in history and many countries around the world are only just starting to record economic growth. Despite this, 2009 may be the year recorded music sales started to turn a corner. The question many are asking is, what part has tougher legal played in the turnaround? Read more »
It was all going so well until the mobile guy turned up, says Tony Brown
The WiMAX Forum Congress Asia 2010 in Taipei was going swimmingly with lots of good news stories for the WiMAX community to get excited about and then Jan Nilsson, president of local 3G and WiMAX operator Far EasTone, took to the stage and brought everybody back to earth with a bump. Read more »
OTT still a burning issue for ops at the IPTV World Forum, says Tony Brown
For the Asia Pacific IPTV operators attending the IPTV World Forum 2010 in London last month, exploring Over-The-Top (OTT) content remains high on their agenda but they are still cautious about working with OTT providers on a commercial basis. Read more »
IPTV’s uneasy alliance with OTT video
One aspect of the IPTV World Forum which was perhaps surprising and completely unsurprising at the same time is how little of the event was developed to pure IPTV. Sky, Opera and UK online video start-up Blinkbox are just three of the names on the agenda who have relatively little to do with IPTV as it has historically (can the word historic be used for a technology that has been comercailly available for under ten years) been known. Opera, of course, is part of the Open IPTV Forum, but is at the event launching its HbbTV solution, something which may prove extremely disruptive for the likes of Deutsche Telekom and Orange.
Yet the presence of such companies at the show was not a result of them sneaking under the fence while the steely glares of the traditional operators were turned elsewhere. Many companies other than telcos have now started to use IP to deliver their content. In fact, I’ve lost count of the number of vendors who have claimed that they “have stopped calling it IPTV now”. Read more »
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