Maybe Google+ will be competitive and maybe it won't, but it's likely to introduce video calling and OTT communications as a replacement for standard telephony. There will be major consequences to this, and we don't have an FCC or political framework capable of coping.
Me too, Mary! That's why I think it's so critical for us all to understand the reality of the complex economic ecosystem we call "the Internet". We get online access because of a complicated food chain of providers. For what we've come to know and depend on to continue to work, we have to be aware of the health of this whole chain of players, and we also have to acknowledge that what we want (which is always as much as we can get for the smallest possible payment) isn't always going to happen. We know we can't buy a top-end BMW for what we pay for a low-end compact car, and we have to understand that if we want more from the Internet we'll eventually have to pay more to get it. The trick is making sure that what we pay goes to support what we want!
You raise one of the key points about the Internet, Bolingbroke. In most telco services, all of the operators involved in creating a call or connection share in revenues paid. With the Internet, this process (called "settlement") doesn't really happen. Thus, while the consumer may in fact be getting billed by a video service for the video and then again by the operator for the usage to deliver it, the parties are all keeping everything they get, so unless each bills something that party gets no share. There have been proposals for settlement in various forms, but the OTT giants lobby strongly against paying for delivery, and if they don't pay and additional delivery capacity demands additional revenues, the user is the fall guy of last resort. The current FCC position appears to be against allowing settlement, but neither that position nor their whole neutrality order is on firm legal ground at this point.
The problem the ISPs have is that additional traffic demands additional capacity, ranging from faster access network all the way through the point where operators connect to the CDNs that serve most of the video (Level 3 for Netflix, for example). Wall Street analysts have already noted that wireline capex is declining because of low ROI, and we could expect that to continue. The return on investment for an ISP is MUCH lower than that of a Google, for example.
Tom, your mention of usage based pricing brings to mind the sceptre of double billing and hordes of unhappy consumers. With the popularity of movie streaming and their related costs coupled with the possibility of usage pricing primarily just for the extra bandwidth required for the next eagerly awaited Jennifer Anniston opus. Well, let me stop right there the potential backlash is not pleasant.
There are many issues with Internet service policy versus pricing policy, most of which came out of the original business model of the Internet in the early '90s. We didn't envision broadband, or OTT video, or CDNs or many of the current elements of the Internet, and the settlement and pricing processes just never caught up with reality!
I have been advocating the showdown between Internet users and their respective ISP's for year concerning tiered bandwidth pricing based on usage. This is just another step closer to that reality.
Hmm... more reasons for me to hate video chat. I'm hoping that more folk like me will "just say no." I can't imagine a world where I wouldn't have the choice to opt out of social network-based calls.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
Subsidized handsets, rather than locked handsets, should be the focus of regulators. We're not getting good deals, not fostering innovation, and weakening our power as buyers.
50 billion household devices will be on the Internet by 2020, according to Cisco. And we're hearing foreign governments are hacking our infrastructure. Surely our refrigerators are next!
YouTube's move to a partial pay-for-view model could help relieve a dearth of good new content but it could also complicate debates in many parts of the world over payment by content providers for delivery of their material to customers.
That's what Larry Page said on Google's earnings call, referring to the conjunction of mobile and the cloud. Well, let's chart it then! We need to be thinking about an Internet where 90% of our traffic goes to 70 destinations within 40 miles of us.
Facebook's Graph Search may face some profound challenges and risks, first, because Facebook users haven't been thinking of their posts as product reviews; and second, because Facebook will now have to contend with the social-network equivalent of SEO "gaming" of results.
EU operators are considering joining up to create a pan-European network to reduce competitive overbuild and cost. This might lower costs and focus operators on higher-level, more interesting services.
Microsoft's buy of Skype could revitalize Phone 7, give Microsoft a social, gaming, and collaborative strategy, and spell the end for old-fashioned telco voice. It will also certainly give Google a headache in its Voice, Chat, and even Android strategy!
With the advent of low-cost Web cameras and broadband network connections, home security systems have become a hot business. In addition to traditional security suppliers, like ADT, the market is attracting telcos, cable companies, and energy providers, thereby creating an area of increasing competition.
Skype recently acquired GroupMe, a startup developing tools to make mobile communications simpler. The move underscores dramatic changes in that market, ones that will change how executives communicate.
Customer interest in mobile video transmissions is growing. However, there is not enough bandwidth now to support rich exchanges – a shortcoming that could stymie movement to applications like mobile videoconferencing.
That's what Larry Page said on Google's earnings call, referring to the conjunction of mobile and the cloud. Well, let's chart it then! We need to be thinking about an Internet where 90% of our traffic goes to 70 destinations within 40 miles of us.
A survey by JD Powers found that customer interest in product features is lessening as phones evolve. Rather than features, price is driving purchases, and that change could have a dramatic impact on how IT departments secure these devices.
Ushering in a new era of cognitive computing systems, IBM announced today the IBM Watson Engagement Advisor, a technology breakthrough that allows brands to crunch big data in record time to transform the way they engage clients in key functions such as customer service, marketing, and sales.
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