Best Broadband

Internet will evolve into ‘global brain’, experts say examiner.com
NTIA awards more broadband mapping grants multichannel.com
YouTube Takes on TV mediapost.com
2009: The year of the smartphone cnet.com
Vevo to strip content from YouTube API theregister.co.uk
Facebook’s Christmas victory over Google sign that email is dying? broadband-finder.co.uk
Never Mind the Nexus One, How About a Cheaper Cell Plan? networkworld.com
OMG! IBM Patented LOL! ROTFLMAO! techdirt.com
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Everyone here at Broadband Reports wishes you a happy and healthy New Year.
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The Wall Street Journal spends an entire article exploring how older homes with chicken wire embedded in the walls don’t play nice with Wi-Fi. Pre dry-wall, many homes used plaster applied to lath, or chicken wire — essentially creating a giant Faraday cage for the homeowner. That’s a problem for many people, in many places, but the Journal apparently singles out San Francisco, where the old collides with a high percentage of tech-savvy users. Here’s an idea: sell your home to someone who claims to have “electromagnetic sensitivity.” It will save them a fortune on funny hats, electromagnetic sensitivity self help books, and wireless signal blocking paint.
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Phone, cable and broadcast companies can get away with a lot in DC, but they best not stand between a man and his football games. As we noted yesterday, Time Warner Cable and News Corporation are engaged in a retransmission fee fight that could wind up with Fox programming being pulled from Time Warner Cable’s channel lineup. This apparently displeases football fan and U.S. Senator John Kerry, who sent a letter to News Corp. warning them that Uncle Sam would step in if Fox programming is disrupted later on today:

It’s funny that Uncle Sam often stands dumbfounded as carriers engage in all manner of price gouging and other anti-competitive behavior (be it against consumers or other companies), but rushes in quickly to the rescue of the American consumer when football broadcasts are at stake. As we’ve noted, Time Warner Cable has used a clever PR stunt and an amusing ransom pic ad campaign to convince consumers that higher TV prices are primarily the fault of broadcasters. In reality, both cable companies and broadcasters make a killing, and consumers wind up paying endlessly higher TV bills no matter who wins these retransmission debates.
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As we noted earlier this month, the FCC recently set the ball rolling for the long and arduous task of migrating the country away from our legacy circuit-switched phone systems to an all-IP voice network. AT&T has since filed their response (pdf) with the FCC, arguing that they should no longer have to support traditional phone services. AT&T of course isn’t as interested in the migration to all IP as they are the elimination of regulations that govern their businesses from state to state. It is, however, refreshing to hear a baby bell clearly admit the landline, as we know it, is dead:

AT&T goes on to insist that 90% of the country already has access to broadband (a debatable metric, especially in more rural AT&T states), and that maintaining landline service will become an increasing drain on their coffers. AT&T of course sees the FCC rulemaking process not as an opportunity to ramp up broadband deployment — but instead to reshape the regulatory process to improve revenues. This is, after all, the company that chose to milk copper instead of migrate to fiber to the home, and like Verizon, really has little to no interest in providing rural Americans with connectivity — of any kind.

While AT&T’s response to the FCC is chock full of bubbly jargon about the exciting broadband road ahead, most of AT&T’s excitement is actually focused on moving all broadband regulation to the more-easily lobbied federal level, revamping the Universal Service Fund so it works more in AT&T’s favor, and whatever other regulatory perks they can squeeze out of the FCC as this conversation gets underway. The number of inconsistencies you’ll find in AT&T’s statement will be directly proportional to how closely you’ve tracked the history of Ma Bell over the last 100 years.

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Netflix CEO Reed Hastings obviously sees Netflix as broadband’s killer app, as the company works to embed cheap Wi-Fi chipsets and Netflix software into every device under the sun. Their problem continues to be Hollywood executives, who have been stingy with streaming licensing rights, out of a misguided fear that offering consumers cheap, easy and high volume film content will cannibalize DVD sales. The Netflix streaming catalog is as a result slim, but Netflix had found a workaround by striking a deal with Starz to simply stream their movies. That loophole is now closed, so Netflix’s Hastings has been buy meeting with Hollywood execs trying to convince them there’s nothing to be afraid of. While execs are fine with new release DVDs, they’re still apparently terrified of new release streaming.
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Both Sprint and Verizon had been offering users the MiFi, a small, Novatel-created device that turns your 3G connection into a Wi-Fi hotspot (though if you’ll recall, back in 2005 Verizon used to whine that such technology violated your terms of service). As Sprint migrates to Mobile WiMax, Engadget has an early sneak peek at the new mobile hotspot they’ll be offering to support the speedier technology. Sprint’s new “Overdrive” dual-mode WiMAX / EV-DO mobile hotspot offers 100 feet of Wi-Fi connectivity once hooked into Sprint’s Mobile WiMax network, but the pricing has yet to be solidified. The device will be unveiled at CES along with other new toys for Sprint’s 4G network, including their new dual-mode (WiMax/EVDO) U301 USB modem.
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We’ve explored how femtocells didn’t quite have the year many had planned for them, in some large part thanks to the way wireless carriers priced and marketed (or didn’t market) them. The technology essentially places a micro-cell tower in the home extending signal range while easing the burden on local towers by routing phone calls over your broadband connection. So far however, many carriers have only offered the technology to customers who complain about signal issues. Meanwhile, carriers like Verizon managed to strip all consumer value from the concept by having their implementation eat away at your wireless minutes. Not too surprisingly, femto vendors tell the Wall Street Journal femtocell sales will ramp up “dramatically” in 2010, even though more objective analysts say 2010 will still be slower than expected for the technology.
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Analysts: Verizon iPhone would have had AT&T s problems product-reviews.net
Movie Studios Pissed Off At Netflix, Don’t Want To Allow More Streaming Movies techdirt.com
Femtocells Poised To Make Impact After Challenging Year wsj.com
RockYou Sued Over User Data Breach gigaom.com
BT prepares for demise of Ofcom? newswireless.net
Palm Unveils WebOS Upgrades for Pre, Pixi pcmag.com
Apple wins appeal over iPod hearing loss tgdaily.com
Apple Says No Boot Camp for Windows 7 For Now theinquirer.net
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FCC Moves Toward Net Neutrality Rules pcworld.com
Vonage’s Second Calling forbes.com
3G intro in Northeast Louisiana overloads AT&T thetowntalk.com
BT protest over mobile 3G licences falls on deaf ears timesonline.co.uk
Coping with the Wireless Data Deluge cio-today.com
FCC Schedules Vote On Terrestrial Exemption Order multichannel.com
Microsoft wants someone to turn Xbox into Xphone theregister.co.uk
Apple cloner Psystar switches to Linux theinquirer.net
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