Lightsquared in last minute, last ditch effort to get green light from Washington orlandosentinel.com
Chipset vendors prep 802.11ac Wi-Fi technology for big consumer push fiercebroadbandwireless.com
Skype killing long distance calling one minute at a time gigaom.com
Virgin Media study names broadband as the best value entertainment service cable.co.uk
Verizon shows off industry first 4G LTE mobile wireless storage prnewswire.com
LTE devices dominate at CES, price points start to come down fiercewireless.com
3D TV still suffering from 'black hole of content' multichannel.com
Comcast rolls out live TV streaming to subs iPads artechnica.com
Samsung 2012 smart TV's would access DirecTV without a set top box engadget.com
Nokia to deliver exclusive US phone devices to each carrier fiercewireless.com
Android powered goggles bring virtual reality closer theregister.co.uk
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Tuesday Evening Links -
Posted: January 10th, 2012, 4:10pm MST
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AT&T Nabs LTE Windows Phone Exclusives - Unveils Growing Lineup of LTE Devices at CES
Posted: January 10th, 2012, 3:19pm MST
On the heels of unveiling eleven new LTE launch markets including New York City, AT&T is taking the wraps off of a slew of new LTE-capable devices. As had been rumored, AT&T's getting first dibs on the first round of LTE-capable Windows Phone devices, announcing that they'll exclusively offer the new HTC Titan II (and its sixteen megapixel camera) and the Nokia Lumia 900 Ace. AT&T's CES announcements included five new LTE smartphones and one tablet. The smartphones include the Samsung Galaxy S II, Skyrocket HD, Samsung Exhilarate, Pantech Element and Sony Xperia ion. If these smartphones (several of which have New Jersey-sized screen real estate) aren't enough, AT&T's new tablet is the Samsung Galaxy Note, which AT&T profiles in a video here.
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Comcast Offers Live Streaming For iPad - AnyPlay Service Being Tested in Nashville, Denver
Posted: January 10th, 2012, 1:17pm MST
Comcast today announced "AnyPlay," a device which enables Comcast TV subscribers to watch live television via their iPads. According to the AnyPlay website, homes get an Anyplay device that will stream any channels you get through traditional cable to mobile devices -- as long as you stay in your home. The service is free, though the website states there may be a $10 install fee involved. There's a few restrictions -- namely that the service is so far only being offered to HD triple play customers in Nashville and Denver. It's also fairly restricted in terms of which devices you can use, so far only supporting the iPad with Motorola Xoom support in the works. Comcast isn't giving a timeline on when all Comcast markets will see this -- only noting they'll be adding new, unspecified markets within months.
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T-Mobile: There Will Be No Backup AT&T Deal - Company Planning to Reboot Business
Posted: January 10th, 2012, 11:23am MST
Back when the AT&T deal was scrapped by a suddenly-and-uncharacteristically pro-consumer FCC and Justice Department, there was some talk that AT&T and T-Mobile might have a backup plan in place. That plan supposedly involved the two companies working on some kind of joint venture or spectrum sharing arrangement. But with T-Mobile getting $4 billion in roaming agreements, spectrum sharing and cash as part of a breakup fee they're apparently willing to go it alone.
T-Mobile CEO Philipp Humm told the WSJ's AllThingsD that they're working on rebooting the company after the failed merger, with AT&T nowhere in sight:After failing to sell itself to AT&T, T-Mobile is prepared to go it alone, says CEO Philipp Humm. "There is no second AT&T deal around," Humm told AllThingsD in an interview on Tuesday. Humm said the company is still ironing out its plans in the wake of the merger s derailment. "Now it s really a question about restarting the business," Humm said. "We will give you more details, probably by the end of the quarter. We are right now finalizing our plans."
What remains unclear is if T-Mobile parent company Deutsche Telekom still wants to exit the U.S. wireless market, or if the AT&T break up fee changed their mind.
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Goldman Sachs Wants Verizon to Sell All Landline Assets - Merge With Vodafone, Focus on Wireless and Enterprise
Posted: January 10th, 2012, 9:47am MST
We've been pointing out for years that Verizon's renewed company strategy has been to upgrade their prized markets to FiOS, sell or ignore the rest of their landline customer base, then fill in the gaps with LTE wireless broadband. The strategy was shaken up slightly recently when Verizon struck a massive new deal with the cable industry that involved not only acquiring $3.6 billion in cable industry-held spectrum, but also an exclusive partnership that has Verizon selling wireless services to the cable industry's massive subscriber base.
Interestingly Wall Street wants Verizon to take this play even further. A new research report by Goldman Sachs suggests that Verizon should sell off their wireline division entirely and become solely a wireless operator. Why? Doing so could allow Verizon to purge their union workers, pensions, and other expenses tied to their landline network and focus (in union with partner Vodafone) on where the real money will be: non union wireless and business services:The remaining wireless and enterprise businesses would have faster growth and a clear fit with Vodafone s assets and strategy, making it a more attractive merger partner, the analysts said in the report yesterday. Given that it no longer faces the threat of integrated cable competitors, Verizon could potentially spin off its remaining Consumer Wireline assets, along with large pension and benefit liabilities, the Goldman analysts said.
In this case what has Wall Street's heart all a flutter is the possibility for Verizon to shed all union-related workers and their pensions. While it seems likely that Verizon will shed some additional unwanted DSL territories (upstate New York seems like an eventual option), it's highly unlikely that Verizon wants to exit a fiber to the home business they just got done investing $24 billion into -- even if the new management is rumored to be less bullish on landline.
Verizon's new cable deal is an interesting one. It's worrying consumer advocates, who have urged regulators to investigate whether the deal came with a gentlemen's agreement not to expand FiOS further in order to limit competitive disruption in cable markets. That's obviously not good news for those in un-upgraded Verizon DSL markets waiting for faster speeds, and it's not good news for phone companies like CenturyLink, Frontier and Fairpoint (two of which gobbled up unwanted Verizon assets) who will now have to compete not only against cable, but Verizon LTE service that's faster than most of the DSL tiers they offer.
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More Details On ViaSat's New 12 Mbps 'Exede' Service - 7.5, 15 and 25 GB Monthly Usage Caps
Posted: January 10th, 2012, 7:36am MST
As we noted yesterday ViaSat's showing off a new $50, 12 Mbps downstream, 3 Mbps upstream satellite broadband service that the company will be selling through WildBlue, Dish and National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative ISPs. As we also noted yesterday, ViaSat was being a little murky about the limitations of the service, which include a low cap, potential throttling, and involves web acceleration. Today the company made most of the details official, announcing that the service will be called "Exede" and will in fact come with traditional usage caps.
According to ViaSat they're offering Exede in three flavors. $50 nets you a 7.5 GB monthly cap, $80 nets you a 15 GB monthly cap, and $130 will give you 25 GB of monthly usage. Despite very un-fiber-like usage limitations, ViaSat's insisting that their new service offers "feels like fiber" performance (perhaps "feels like desperation in the face of LTE" wasn't marketable).
ViaSat desperately wants this to be a service that seriously competes with landline broadband, but there's limitations in place satellite will never overcome. Since you can't beat physics and magically eliminate the latency that comes with all satellite broadband services, ViaSat's using a new web acceleration technology their press release still doesn't get very specific about:The Exede service also includes advanced web acceleration technology to provide an Internet web browsing experience with feels like fiber performance. Through a constantly evolving variety of techniques that go far beyond simple caching of web content, this new web acceleration technology quickly delivers pages, even on media and video intensive websites.
In addition to the caps, ViaSat has stated they'll likely explore throttling users should they consistently exceed their allowances, something that won't be too difficult in the age of HD video. The company's new website for the service can be found here. We'll offer some user experiences with the new service once it officially launches next week.
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'One or Two' Qwest Markets to Get CenturyLink IPTV - As Company Slowly Plunks Away at IPTV, DSL Upgrades
Posted: January 10th, 2012, 5:35am MST
Despite pioneering in the IPTV field, latter day Qwest wasn't much on the idea of getting into the TV business, repeatedly insisting they supported the idea of an "over the top" solution. Granted that was partially because Qwest spent the last few years shopping itself around, and made debt reduction its first priority. In contrast, new Qwest owner CenturyLink offers an IPTV service dubbed Prism, but only in select markets. Initially the telco balked when asked about when and if they'd expand these services, but now they're offering new detail on just who'll be getting upgrades -- and it won't be many of you.
"We pass about a million homes today with our IPTV service and expect to provide service to at least one Qwest market in 2012 and potentially two markets," said Stewart Ewing, EVP and CFO of CenturyLink. Overall however their total number of IPTV customers sits at roughly 50,000.
Speaking at the recent Citi Entertainment, Media and Telecommunications Conference, CenturyLink, Ewing insisted that once the carrier gets at least 20 Mbps service deployed they feel they're "well positioned" to participate if over the top streaming video services like Netflix "eventually takes some of the traditional TV market."
The problem for most of these second and third shelf telcos is they're losing customers quickly to cable operators, who are offering true triple (and soon quadruple) play services in addition to faster speeds. While the company passes 5.4 million homes with FTTN, the majority of their customers (and those acquired by Embarq and Qwest) are on older DSL. 20% of CenturyLink's customers can get 20 Mbps or higher, half can get 10 Mbps or higher, and two-thirds can get 6 Mbps or higher.
That leaves a lot of customers of slower speeds, and while the company insists they'll slowly get around to upgrading these customers -- it's not clear if they'll be quick enough to prevent a significant erosion to cable competitors (and their new friend Verizon).
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Cox Joins the Rate Hike Party - As Cable's Relentless Price Increases Continue
Posted: January 10th, 2012, 5:14am MST
Cable rate hike season continues right into the new year, and it seems likely you'll soon be able to enjoy the festivities all year round. Users in several Cox markets in our forums note they've been informed of price hikes on numerous TV, DVR and phone-related services. A letter sent to users in Florida and Arizona notes that Cox's local channel TV Starter package will change from $19.55 to $22.85, in addition to hikes to pricing for various Cox premium channels and TV pack bundles. Cox DVR rental prices are also going up, with the rental price for Advanced TV Standard Definition receivers going from $5.55 to $6.99 per month, and the rental cost of Advanced TV High Definition and High Definition/DVR & DVR receivers going from $7.45 to $8 per month. Users in some markets say they're also getting notices of increases to broadband, VoIP and caller ID services.
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Sprint Unveils First LTE Launch Devices, Including Galaxy Nexus - Available Sometime in the Second Half of 2012
Posted: January 10th, 2012, 5:03am MST
Sprint last week announced that they'll be launching ten initial LTE cities (including Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio) sometime before the first half of this year, though LTE handsets won't show up until later this year. Confirming some premature advertisements, Sprint at CES this week confirmed that one of the first LTE smartphones they'll offer users will be the Google Samsung Galaxy Nexus, in addition to the LG Viper smartphone and a Sierra Wireless mobile hotspot that will support the company's EVDO, LTE and Mobile WiMax networks. Sprint didn't give launch dates or pricing for any of the new devices, but says they plan to offer 15 LTE-capable devices before the end of 2012.
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Tuesday Morning Links -
Posted: January 10th, 2012, 3:55am MST
Apple, RIM deny providing backdoor to customer data for government of India theregister.co.uk
How France's Free.fr service will reinvent mobile gigaom.com
Homeplug Power Alliance announces AV2 standard to support broadband speeds eetimes.com
After beating Verizon in false advertising lawsuit, new Cablevision ad claims Optimum Online faster than FiOS fiercecable.com
Entrepreneurs see opportunity in new race for domain names wsj.com
Doubts cast over EU funding for UK broadband projects ispreview.com
Will Microsoft's new WiFi-NC set a new network standard? networkworld.com
Nokia looks to AT&T for US comeback lightreading.com
In-Game purchase revenues to increase to $4.8BN in 2016, up from $2.1BN in 2011 marketwire.com
Half of smartphone owners willing to watch ads for free apps arstechnica.com
Mobile app usage further dominates Web flurry.com
MySpace to re-invent itself as "over the top" Web TV experience allthingsd.com
CenturyLink to bring IPTV to Qwest markets, expand FTTN network fiercetelecom.com
In-Car wireless raises security, safety concerns firecebroadbandwireless.com