January 2012

Google launches ad campaign to ease privacy concerns

Google, under scrutiny from privacy watchdogs for changes it made to its search engine, is launching a splashy ad campaign designed to alleviate privacy concerns.

Google is rolling out the Good to Know campaign in two dozen U.S. newspapers and magazines, including the Los Angeles Times, and in public places such as the subways in New York and Washington to encourage people to protect themselves and their information on the Web. The campaign offers practical advice and tips, including how to manage what kind of data people share with Google and websites. Google, whose success depends on users feeling comfortable enough to spend huge chunks of their time online, originally launched the campaign in Britain in October.

AT&T jacks up 'measured' phone service rate because it can

[Commentary] With bills for pretty much everything steadily rising, some people try to keep a lid on monthly costs by opting for "measured" phone service. What that means is they're charged a fixed rate for a limited number of local calls, plus a per-minute rate for any additional calls. If you don't use your phone a lot, it can be a really good deal. Too good, apparently. Or so the bean counters at AT&T seem to have concluded.

Beginning March 1, the company's base rate for measured phone service will jump $3 a month to $15.37 from $12.37 — a nearly 25% increase. The charge for additional local calls will be 3 cents per minute. Separately, AT&T's flat-rate charge for unlimited local calls will increase $1.05, to $21 a month. These are simple plans for people with simple calling needs. Their cost to AT&T is negligible. "It's extortion, pure and simple," said Regina Costa, telecom research director for the Utility Reform Network, or TURN, a San Francisco advocacy group. "There's no proof that these price increases are justified." And thanks to our hands-off state regulators, no such proof is required. As of last year, the California Public Utilities Commission has allowed phone companies to jack up basic rates as much as they please.

Sales of $100 smartphones set to double

The take-up of entry-level smartphones costing less than $100 is forecast to more than double to above 500 million this year, causing a steep increase in global data usage over connected mobile devices.

Low-cost chip technology has lowered the price of a basic smartphone to beneath $100 in many parts of the world in the past year. In emerging markets such as India high prices had been seen as the main barrier for the widespread adoption of mobile devices. Research from Deloitte says there will be at least 500 million smartphones costing $100 in use by the end of 2012, driving the market for connected devices and associated data applications more quickly than expected.
The research estimates that the installed base of $100 smartphones was about 200 million at the end of 2011, with the majority of devices being shipped in the past year.

Our gadget lust has reached a crossroads

Lost amid the endless parade of new devices at the Consumer Electronics Show is the much larger story of how the industry is undergoing one of its most radical shifts in decades.

Gadget-hungry consumers seem to have finally reached the saturation point. After exploding for three decades, the average number of devices owned by U.S. households has hit a plateau and is expected to decline in the coming years. Never fear, Silicon Valley. This does not signal the end of the digital revolution, but a new phase. In this new era, companies can no longer count on consumers continuing to add to their stockpile of gadgets. Instead, new devices, to succeed, will need to be able to perform the functions of several older ones, while working seamlessly with all the other devices in the household.

T-Mobile defends FCC from AT&T attack

T-Mobile defended the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in a statement on Jan 13, criticizing AT&T for the first time since the companies abandoned their plan to merge.

“T-Mobile strongly supports the Chairman’s ongoing efforts to obtain incentive auction authority and to make more spectrum available for the mobile industry," T-Mobile said in the statement. "Spectrum is the ‘life blood’ of the wireless industry and in a world of scarce spectrum opportunities, it is vital the FCC, as the expert agency, have the ability to design auctions to ensure robust competition exists for consumers."

AT&T’s Need for Spectrum Signals 77% Premium for Dish: Real M&A

AT&T is under so much pressure to add wireless spectrum after its failed $39 billion bid for T- Mobile USA that it may be compelled to pay the highest premium in more than a decade to secure Dish Network.

AT&T may consider a bid for Dish after the second-largest U.S. satellite-television provider acquired airwaves from the bankruptcies of DBSD North America Inc. and TerreStar Networks Inc. that could give AT&T two to four more years of capacity, said Stifel Nicolaus & Co. With the industry facing network constraints and a scarcity of new spectrum that’s making Dish a target, President and Chief Executive Officer Joe Clayton says the company is open to future acquisitions. At $50 a share, cited as a reasonable price by Alpine Mutual Funds, AT&T would have to pay a 77 percent premium for Dish, the highest in an acquisition greater than $5 billion by a telecommunications company since 2000.

Cable Had Fastest Broadband Downloads In 2011: Net Index

Cable operators delivered the fastest average broadband download speeds in 2011 -- with major MSOs easily blasting by rival telco and satellite Internet services -- according to data from independent testing firm Ookla.

For the full year, the six fastest residential Internet service providers in the U.S. based on average download speed were Comcast, Charter Communications, Cablevision Systems, Time Warner Cable and Insight Communications. That's according to Ookla's Net Index service, which has measured hundreds of millions of individual user tests through its Speedtest.net website. (Data for some providers, including Bright House Networks and Suddenlink Communications, is not available in Net Index.) Comcast and Charter delivered average download speeds of 17.19 Megabits per second, followed by Cablevision at 16.40 Mbps, Cox at 15.76 Mbps, TWC at 14.41 Mbps and Insight at 14.22 Mbps. Verizon Communications fared better than its telco peers with an average download speed of 12.94 Mbps, thanks to FiOS Internet, its fiber-to-the-home service that provides up to 150 Mbps downstream. And overall, Verizon had the highest upstream speeds with an average of 7.41 Mbps. Still, the company's legacy DSL services dragged down overall speeds.

Comcast, Verizon Wireless Start Co-Marketing Run In Pacific Northwest

Comcast and Verizon Wireless this week will launch a marketing program in Seattle (WA) and Portland (OR) promoting their respective services to the other's customers, ahead of regulatory approval of the deal.

Under the trial promotion, customers who sign up for two-year contracts for Comcast and Verizon Wireless services will be eligible to receive a prepaid Visa card of $100 to $300, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. To qualify for the prepaid card, customers must purchase the Comcast and Verizon services within 14 days of each other, and must activate a smartphone or tablet device, according to Seattle-based tech blog GeekWire. The initial joint offer is scheduled to end in May. Under their co-marketing deal, Comcast will promote Verizon Wireless services through its call centers and the carrier will pitch the MSO's Xfinity triple-play in its retail stores. Eight Verizon Wireless stores in the Seattle area involved in the initial retail launch. Comcast and Verizon Wireless expect the marketing program to roll out to other markets this year and into 2013.

Murdoch shows he doesn’t understand how content works

News Corp. founder Rupert Murdoch caused a stir over the weekend with some comments he made on Twitter after the Obama administration criticized the SOPA anti-piracy bill.

Murdoch criticized President Obama for siding with “Silicon Valley paymasters” who threaten software (and presumably content) creators with “plain thievery.” Then he attacked Google for being what he called the “piracy leader online,” and for streaming movies for free while selling advertisements around them — something that appeared to be a reference to copyright violations on YouTube. Finally, the News Corp. chairman said he had searched Google for links to the movie Mission Impossible and found several sites offering free links. It’s more than a little ironic that Murdoch made these comments just a day or so after admitting that his company screwed up royally with Myspace, the social-networking leader it paid more than half a billion dollars for in 2005 — only to be forced to sell it last year for just $35 million after mismanaging it into oblivion. In a message that seemed to be a response to his many critics on Twitter, he admitted that the simple answer to the entity’s massive failure was that News Corp. had “screwed up in every way possible,” but the company had “learned lots of valuable [and] expensive lessons.”

Netflix, Hulu and the golden age of content

Hulu is launching its first scripted original series in February, and the company is already thinking about investing more in original content. Hulu’s move toward original content follows similar announcements by Netflix, which is going to launch its first original series this spring as well. For both companies, going into original content is in part a reaction to the threat of being locked out of deals for popular TV shows. But it’s also part of a larger movement toward a new Hollywood, where content is produced for online-only properties, money is raised differently and networks aren’t the only game in town anymore. It’s a new golden age of content, and these are its key players: Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, Kickstarter, Amazon Studios, and BitTorrent.

Benton

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