Cablevision Still Wants to Offer Wi-Fi on Trains – Even Though 'Complicated' Proposal Has Been Delayed

DSLReports — Thu, 23 May 2013 05:05:18 +0000

Cablevision has spent the last few years deploying Wi-Fi to NYC metro region commuter areas, and now says they’re getting close to offering service on the trains themselves. Speaking on their recent earnings conference call, Cablevision executive Tad Smith stated the company is “in active, productive, very positive conversations with the trains” but that deploying such technology has been “complicated.” The company filed a proposal with the MTA back in 2010 and originally hoped the project would be up and running within twelve months. Still, Smith says the company is “optimistic for the future” of the project, which is making slow but steady progress. Whether commuters (most of whom now have an LTE connection in their pocket) will need or use it might be something else entirely.

Porn Copyright Troll Threatens To Call Your Neighbors – Latest Prenda Incarnation No Less Sleazy

DSLReports — Thu, 23 May 2013 05:05:11 +0000

Porn copyright trolls like Prenda law already do plenty of sleazy things in their attempt to frighten BitTorrent porn downloaders into ponying up ~~extortion~~ settlement money. While Judges are just now starting to take aim at these firms, the trolls remain busy trying to frighten porn downloaders into ponying up cash. Torrent Freak points to a new round of letters being sent out by the “Anti-Piracy Law Group,” the latest incarnation of Prenda Law. In those letters, the group ups its game by threatening to call a user’s neighbor unless they pay up. From the letter:

“The purpose of this step is to gather evidence about who used your Internet account to steal from our client. The list of possible suspects includes you, members of your household, your neighbors (if you maintain an open wi-fi connection) and anyone who might have visited your house. In the coming days we will contact these individuals to investigate whether they have any knowledge of the acts described in my client s prior letter.”

Granted Prenda and its various tendrils don’t want these cases ever actually going to court, and if they send out letters in enough volume, it’s more than enough to pay off the rather small legal penalties incurred so far.

Verizon: 60% of New FiOS Users Sign Up For 50 Mbps or Faster – While First FiOS Market (Dallas) Now Sees 50% Penetration

DSLReports — Thu, 23 May 2013 05:05:07 +0000

Speaking at the J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media and Telecom Conference earlier this month, Verizon CFO Fran Shammo stated that the company’s earliest FiOS markets are now reaching penetration targets and that most of their new customers are signing up for faster speeds. According to Shammo, 60% of new FiOS Internet subscribers added in the first quarter chose Quantum speeds of 50/25 Mbps or faster. He also stated that Dallas, Verizon’s first FiOS launch market, is now reaching 50% penetration. Previous Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg once suggested he’d wanted to see 40% penetration in most existing markets before continuing FiOS expansion. Subsequent CEOs (and Shammo) have made it pretty clear that another big FiOS expansion push will probably never happen.

DirecTV Considering Embedding Antennas Into Set Tops – As a Way to Skirt Soaring Retransmission Fees

DSLReports — Wed, 22 May 2013 20:35:53 +0000

DirecTV is contemplating embedding an antenna into their set top boxes in order to offer live over the air broadcasts, thereby circumventing retransmission fees. Speaking at the JP Morgan Technology, Media and Telecom conference in Boston, DirecTV chief financial officer Patrick Doyle stated they didn’t have a timeline on the project, but that it makes financial sense due to the soaring price of retrans fees and the landscape shift that’s occurring courtesy of Aereo. He also stated that whenever it does get deployed, it would only be initially made available to new customers. “We ll probably test in some markets an over-the-air integrated tuner set-up and make sure the customer experience is there,” insists Doyle.
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Top Countries for Mobile Payments Potential

IPCarrier — Wed, 22 May 2013 20:00:13 +0000

Singapore, Canada, the United States, Kenya, South Korea, Japan and the United Kingdom are among the countries where mobile payments are poised to get traction, according to Business Insider.

The index measures the ability to completely replace use of credit and debit cards with mobile devices. But each of the countries ranks high in terms of readiness for different reasons.

Access is where Singapore shines. It has 100 percent mobile coverage, while 70 percent of the nation’s residents have internet access and 68 percent own a mobile phone.

Canada, according to MasterCard, has the best cooperation among mobile networks, financial institutions, and government agencies. Plus, Canada is the global leader in Internet penetration with 82 percent of consumers online.

The United States has the most mobile-payment potential, in terms of household spending per capita, at $33,000, the highest in the world.

Kenya already has 68 percent of residents frequently using mobile payments, more than in any other nation.

South Korea is notable because Koreans use mobile payments to transfer money between two individuals about three times more often than they do to make point-of-sale purchases.

Japan has potential because, on average, each person in Japan has 14.98 credit or debit cards, creating a huge opportunity for displacement.

The U.A.E. is the global leader in business adoption of new technologies.

The United Kingdom makes the top of the list because of its extremely high household mobile-phone (85 percent) and Internet penetration (80 percent).

Saudi Arabia has potential because more consumers who use mobile payments are making point-of-sale purchases in Saudi Arabia than in any other country.

China potential comes from its sheer population size.

Negroponte Switch for Mobile Traffic?

IPCarrier — Wed, 22 May 2013 19:23:35 +0000

To the extent that tablets and smart phones are displacing time formerly spent with PCs, there is potential for a shift in demand for access from mobile and fixed networks. That’s what offloading of mobile traffic to Wi-Fi networks is all about.

On the other hand, users also are shifting application use formerly occurring on PCs to their smart phones and tablets. So some traffic formerly on the fixed network is loaded to the mobile network.

But the composition of the traffic is uneven. Where once television was delivered “over the air,” it has over the past several decades moved to the fixed network, while “narrowband” traffic (voice and messaging) has moved to the air (mobile networks).

Some might remember that this was known as the “Negroponte Switch.”

Something along similar lines is happening with “mobile” traffic. The bandwidth-intensive applications, especially video, is moving to the fixed network. The real-time communications traffic (chat, messaging, voice) and real-time application traffic (navigation, some transactions) is moving to the mobile network.

Microsoft Introduces Next-Generation Xbox – Sort Of.

DSLReports — Wed, 22 May 2013 19:06:41 +0000

Microsoft this week introduced the company’s long-awaited successor to the Xbox 360 video game console: the Xbox One. According to Microsoft, their new console will come with 8GB of RAM, USB 3.0 ports, built-in 802.11n, and support for Wi-Fi Direct — but that’s about as technically specific as Microsoft was willing to get. Like Sony, Microsoft held back most of the details ahead of their full reveal at E3, though unlike Sony — Microsoft did actually show what the console looks like. The company also highlighted how the new Kinect sensor will be dramatically more sensitive and supposedly useful, as well as a new redesigned game pad. Microsoft’s full announcement can be found here.

"Wi-Fi-Only" Works About Half the Time: Issue is What Might be Possible in Future

IPCarrier — Wed, 22 May 2013 18:26:47 +0000

Historically, the big value mobile phones represented was the untethering of “calling” from places. In fact, so great was the value that mobile calling displaced less expensive place-based calling.

More recently, the value of a BlackBerry was the ability to use email anywhere. In the latest iteration of the untethering trend, people now expect to be able to get access to the Internet anywhere they are.

But there is another trend happening as well, namely that people find it useful to shift Internet app consumption to stationary or fixed modes, to avoid mobile Internet access charges. In other words, mobile networks are for mobility, fixed networks are for capacity.

And since perhaps 80 percent of Internet data consumption now occurs “indoors,” capacity increasingly has become the value, rather than mobility, even for mobile devices.

That is not to say nomadic access is not important, only that essentially tethered access has become more important. Just how important remains to be seen.

Generally, one might say that “synchronous” or “real time” communications and apps benefit from “anywhere, anytime” access. Asynchronous apps and communications (email, voice mail, blog and social posts) can tolerate some periods of disconnection, and are better suited to place-based access.

So the issue is the degree to which growing use of asynchronous apps means access can be useful if it is “not always connected,” as is the case for any user relying on devices with Wi-Fi access only, and not full mobile network access.

At least so far, voice and messaging devices (phones) have benefited from “anywhere, anytime” access. PCs and now tablets often can provide high value even when connectable only sometimes.

The big zone of uncertainty is whether smart phone Internet access demand will change to any great extent. The possible change is voice and messaging on the mobile network, with Internet access mostly or even exclusively based on Wi-Fi access.

Smart phone owners know they can use Wi-Fi access inside and outside the home, and there is a financial benefit to doing so.

Mobile service providers also realize they can avoid capital investment by encouraging their users to switch their devices to Wi-Fi whenever possible, as well.

Voice-based or communication-based applications generally are not the best candidates for “Wi-Fi-only” networks. But tablets, PCs and Chromebooks are a different matter. And smart phone Internet access already is a case where mixed access is the norm. That already is allowing creation of business models based primarily on fixed access (Wi-Fi) with a mobile overlay.

34 Percent of Global Tablets will be Cellular Connected by 2017

BT, for example, appears to be thinking along those lines.

Having won 4G spectrum (2×15 MHz of FDD and 20 MHz of TDD 2.6GHz spectrum), BT suggested it would not build a retail mobile network, but use 4G to augment BT’s fixed networks.

Now BT says it will launch its own retail network.

The thinking is that BT will source wholesale mobile connectivity from one of the U.K. mobile service providers to provide full mobile access, while using its own spectrum largely for fixed or location access.

That is analogous in many ways to the ways mobile service providers already blend full mobile access plus Wi-Fi access. The potentially big challenge is whether it might eventually be possible to create

Wi-Fi only

access services that have high value even if there is no mobile access, as once was thought feasible around the turn of the century.

Those of you who travel outside your home country already do this: you turn off your mobile Internet access and rely only on

Wi-Fi

when out of country.

You Can 'Over Use' FiOS After All – Verizon Warns You if You Push Into Terabyte Territory

DSLReports — Wed, 22 May 2013 18:03:32 +0000

For years Verizon has marketed their FiOS fiber to the home service as a superior alternative to cable. Part of that sales pitch has been the argument that the service doesn’t require bandwidth caps — though Verizon has historically always chosen their words very carefully to leave the possibility open sometime in the future. That doesn’t mean Verizon doesn’t warn users whose usage can get borderline ridiculous. One user in our FiOS forum proudly crows that he managed to get a warning phone call from Verizon for excessive use. How excessive? One month the user claims he clocked in over 75 terabytes of data usage, and other users in the forum say they see similar usage resulting in similar phone calls. Verizon would obviously like the user, who runs servers out of his home, to upgrade to a business-class connection.
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Sprint Increases Clearwire Bid to Beat Dish

Telecom_Monthly — Wed, 22 May 2013 16:01:13 +0000

Sprint has raised its bid for Clearwire by 14%, bringing it up from $2.97 per share to $3.40 per share. The new offer values Clearwire at $10.7 billion and, most importantly, it surpasses the rival $3.30 bid made by Dish. While the status of Dish’s offer has been unclear since the company decided to try acquiring Sprint itself, Clearwire shareholders continue to point to it as a better deal than the one made by Sprint.

While Sprint had said that its bid was superior to the one made by Dish and Clearwire’s board seemed to agree, shareholders such as Crest Financial staunchly opposed the deal as unfair. A vote on Sprint’s offer was scheduled to be held on Tuesday, though, in light of the new offer, the shareholder vote has been postponed until May 30. Sprint called the new bid its best and final offer.

Sprint seems to be following in the footsteps of Deutsche Telekom, which similarly raised its bid for MetroPCS at the eleventh hour in order to win the support of shareholders. In addition to its attempt to acquire Clearwire’s spectrum, Sprint is also at the center of competing bids by Dish and Japanese wireless carrier SoftBank. The latter is so confident in the strength of its offer that it recently gave Sprint a special waiver to enter into broader talks with Dish, with the expectation that further review will only prove Dish’s offer to be inferior.

If the SoftBank deal goes ahead, it will close on July 1. With the Clearwire vote coming at the end of the month, Sprint’s situation is approaching the climax.

Original article: Sprint Increases Clearwire Bid to Beat Dish