A study out on Sunday from the Pew Internet and American Life Project took a look at a computers, Internet access and cell phones to figure out how often such devices failed in the last 12 months and what people do when those failures happen. Unsurprisingly, such failures were pretty common, with 44 percent experiencing some kind of web connection failure, 39 percent experiencing a computer failure and 29 percent experiencing a cell phone issue within the last 12 months.
Surprisingly, reboot was not an option for fixing the problem, although that pretty much solves whatever issue I happen to encounter. So how did people deal with tech breakdowns? Almost 40 percent called customer support, while 28 percent fixed it themselves and 15 percent called on friends or family. Only 2 percent found help online, and 15 percent couldn’t solve the issue. Most people found such failures to be frustrating as they went through the steps to figure out how to fix the issue:
- 72 percent felt confident that they were on the right track to solving the problem.
- 59 percent felt impatient to solve the problem because they had important uses for the broken technology (who are the other 41 percent?!).
- 48 percent felt discouraged with the amount of effort needed to fix the problem.
- 40 percent felt confused by the information that they were getting.
If, on top of the high percentage of failures, two out of five people are confused by the information they’re getting as they try to solve service issues, this is a problem for everyone — especially as companies and startups are using these devices and services as platforms to launch revenue-generating services. The more time a device is broken, the less time a consumer is clicking on ads, shopping or downloading applications.
Some two years ago, it started to become clear: The web was going to change the way we consume video. So in December 2006, in order to closely track and monitor the growth of online video, we launched NewTeeVee. There we have chronicled the massive influx of venture capital investment into literally hundreds of startups — some of whom dream of being the next YouTube, others that hope to come up with the magic potion for video advertising.
In the process, Liz Gannes and Chris Albrecht have developed deep insights into the online video industry. And they have done a great job of separating the noise from the signal. Today the two of them will get on stage for our second NewTeeVee Live conference, where they will talk to dozens of industry experts, insiders, movers and shakers to help guide the conversation around the future of online video.The world of video finds itself in a pretty awkward place – watching videos on the web has become as natural as sending email.
When recovering from my heart attack, I turned to Hulu to provide on-demand fun. Today, I don’t think twice about spending $20 a month on TV shows from Apple’s iTunes store or $10 for a couple of movies from Jaman. My video-watching habits, while extreme, are precisely what is scaring cable companies into taking the self-destructive and short-sighted approach of imposing metered broadband on their customers. Phone companies are following suit.
Meanwhile, the broader economic downturn and subsequent advertising slowdown is threatening the vibrancy of this business I love so much. Layoffs have started to mar the online studios producing eclectic independent content, and a lack of advertising dollars is poised to plunder the meager treasuries of startups that are finding that the VC spigot has run dry.
But just as when you think the (online video) world is coming to an end, you have companies like Netflix, Blockbuster and others introducing devices that marry the web video to the living room experience, and in the process, inventing a whole new dynamic.
Today we will hear from Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, who is going to share his vision of the future, while Sling CEO Blake Krikorian is going to talk about the future of our living room in a fireside chat with yours truly.
The success of Hulu has awakened the Hollywood studio system to the possibilities of online video, among them the riches that don’t need to be taxed by cable companies and other gatekeepers. With that in mind, Jason Killar, CEO of Hulu, is going to be sharing his story.
CSI creator and executive producer of the CSI franchise, Anthony Zuiker, seems to have figured out the magic formula for cross-platform storytelling and he is one of our keynote speakers.
The online video industry is transitioning from being a gangly teenager to a grown-up; what remains unclear is exactly how it will evolve. I’m confident that by the end of the day we will have a better sense of what that will involve, allowing Liz, Chris and I to bring you the stories that will help all of us prepare us for this new future. We hope to see you there.
And if you can’t be present in person, we will be streaming the conference, thanks to the efforts of our partners, Ustream. We will also be posting to NewTeeVee Live’s Twitter stream, and will be live-blogging the conference over on NewTeeVee.
Over the years we have seen the gradual separation of phone numbers from geographical location. To date Skype’s SkypeIn service has been the best demonstration of this trend; even though I live and work just outside Toronto, Canada, I have a Palo Alto, Calif., SkypeIn number for historical family reasons, and I recently acquired a San Francisco number for Truphone. The same separation can apply to most VoIP-based voice services.
Over the past couple of years Belgian-based Voxbone has also developed an international numbering service which offers its clients a “local” phone numbers in any of 5,000 cities in 45 countries. OnState has used Voxbone’s “local” numbers as access points to its virtual call center service; its clients’ businesses can offer customer service and support centers with worldwide “local” access. However, it would be even more convenient for businesses selling into multiple countries if they could simply offer one universal number worldwide. Now, they can.
Yesterday, three months after the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) made available the +883 “global” country code, Voxbone announced the launch of its country-agnostic iNum service. I first learned of Voxbone at last spring’s eComm 2008 where Voxbone CEO Rod Ullens first mentioned the iNum concept. This announcement starts to realize his vision of enabling low cost conversations with worldwide access by taking advantage of the technology around IP-based communications:
“iNum is a new kind of phone number for a new kind of world — a world with a new geography that’s about local presence and global relationships, not about distance or national borders,” said Rodrigue Ullens, CEO and co-founder of Voxbone. “We believe the new geography is defined by the markets, customers and vendors that businesses need to connect with most. We need ‘local’ communication with these people — whether calls originate on public-switched or VoIP networks, whether they are truly local or ‘virtually’ local.”
In practice, that means a Voxbone iNum Service Provider Partner will supply a customer, whether an individual or a business, with a number that has an 883 country code. Once the service is fully rolled out to Voxbone’s 5,000 local points of presence worldwide, that iNum number will be accessible for, at most, the cost of a “local” phone call from any PSTN or VoIP service.
“At most,” because fundamental to Voxbone’s services is that they are IP-based and therefore calls amongst iNum Partners’ services are free. Currently Voxbone has 10 iNum Service Provider Partners, including Truphone, Mobivox and Voxeo, who either have made iNum numbers available today or will do so in the next few weeks. (For those callers who don’t use an iNum partner’s service, iNum numbers can be called through 55 “local” access points in 45 countries for the cost of a call to these access points.) Ullens, in a SquawkBox conference call yesterday, said that Voxbone will be negotiating with carriers and service providers worldwide to build out their service to become universally available.
Voxeo has set up a demonstration iNum service example; call +883 510 001 800 024, give their virtual operator a U.S. postal code and you will get local weather reports. This call can be made via the iNum Partners’ services today; it will become available via the local access points as they are set up over the next week. Another example: iotum’s Callflower Conference Call service will be using iNum numbers in a few days.
Jim Courtney is an Associate Editor of Skype Journal.
Cisco today announced a new edge router capable of moving 6.4 terabytes of data — the equivalent of 200 full length movies — per second. Om anticipated the product last week, pointing out that the influx of data traveling over the Web requires better and faster equipment to manage such complexity and traffic growth. What we also need is a different type of chip.
Routers have to process a lot of data really quickly. They are the air traffic controllers of the Internet: Each time someone types in a URL, the router has to figure out how to get the request to the correct end point. Since the number of possible routes grows every year, as does the number of times a router is consulted, old processors just can’t cut it anymore, especially at the edge where this Cisco router will sit. Instead of making chips for such devices more powerful (and more power-hungry), engineers are following in the footsteps of the server world and adding more cores.
Multicore chips are gaining in use in the embedded world for networking gear, set-top boxes and other applications. In recent routers Cisco had turned to Tensilica, a maker of specialized embedded multicore chips that can take tasks such as routing and video encoding and speed them up without requiring a lot of power. Tensilica calls its products data plane processors or DPUs. Cisco used those DPUs on its QuantumFlow processor.
Cisco is still using the QuantumFlow processor, but has its own custom-designed cores replacing the Tensilica core, inside this latest router, according to sources. However, Intel uses Tensilica cores for audio processing in its new line of systems on a chip built for video players). Other chipmakers, such as Freescale, which in June announced a new family of processors called QorIQ (say “Core IQ”), are tackling the problem of dealing with real-time data in low-power environments with more flexible, multicore embedded processors.
As real-time data processing becomes more important in areas such as reading routing tables and video and audio processing, Tensilica’s DPU cores and Freescale’s chips offer a way to process that information using less power than a general purpose CPU or even a graphics processor that might also be used for the task. Scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab are even using the Tensilica cores to try to build an energy-efficient supercomputer. In a connected world where devices have to do more but consume less, this type of design may be the way to go.
AT&T this week said it would join other broadband providers in trialing tiered broadband services. The trial packages range from the ability to download between 20 and 150 Gigabytes of information and are supposedly an effort to help AT&T manage the growth of traffic on its network. But the move is more likely an attempt to capture some of the value of the content moving through its pipes without getting in trouble with regulators.
As broadband matures, carriers aren’t merely upgrading their networks, they’re also upgrading their pricing plans, the thought being that different service levels offer a more nuanced way to manage traffic and increase sales. For an example of multiple plans in action, check out PlusNet, a UK-based ISP that lists at least four different service plans on its web site. Kurt Dobbins, chief technology officer of IP services with Arbor Networks, a company that sells network management equipment to both AT&T and PlusNet, says this is to be expected in a mature market, especially in light of the FCC’s efforts to ensure transparency when it comes to delivering broadband services.
“Carriers are all seeing a fundamental growth in traffic, and very few of them are seeing the equivalent growth in subscriber acquisition, so they’re spending billions more on bandwidth capacity but are seeing no new revenue,” Dobbins says. “This is an answer to how they will grow revenue.”
The end result will be bills that have different tiers of speeds and caps, as well as different service levels for different applications. For example, users would be able buy a voice and video service that would prioritize those types of traffic as more important than gaming or a virtual private network line. Dobbins also says the use of such tiers could help offload traffic by allowing customers to, for example, shares files during off-peak hours, and perhaps see that traffic not count against their cap. In a quote that would make any telco marketing maven proud, he called that, “giving the customers something for free.”
“The service provider business models are trending to some form of usage-based billing, but the end game is value-based pricing and subscriber opt in,” says Dobbins. “In the case of usage-based billing and caps, ISPs see that as an interim step.”
Because Dobbins works for a company whose sales would do very well under such pricing schemes, he may be a bit biased, but the scenario is still a likely one. Even today, AT&T is making a distinction between levels of service for its U-verse television offering as compared to video delivered via broadband.
Carriers, in creating these sorts of plans, relegate the Internet to entertainment or a productivity tool, and encourage consumers to view it that way as well. That’s unfortunate because the Internet is far more than a source of Tina Fey videos or a line back to the office; it’s a direct connection to people and information that can be harnessed in ways we are only now discovering.
Such uses include medical monitoring via the Internet, or interactive collaboration to make music or to design buildings. Carriers are refining their offerings to price those services according to their value. I can’t argue with their right to do that (in a truly competitive market), even if it means that I end up paying more. The downside is that it will put certain valuable services out of reach for some. So instead of being a great equalizer, the Internet ends up perpetrating the inequalities in education and access to information that exist today.
One of the topics I’ve touched on recently that’s garnered the most interest has been the prospect of a Chief Technology Officer sitting in the cabinet of the President of the United States. It’s something that’s been promised as a certainty to us should we deign to elect Senator Barack Obama our next president, but exactly who and what we’ll be getting out of the bargain is still pretty nebulous.
It’s even received extra attention yesterday with the release and added emphasis on Barack Obama’s technology policy. Amongst the various topics we’ve talked about here at Mashable, other featured pieces to the technology plank of Obama’s platform include doubling basic research funding, making research and development tax rebates permanent, immigration reform and increased governmental transparency.
Interestingly, most of these promises are supported by both candidates. Republicans are traditionally for any tax cuts they can get their hands on, Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin has been calling for increased governmental transparency (which interestingly was met by criticisms from Obama surrogates saying the junior senator’s existing measures were good enough).
The key issues where the candidates differ are on how anti-trust laws are enforced and crafted and on the issue of nationalized broadband. All of these issues are somehow wrapped in the cloak of a national Chief Technology Officer (CTO). We talked about this issue in overview a couple of weeks ago here at Mashable, but I thought I’d take a deeper look at the issue on the eve of the election, since I haven’t seen a plain-English dissection of this issue anywhere this season.
First, the final word on the idea of a national CTO.
As someone who’s been given the title of CTO a couple times in my career history, I can tell you that even in technology-centric companies, the meaning changes to suit the purposes of whomever gives it, and the anecdote I’ve mentioned every time the topic has come up here regarding Microsoft’s first CTO never fails to re-inforce that point.
Many readers and commenters have some very idyllic ideas as to what the CTO should do or is intended to do. The most common theory is that the national CTO will be a fundraising cheerleader for government lead technology initiatives which need attention, as Mashable reader Joe Hall said last time around.
I understand the concept of a fundraising cheerleader. My point is that we don’t need to raise funds for a nationalized broadband infrastructure. Last time we did something like that was the Universal Service Fund. We raised $50 billion through those efforts and nothing measurable was accomplished, because ultimately it’s up to the telcos to accomplish, and they’ve proven they can’t be trusted to follow through.
One of the other theories is that the CTO is simply a position for a cabinet level advisor for the president. The individual will presumably be more technology savvy than the president, and thus be much more qualified to provide valid directions for the executive branch to take in their technology decisions.
In and of itself, this isn’t an objectionable idea, except for the fact that it’s a completely redundant position to create. Shortly after the 9/11 catastrophe, President Bush created an advisory council called PCAST, which consists of venture capitalists, captains of industry, and university thought leaders. Creating even more executive level bureaucracy is not necessarily going to help things.
Of course, if you look at the position the way I originally envisioned it when it was suggested, the case against the position becomes almost overwhelming:
So we’re starting out with a nebulous position, and we’re putting it in charge of interpreting the nations’ technology issues, and hoping that the government won’t abuse the advice to expand their own power and use it to drum up votes.
Do you think we’ll see the end of exploitation of Craigslist as a political punching bag anytime theirs a prostitution bust with a CTO? Do you think we’ll see an end to Attorney Generals using pedophilia online as a way to scare the public and major corporations into playing ball?
No, of course not, they’ll just have more advanced terminology to play with. Semantic web technology will be used to scare the electorate into outlawing the technology so we won’t have a Will Smith I, Robot situation on our hands. Better understanding of how trojans and worms are spread will only encourage congress to pass a law requiring mandatory keyloggers on every citizen’s computer.
If they get really altruistic and industrious, they might just get interested in protecting our privacy. Of course, to them that’ll mean that every blogger will be required to obtain a license to operate a webserver so they can regulate how data is collected - data handling procedures that will tell you how you treat personal data entered in comments, cookies left by your ads, and disclosure of your sources.
Of course, of the key technology positions Obama’s advocated, whether it be under the cloak of the idea of a national CTO or on it’s own has been nationalized broadband. This, too, has been a recurring topic here at Mashable.
Nationalized Broadband and the Lessons from East Asia
One of the interesting comparisons that keeps getting brought up is the rapid growth of the telecoms in South Korea and Japan during the 1990s, and what role their respective governments played in that growth. It tends to be brought up in the comments here at Mashable as an argument for both sides - some folks will say that the runaway growth is due to the governments’ hands-off approach, while others will say that it’s a direct result of governmental intervention and direction of the growth of the telecom sector.
The truth is somewhere in between. It’s hard to find many resources that directly touch on this bit of technological history that don’t have partisan influence in their authoring, but I was able to find a research paper from Berkeley University that had a veritable treasure trove of details that provided historical perspective dating back to the 1800s. Anyone with a few hours to kill ought to check it out, but those of us interested in the parts pertinent to what we should do in America to get our broadband up to international snuff (so to speak), might be more interested in these factoids I gleaned from the paper:
- In the one year between 1999 and 2001, the number of DSL subscriptions in Korea rose from 97 thousand to 2.7 million
- In that same year, cable modem subscriptions increased from 17 thousand to 1.5 million.
- The rates of growth that were experienced in Japan as well as South Korea were due to governmental de-regulation.
- In Japan, the telecom was handled and regulated by the same division of government responsible for postal regulations (sound familiar?). Once that restriction was eliminated, the roadblocks were cleared for rapid growth.
- In South Korea, similar governmental roadblocks were cleared, mostly having to due with censorship.
- In both cases, demand and centralized population centers were the biggest driving factors behind adoption.
Only after rapid growth and clear dominance by a few private broadband providers had been established did the government step back in and exert a heavier hand in how the markets were regulated.
Which is better: bad tech policy or no tech policy?
What does that mean in terms of what we should do for America? Well, the idea that we should regulate our way to better competition and more innovation continues to be an idea that doesn’t bear scrutiny. As we talked about last time around, all attempts in the past by the government to subsidize or regulate a way to wider telecom infrastructure adoption have ended in miserable failure in America or abroad.
On the other hand, we have a vastly different landscape in our broadband industry here than in the late 90s over in East Asia. We have what is essentially a governmental sanctioned duopoly. In most major US markets, the choice is between the phone company and the cable company. The top-tier plans are starting to reach speed parity with the announcement by Comcast to offer 50 mbs DOCSIS Internet access.
Instead of attributing these positive moves in the US to market competition (which admittedly did play some part), it’s probably more accurate to ask why this hasn’t happened much sooner, since the average home connection in East Asia has been priced what an AOL dialup account costs while reaching speeds only now being achieved.
The answer lies in that the USA has has such a cozy relationship with the telcos and cable companies, providing subsidy and endorsement of their business model that the incentive for them to grow and innovate simply doesn’t exist.
Rather than focusing on anti-trust and and subsidies, as Barack Obama intends to do, what would be better would be focusing on creating an environment where corporate taxes were lowered, and other tax incentives were emphasized for start-ups who focus on better information infrastructure. Senator McCain’s tax plan is moderately favorable towards this theory, though it is likely simply a coincidence convenient to this argument rather than a well thought out technology policy.
When it comes to the basics, both presidential candidates are generally on the right track, and are generally in agreement as well. I’ve outlined above where they differ, though, and I think history has shown that Barack Obama’s desired policy directions would be more detrimental to innovation and growth for the tech sector.
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Cogent Communications, one of the largest bandwidth providers in the world charged that Sprint-Nextel has severed its network from Cogent’s networks. This could cause network slowdown and decrease in web performance. In a statement today, the company said that Sprint unpeered from Cogent’s network at 4.30 p.m. on October 31, 2008. Peering is a voluntary process where two networks exchange equal amount of data amongst each other without actually paying each other.
“It is no longer possible for many Sprint customers and Cogent customers to directly communicate across the Internet,” Cogent said and alleged that Sprint was in “violation of a contractual obligation to exchange Internet traffic with Cogent on a settlement free peering basis.” The two companies are in litigation over the issue.
I will try and talk to both companies in the morning, but I just wonder if Sprint is the only party to blame here. Cogent, based in Washington DC has been involved in similar un-peering spats with Level 3, Telia and other operators.
In the past these problems have arisen because one of the two network operators feels that they need to be compensated for the the traffic they are sending to the other. Cogent CEO Dave Schaffer in an interview earlier this year said that carriers hate them because they don’t like “our low-price pricing policy except our customers, and most of the companies have been reluctant peers with us.”
Cogent says that any “Sprint-Nextel wireline customer that is unable to connect to Cogent’s customers a free 100 megabit per second connection to the Internet for as long as Sprint continues to keep this partitioning of the Internet in place.”
The Financial Times is reporting that UK ISP Orange will not use an advertising product from Phorm because of concerns about user privacy. This would make Orange the odd man out in the country. BT, Virgin Media and TalkTalk are all still on board with Phorm, although their resolve may be weakening, judging by the fact that none of them have put Phorm’s product in commercial use yet. Phorm uses deep packet inspection to serve ads based on the sites a consumer visits. A similar company, NebuAd, caused an uproar earlier this year, after Charter Communications said it would deploy the service. Charter quickly backed off.
Paul-François Fournier, senior vice-president of Orange’s online advertising division, expressed interest in using customer data for advertising, but says he recognized that privacy was a key issue. He told the FT, “Privacy is in our DNA, so we need to be honest and clear about what we are doing. We have decided not to be in Phorm because of that … The way it was proposed, the privacy issue was too strong.”
Privacy issues may have stopped Orange in this case, but ISPs are increasingly looking for a revenue boost, and the detailed stream of data passing through their pipes is like a vein of gold they can’t wait to mine. Earlier this year at a Congressional hearing on privacy, the major U.S. carriers sought to regulate themselves on privacy issues, while also trying to figure out a way to get consumers to buy into the practice through lower rates or promising a better surfing experience.
Given that Time Warner Cable is able to market a bandwidth cap to people in Beaumont, Texas, under the guise of a lower-priced bundle, I’m sure cable and telecommunications companies will figure out the right incentive for most people to give up their privacy.
Logitech, a Swiss maker of computer peripherals has acquired video conferencing software maker SightSpeed of Berkeley, Calif. for approximately $30 million in cash. The deal is expected to close sometime in November and will have no material impact on Logitech’s business. SightSpeed was started in 2001 and has about 25 employees. Video conferencing is becoming a larger part of peripheral makers such as Logitech who are seeing an increase in the sales of computer-attached video cameras. Logitech, I suspect is trying to distinguish itself by tightly marrying its hardware to software from SightSpeed.
The acquisition of SightSpeed will provide Logitech with video calling technology and a software and services development team that can be focused on future video calling initiatives that can enable cross-platform video communications with an intuitive, lifelike experience, for people sitting in front of a personal computer or with their family in a living room. (Press Release)
Level 3 Communications this morning reported a narrower-than-expected third-quarter net loss and revenue that — at $1.07 billion — was in line with analysts’ expectations. But even that wasn’t enough to satisfy investors, who have now pushed the share price below $1 to as low as 60 cents. You can now have a double shot of espresso from Starbucks or buy three shares of Level 3.
Jokes aside, Level 3 was indeed very cautious in outlining the future of its business, noting that the broader slowdown in the economy was resulting in longer sales cycles. This lukewarm outlook is terrifying for investors already concerned with company’s high level of debt and its ability to navigate the current credit crunch. When I spoke to the company recently, they said they weren’t worried about refinancing their debt.
Notalby, Level 3 made certain comments in its third-quarter results release that don’t bode too well for video and other online media-related startups:
The Content Markets Group has experienced a decrease in sales to certain media and entertainment companies who may be dependent on external financing sources.
On the flip side, the big companies seem to like Level3’s CDN model vs. those of its competitors. Since it owns its network infrastructure, it can play the low-price game better than its rivals.
At the same time, the company has seen increased sales activity among larger media, entertainment and sports enterprises who seek to make more content available online.
Image courtesy of BigCharts.com.
