government

Disney puts MovieBeam on ice

Check out Stefanie Olsen's scoop on Disney delaying MovieBeam, its digital video service. MovieBeam broadcasts data signals to a set-top box that stores films on a hard drive. Users can then watch the movie when they want after paying between $1.99 and $3.99 for the work.

Disney prides itself as the world's most powerful content provider. While it can count on ABC to broadcast its wares into homes, Disney remains fearful of being shut out of digital distribution. Just look at how hard the company pushed to throw a monkey wrench into the proposed America Online-Time … Read more

States lagging in broadband

Has the United States missed the broadband boat? Several articles have been published recently, by Reuters, BusinessWeek and Broadbandreports.com saying it has.

The doom and gloomers refer to figures from a report published by the Organization for Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in 2003 that states the U.S. has dropped from third to tenth in broadband penetration--behind countries such as South Korea, Japan, Belgium and Canada.

These articles argue that even though carriers in the United States are starting to sign up more subscribers, their services' speeds are much slower--and yet more expensive--than in other countries.

So … Read more

GOP's broadband agenda

Delegates at this week's Republican National Convention spelled out their domestic policy on broadband, setting a goal of giving all Americans affordable access by 2007, according to IDG News Service.

The document circulating around the convention advocated a moratorium on broadband access taxes to spur growth as its central pillar. It noted that the amount of spectrum for wireless broadband nearly doubled since the Bush administration began its term, IDG said.

For a perspective on where Bush and Kerry stand on broadband, I'll point again to John Borland's detailed breakdown in a recent CNET News.com special … Read more

Forget HBO, we've got DSL

A study by the American Hotel & Lodging Association on Wednesday found that half of all hotel rooms in the U.S. have a broadband connection. That's up from 23 percent in 2001.

I remember as a kid seeing motels with signs saying, "We have cable," or "We have HBO." They've been replaced by "We have broadband." Believe it or not, more hotel rooms have broadband than the 25 percent that have ATM machines in their lobbies. Shocking.

IE's band reunited for music

In a darkened suite in San Francisco's trendy Clift Hotel, a familiar face sat quietly while Yusuf Mehdi, the head of MSN, briefed reporters on its new music download service.

Sporting a shaved head and goatee, the looming figure during the presentation was none other than Rob Bennett, now on the MSN Music team. Bennett in the mid-'90s fought in the trenches with Mehdi in plotting the strategy for Internet Explorer.

Another name resurfaced during Mehdi's briefing. Hadi Partovi, the guy who planted a gigantic IE logo on the lawn of Netscape Communications' Mountain View, Calif. headquarters, … Read more

Enron broadband exec changes plea

The Associated Press reported today that the chief operating officer of the defunct Enron Broadband Services will change his innocent plea to guilty for allegations of conspiracy, securities fraud, insider trading and money laundering.

Enron, one of the greatest corporate failures in history, has planned for the division to create an on-demand video service. The company partnered with Blockbuster but scrapped the deal in 2001.

Another day, another Enron executive to change a plea.

AOL's TV gambit

America Online is streaming the pilot episode of The WB Television Network's " Jack & Bobby" this week. The company said it's the first time a new show has premiered in streaming-video form on the Internet.

While it's too early to tell if this is a winning play for AOL, it's certainly a good step for its objectives. Beaten up by subscriber losses in its dial-up service, AOL needs to convince broadband customers that it's got something that nobody else has. This HBO model could work if there's enough exclusive content that people … Read more

Wake up, TV networks

The Financial Times on Monday wrote an interesting piece about Web streaming during UEFA Euro 2004, the venerated soccer tournament that drives Europeans bonkers every four years. The FT reported that the official Web site served up more than 500 million page views and more then 50 terabytes of data during the three-week event. England's nail-biting match against home team Portugal alone streamed 2.9 gigabits of data per second. (England lost in penalty kicks after David Beckham launched a dud over the woodwork).

TV networks need to get into the game. Sports nuts want their sports when they … Read more

All broadband, all the time

Kudos to BroadbandReports.com for its ability to scour its ripe message boards for the latest skinny on what's working in the world of broadband and what's not. Today, folks over there reported that community members received notices from AOL to beta test a VoIP product. BroadbandReports also consistently gets the first notice of service changes, such as speed upgrades, in certain cable or DSL areas.

Good for them. Proves that user generated content provides enough smoke to reveal a fire.