ECTA / PRESS / ECTA Press Releases / 2011 / Telco CFOs call for structurally separate netcos. Telco CFOs call for structurally separate netcos to operate Europe’s fibre networks Commission and regulators should focus on making the economics work for fibre roll-out and avoid political deals with dominant firms, companies stress Brussels, 30 March 2011: Chief Financial and Operating Officers from leading telecoms competitors met today with the European Commission and major banks to exchange views about the conditions needed to allow investment in ultra-fast fibre networks, at a roundtable event organised by ECTA. The roundtable comes at a critical time as the Commission explores ways to deliver the challenging "Digital Agenda” target of 50% of consumers using 100Mbit/s by 2020. CXOs highlighted that a "utility” model in which a single fibre is installed which is open to competition would best limit costs and risks of investing in fibre. Fastweb and Wind presented Italian proposals in which telcos jointly invest in a structurally separate "netco”.
2011 Quarterly Earnings - Google Investor Relations. When It Comes to Television Content, Affiliate Fees Make the World Go ‘Round. April 28, 2010: April 28, 2010: “The clock on the wall’s moving slower My heart it sinks to the ground And the storm that I thought would blow over Clouds the light of the love that I found” – Fool in the Rain, Led Zeppelin More often than not, we here in Silicon Valley are prone to idealism. We see a scenario the way we want to see it, and make predictions that fit our view of how we think the world should work, or perhaps even how we would like the world to be. This is especially true when it comes to technology. Outsider “luddites” who do not immediately grok the remarkable disruptive power of our latest and greatest technologies are doomed to the business trash heap – driven there by obsolescence and an obstinate refusal to accept their fate.
One often discussed target of such criticism is the media industry. There are three key reasons why Hollywood is under less duress than Silicon Valley wants to believe. Here are some specifics to help frame the issue. Cablevision vs WABC. Www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5711/125/ The cable company submission to the CRTC on usage based billing confirms what has been readily apparent to consumers for some time: there is no link between the prices charged by ISPs for usage pricing and the actual costs to ISPs. According to the cable companies: In order to be effective as an economic ITMP, the usage based price component needs to be established so as to discourage use above the set limit. The price should incent use in excess of the limit only to the extent that the consumer would gain significant value from that usage. If the price is set substantially below the consumer’s value, it will have little influence on usage.
In other words, UBB is behaviour based billing, not usage based billing. Telecoms regulation: Put a cap on it. Demystifying Networking. Foreword Preface What is the Internet About? Telecommunications vs. Networking What is a “Network”? Networks vs. A New (kind of) Infrastructure Carriers Collateral Damage vs. Creating (Generative) Opportunity Email: A Precedent Getting There The Right to Communicate There: What we can achieve Summary Further Reading I thank Andy Oram for this foreword: For decades, the most advanced communications technology most of us experienced was a telephone call.
Today we have one-to-one and one-to-many exchanges of audio files, video files, text, and graphics over the Internet. But we still get all these communications through the old telecom network. Bob Frankston for several years has been laying out another vision that combines some unique proposals of his own with elements found in writings by other leading technologists in telecom and the Internet. Andy Oram , Editor, O'Reilly Media "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day.
This essay is not about “The Internet” as such. Actually it’s even simpler. Some Stock Jocks Still Really, Really Want FiOS To Fail - Sanford Bernstein: Building New Networks 'A Losing Proposition' WiFi highlights an inconvenient truth about QoS... ... it's not always needed. Increasingly, smartphones get used with WiFi. Some estimates suggest that up to half of data usage now goes over WiFi. Most of that WiFi is connected from homes, offices or public hotspots over backhaul provided by an operator other than that providing the cellular connection to the smartphone.
Although in some cases there is an offload agreement in place, there is usually no direct measurement or control of QoS end-to-end. But some operators have (or are launching) their own data and content services - whether it's a content site, their appstore, remote backup or even RCS. This means that some of the access will come in to the operator domain via the open Internet. This isn't new in itself - technologies such as UMA/GAN have been around for a while, as have assorted softphones, remote access clients and so forth.
Plus, this means that in those situations, the operator is itself acting a so-called "OTT" provider, riding for free on somebody else's pipes. Eyes in their ankles: The congressional view of network neutrality. For quite a while I've been baffled by the inability of too many members of Congress to understand the importance of the network neutrality discussion. I'm not satisfied that I know for sure, but I may be getting closer. Let me start out by saying that I'm not all that much of a fan of regulations for the sake of regulations. There are cases where regulations are warranted, prescription drugs for example, but many other cases where regulations have proven to stop any meaningful progress. Most of the regulations empowering AT&T when it was a monopoly were of the latter type.
But I feel that regulations requiring carriers to treat their customers fairly are likely to increase progress rather than limit it. TECH DEBATE: Net neutrality, needed or not? To continue reading, register here to become an Insider It's FREE to join Network World - For quite a while I've been baffled by the inability of too many members of Congress to understand the importance of the network neutrality discussion. Mobile operating systems and browsers are headed in opposite directions. During a panel at Web 2.0 Expo, someone asked if the panelists saw any signs that suggest mobile operating system fragmentation might decrease. One of the panelists had a blunt answer: “No. There will be more fragmentation.” It is striking to see the different trajectories mobile operating systems are on when compared to the mobile web. In 2006, two smartphone operating systems accounted for 81 percent of the market. Fast-forward to the present and the picture is different. The future promises more operating system fragmentation, not less: In February, Nokia and Intel joined forces to create a new open source smartphone operating system called MeeGo.
This list doesn’t include differences within each particular operating system. There are more mobile operating systems coming and no signs of the mobile OS market narrowing any time soon. The mobile web is converging By contrast, the mobile web is converging on HTML5 and WebKit. There are a couple of things to keep in mind about this list: App Store not invited to web's date with destiny. High performance access to file storage Open...and Shut Just as the web seemed to have won - with consumers living their lives online through Facebook and Google and enterprises embracing cloud computing - along comes the mobile app to spoil the party. And while mobile apps aren't the only force prompting a reconsideration of the web, as noted in The Economist, no single factor may be more potent.
After discovering the freedom the web offered us for years, why this return to the isolation of closed apps? Financial Times journalist Richard Waters suggests here (warning: PDF) that the apps' convenience is the reason we're so eager to cede control to app (and app store) vendors: On the small screens of smartphones...the battle between app stores and the wide-open web looks to be over. Consumers have voted with their thumbs: the easiest way to find and access a service is through an app, not surf to a web page. This is true so far as it goes. That's not progress from the lowly URL. They're not. Wireline Costs and Caps: A Few Facts. Bandwidth costs in the U.S. are between 2% and 5% of what we pay for broadband, a very minor part of the cost. So when the Washington Post suggested "It's expensive to run a broadband network," as a legitimate reason to block Netflix and other video I thought to revisit the actual numbers.
Broadband is an extraordinarily profitable service. Top Wall Street analysts John Hodulik of UBS and Craig Moffett of Bernstein both report broadband margins of 90% based on official company filings. My own figure is more like a 75% margin because I allocate additional costs, but either implies running a broadband network is actually inexpensive in relation to the price charged. Bandwidth isn't free. Large European carriers have similar costs to the Americans. High backhaul and bandwidth costs in some parts of the world are important issues. Here are some numbers: 2 cents to 5 cents per gigabyte. . $1/month/customer. 15 gigabytes/month. Going Down: Bandwidth usage growth per customer.
2-5% Of Your Bill Actually Goes To Bandwidth - Netflix Is Not The Enemy, And The Sky Is Not Falling. Somewhere between 2-5% of your monthly broadband bill actually goes to bandwidth, long-time broadband industry analyst Dave Burstein reminds readers. While there's obviously plenty of additional costs beyond that -- such as support, lobbying, labor and marketing, there's also abundant new revenue streams (advertising via webmail, BVAS, selling your clickstream data, DNS Redirection revenue, charging to get around spam filters, targeted behavioral advertising). Burstein notes that the fact that bandwidth margins are about 90% is important to remember as ISPs try to convince consumers that Netflix bandwidth demand is unmanageable without low caps and high overages, or content company subsidies: quote:2 cents to 5 cents per gigabyte.
The actual bandwidth cost to a large carrier like Time Warner or AT&T, depending on how you do the accounting. $1/month/customer. The industry standard figure for the cost of bandwidth. Telmex to Put Rural Lines Into Separate Company. MEXICO CITY — Teléfonos de México, the country’s dominant fixed-line phone carrier, plans to carve out its rural lines into a separate company, adding a new layer to a dispute between the company and its competitors. The new company, to be called Telmex Social, would serve 46 percent of the country where there is no competition, according to an announcement on Tuesday, although it would account for only 12 percent of the parent company’s 15.5 million lines.
Those lines operate with small profits or losses, the company said. Telmex, as the parent company is known, has long argued that it has carried out a social responsibility by serving Mexico’s poor and rural areas while its competitors have scooped up profitable business lines in big cities. But Telmex’s social commitment is not by choice. Under its concession, first as a monopoly and then as a dominant fixed-line company, Telmex has been required to provide service throughout Mexico. » HKBN dictating terms in Hong Kong but can operators can really live on access fees alone?