Free UTOPIA!

Headlines this last week have been dominated by the DTV switch, The Pirate Bay’s trial, and a finalization of the broadband stimulus amount. There were also announcements on 4G wireless from AT&T and Verizon as well as more movement towards online video (and a big step back for Hulu). All this and more in this week’s Broadband Bytes!

• Remember how Congress scrambled to delay the DTV transition because it would otherwise be a disaster of biblical proportions? Well, 40% of stations switched on the 17th anyway without too much trouble at all, isolated incidents aside. Calls to the FCC and stations were very light and have dropped off quickly. Additional stations won’t be allowed to make the switch until after March 14 and must notify the FCC of their intent to switch before June 12 by March 17.Meanwhile, the number of people unprepared for the switch has dipped even further to 4.4%. While a big hunk of change will go towards new converter box coupons, priority is going to be given to analog-only households (provided, of course, that there are boxed to be had).
• The Pirate Bay trial is quite the spectacle and it’s not going so good for the prosecution. TPB has totally stomped the prosecution on PR, half the charges got dropped and the judge got really REALLY irked at the prosecution for introducing new (and unexpected) evidence in the middle of the trial. (Hey prosecution? It also doesn’t help to try and shout down the judge. Just sayin’.) TPB is also asserting that 70-80% of the torrents on their site do not violate copyright and claims that they have less infringing content than YouTube. It’s looking a lot like the world’s largest torrent site isn’t likely to go down in this trial, much to the chagrin of content owners.
• Speaking of content owners, here’s something that should delight them. According to new metrics, P2P activity has decreased while Flash video (i.e. YouTube, Fancast, Hulu, etc) has skyrocketed. As content owners put more of their media library online and subsequently monetize it, users will ditch piracy options. (Silly notion, right?) Still, they don’t always get it. Hulu seriously cheesed off users of Boxee, a fork of XBox Media Center (XMBC) when content providers asked Hulu to block Boxee from playing TV shows and movies. (TV.com also got blocked.) In response, many users went back to torrents or, even worse for Hulu, hacked a new Hulu plugin that brought back the content AND blocked the ads. All of this should serve as a warning for cable networks as they try and push more online video options. Getting greedy never helped anyone and usually backfires, especially as consumers look to cut their bills.
• The broadband stimulus number has firmed up at $7.2B in total spending and BPL looks like an unexpected back-from-the-dead winner. IBM plans to apply for stimulus funds to roll out BPL service to over 200k rural customers. The challenge is determining just which areas are considered underserved or unserved. Public Knowledge slammed Connected Nation, a broadband mapping group, as nothing more than a front for big ISPs and accused them of making up bogus broadband maps to serve their interests. It’s entirely possible that Connected Nation could score the lion’s share of the $350M in funds for mapping, a scary proposition if the accusations are true. After all, this isn’t the end of federal broadband efforts.
• Everyone is racing to see who can get to 4G first. Clearwire has already rolled out Portland and Baltimore, but the market is going to get very crowded. Cox Communications hired an exec to monetize the 700MHz licenses that it picked up and start offering cell service. AT&T is aiming for a 2011 general roll-out of LTE as is T-Mobile. Verizon, though, is hoping to beat them both to market by a full year with LTE smartphones due out in 2011. Even rural telco CenturyTel, Embarq’s new owner, is shooting for an LTE network in 2010 using their 700MHz allocations. Considering the growing demand for mobile data services and the potential to shake-up fixed broadband options, putting money into wireless is a smart investment. AT&T and Verizon have been using those revenues to finance fiber deployments for some time.
• There’s a new attempt in Congress to force ISPs and hotspot owners to keep 2 years worth of access and subscriber logs to assist law enforcement. The justification, as usual, is that retaining the data will help catch people dealing in child porn. Unfortunately, keeping and managing two years worth of access logs is a huge undertaking, especially for wifi hotspots and home owners who choose to share their connection. Such efforts have typically died in committee despite previous pushes from both sides of the aisle.
• In what I can only hope is the start of a trend, Linksys will be selling a router with integrated Internet security software. It’s only going to block malicious or suspicious websites for the time being, but future models could integrate anti-spyware and anti-virus. If someone offered such a device, I would definitely buy one. It beats installing resource-hogging security software on every PC.
• Sprint continues to rack up losses, both in subscribers and dollars. They burned through $1.6B and lost 1.3M customers in the last quarter. Comcast isn’t doing so hot either, but they managed to stave off a full-on meltdown with higher telephone revenues. Sirius also saw its hide saved when DirecTV’s owner bought out a sizable chunk of the struggling satelite radio operator.
• Recession-influenced special pricing continues as operators struggle to hold on to cash-strapped customers. Sprint rolled out a new “Simply Everything” plan that adds laptop data (but not phone-as-modem) for another $50 a month. T-Mobile is also rumored to be looking at unlimited options of it’s own including a $50/mo unlimited voice plan as well as a $85/mo unlimited mobile voice and data plan. Verizon, though, takes the cake for considering a $5/mo inbound-only landline. Utah, though, is taking a step back. The legislature approved a move to upcap phone service rates for incumbents like Qwest and it is largely expected to be signed off on by the governor.
• Cable operators are serious about deploying DOCSIS 3.0. Comcast is shooting for making 50Mbps service available across 65% of its footprint by the end of this year. Canadian cable operator Shaw is also pushing wider availability of its 100Mbps tier while overbuilder Knology plans to up the spending for network upgrades to push more DOCSIS 3.0. Operators, though, are likely to see a reprieve from upgrading to avoid a crush of traffic, especially since the “exaflood” still hasn’t happened.