Murdoch: I Was ‘Frightened’ of Cable Triple Play [Multichannel News]
Multichannel News reports that Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corp., unloaded his interest in DirecTV due to his fear that satellite television couldn't compete with cable's superior product. Murdoch is known worldwide for his shrewd investments in media companies.
Murdoch's explains his concern about satellite's ability to compete with cable, “I might have been wrong. I don’t think I’m wrong in the long term.”
DOCSIS 3.0 Spreads Globally [Broadband Reports]
While the rollout of DOCSIS 3.0 is just beginning in the U.S., there's a hint of the coming broadband speed explosion due to DOCSIS 3.0 coming from Europe. A company called Liberty Global is advertising downstream speeds of up to 120 Mbps in Amsterdam using DOCSIS 3.0.
Wow! DOCSIS 3.0 promises to keep cable broadband at the forefront of speed. Here at Insight, we'll be carefully following each development of this new technology.
Group Posts E-Mail Hacked From Palin Account [Wired - Threat Level]
The headline from the ongoing presidential race today is the news that a hacker has broken into VP nominee Sarah Palin's Yahoo webmail, and has posted the contents of her email inbox online. Authorities are investigating this clear violation of the law, but what does this incident tell the average webmail user about their email's security. Initial evidence is pointing toward Palin's webmail password being compromised because the hacker was able to guess the answer to her security question.
It's very important for webmail users choose strong passwords and make sure that their security questions are not easy to guess. You don't need to be running for national office to become a victim of a hacker, but careful security measures will protect your information.
ESPN's ISP discrimination shakes Net neutrality hornet's nest [CNET News]
Is the net neutrality crowd after ESPN now? That's what one blogger at CNET thinks should be happening. The proposed target is ESPN 360, ESPN's streaming video product that shows live sports events. ESPN 360 is provided to users of internet service providers (ISPs) that have contracted with ESPN to provide the service to their users.
Never mind that net neutrality advocates have traditionally focused their cause at alleged content discrimination by ISPs, now at least one voice is advocating that the cause be expanded to content providers as well.
On espn360
This is a new front in the content provider war, not a net neutrality issue. Carriage of sports networks like NFL Network, EspnU, CBS College Sports, the regional fox sports nets and big ten network all had similar fights and carriage lockouts when the video provider and the network couldn't agree on pricing and tiers for those networks. Along the same lines is the exclusivity contract between DirectTV and NFL Sunday ticket.
Outside of sports there are other examples that I know of. There is at least one very small cable provider who has just recently started carrying Disney channel due to some of the onerous carriage restrictions, channel bundling and pricing of Disney. Video customers were moving to other providers (The 2 satellite carries and a local FTTN telco product) and the decision was made to stop the bleeding of customers and pay up. In turn, they raised cable rates. As another example, as of now, Dish network does not carry Fox Business, but it is on Direct tv. Dave Ramsey on his radio show made a point of mentioning this fact yesterday.
What is troubling about this is espn used to sell their espn 360 product to willing subscribers of any internet carrier at pay-per-view rates as Gameplan online, why they haven't allowed subscribers to still buy at those high prices is a strange business decision unless they are getting massive subsidies from Verizon and ATT to offset the loss of the biggest cable co's (Comcast, TW, Cox, etc).
What this case does show is ala-carte pricing is going to sound better to some customers, while others are enjoying subsidized channels like Lifetime, O, Sci-Fi or EspnU
Posted by: bofkentucky | Thursday, September 18, 2008 at 07:32 PM