Unfiltered

The Pacific Telecommunications Council Conference last week featured presentations forecasting great growth in Internet usage and traffic. For example, Telegeography Research said there will be more than 700 million broadband Internet subscribers globally by 2013, and Cisco Systems said global Internet traffic will register more than three-quarters of a zettabyte (766.8 exabytes) by 2014. Cisco said one of the most surprising drivers of traffic is “ambient vide,” from sources such as video surveillance, nanny cams and, of course, puppy cams. (more…)

Microsoft’s Mediaroom TV middleware has become pretty well established in the service provider market, but in the past year most of the excitement around TV/video software has been centered on new efforts like Apple TV and Google TV. Some industry observers expected Microsoft to strike back at this month’s 2011 Consumer Electronics Show with possible news of Microsoft set-top box product, but that did not happen. However, ZDNet’s All About Microsoft blog reports this week that some new code-named projects are coming to light that may offer a glimpse at where Microsoft’s TV efforts will go next and how Mediaroom may evolve. (more…)

The U.S. still can’t break into the top 10 worldwide among countries with the fastest average broadband connection speeds, but at least it began moving in the right direction in the third quarter of last year. According to Akamai’s State of the Internet Report released this week, the average broadband connection speed in the U.S. was  5 Mb/s in Q3 2010, representing an 8.6 percent jump over the second quarter and helping the U.S. move from 18th place up to 12th  place overall worldwide. (more…)

Netflix continues to be an unstoppable force in video distribution, and its success in online video streaming continues to vex the content industry. Many content companies have signed over some programming distribution rights to Netflix even though it might affect the value of their content in the traditional multi-channel video distribution market. Among Netflix’s most vocal opponents in the content world is HBO, and HBO parent Time Warner. A recent feature on Netflix in The Hollywood Reporter indicates that HBO is nowhere near selling its content rights to Netflix, and reportedly would need Netflix to raise its streaming membership price as high as $20 before it would consider a deal. (more…)

The Federal Communications Commission has released what it calls “new” data on the landline and VoIP voice communications market in the U.S. Among other figures, the agency states that there were still 127 million switched access landlines in service at the end of 2009 and 26 million VoIP connections, though the former number represented a 10 percent drop from the previous year, and the latter number a 22 percent increase. (more…)

Internet giant Google announced this week that its Chrome browser will now only support online video published in its own WebM format and the related Theora format, and that it will no longer support the popular H.264 industry standard video format. The move has generated a ton of criticism, even though Google claimed it is making the move because WebM is open—or at least royalty-free—and H.264 is not. (more…)

The controversies of the old year don’t fade away with the arrival of the new: Level 3 Communications and Comcast ended 2010 locked in a dispute over extra charges that Comcast imposed on Level 3 for completing the delivery of Internet traffic—some of it video that potentially competed with Comcast—to Comcast end users. Level 3 has vocally urged the FCC to consider the dispute as it nears a vote on Comcast’s NBU Universal deal, though with the FCC’s new Net Neutrality rules set to take effect next month, Level 3 also could formally file a Net Neutrality complaint with the FCC, something that amid all the talk, it hasn’t done yet. (more…)

Walt Disney Co., which owns TV networks ESPN and ABC, among others, reportedly is talking to Yahoo! about making some of its TV content available directly to consumers through the search engine giant’s Web-connected TV widget program, according to The Wall Street Journal. It doesn’t sound like anything has been confirmed yet, but the potential deal is being portrayed as Yahoo!’s competitive answer to recent hybrid TV forays by Google, Apple and Cisco Systems. (more…)