Back in the day, like 2 years ago, TV stations had ‘Green Rooms’. Places where upcoming guests could be preped, preened and soothed before going on camera. Purpose was to calm the precamera jitters and get the guest in the right mood. The lubricant was usually free drinks and snacks. Well that may be coming to a close. A combination of technology and strangled budgets is making that room a thing of the past. Evidence by this —

That’s Ben Popken of the Blog Consumerist being interviewed via Skype Video at the station WTVT in Tampa, Florida. First, cool dude. Innovative too. It shows some intelligence of the broadcaster that the world is truly getting flatter. It will not be much of a leap that we will see a 3 way talking head Skype call on Sunday Morning with Chris Wallace. If you got that far then why even bother with having the Panel show up at the crack of dawn either. Just pipe them into the Skype conference and you are done. By the way Skype has been supporting video since early this year. See here.

My only question? When will Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit be doing this from his media center?

Linky.

UK taxpayers may be on the hook for a very big bill if BT gets concessions from regulators in return for building a fiber to the home network. It seems the Brit’s telco monopoly is trying a few tricks form the US telco’s playbook by selling a lofty goal with numbers that simply don’t add up. If that’s the case, the end result will be lots of taxpayer investment, less competition, stagnating network upgrades, and higher prices. Lets hope for the sake of UK residents that  their regulators are not as easy of a patsy for the telco siren song as they have been here in the US.

Unless you’re using Enron math, BT’s new plan to connect 10 million homes — roughly 40 percent of the United Kingdom — with fiber networks at a cost of £1.5 billion doesn’t quite add up. At today’s conversion rate, that’s about $3 billion — or $300 to wire up each of these proposed 10 million homes.

BT hopes this will help it stave off competition from rivals who have started to use their new backbones and the latest technology to eat into its broadband business. Cable operator Virgin, for example, plans to use DOCSIS 3.0 to compete with BT. The incumbent has been reticent about upscaling its infrastructure over concerns that it would spend billions and then be forced to share with upstarts, the way it does now. By comparison, the new plan is closely tied to regulatory concessions and includes some sort of investment protection from Ofcom, the British regulator. (GigaOm)

A takeover of Sprint by SK Telecom has been in the rumor mill for more than a year. According to CNBC, it may be more than a rumor very soon. If the dollar falls much further, I’m betting it’s a done deal.

An agreement would be at best weeks away, CNBC said, citing people familiar with the talks.

Sprint shares closed up 9 percent at $9.04.

U.S.-listed shares of SK Telecom, Korea’s largest mobile-phone service operator by subscriber numbers, fell 2 percent to $20.67.

Sprint spokesman James Fisher had no comment on the report. No SK Telecom representatives were available in the early morning hours, Korean time.

CNBC reported that private-equity firms would provide financing for the deal, since SK Telecom’s market value is about half of Sprint’s $22.6 billion. (Yahoo)

Noah Pepper over at Public Knowledge lays it out pretty well on the whole issue about network congestion and bandwidth caps. So without further adieu –

For example, lets assume we study two users on the network, lets call them Alice and Bob. Both are on the same service plan and network, which allow them 5mbps normally, but the network gets congested during peak hours (5pm - 11pm) allowing a user to use at most 2mbps. Alice gets online at 2 am and starts downloading large files, maxing out her internet connection until the next day at 2 pm. Bob gets home from work at 5 and hops online to watch streaming videos until he goes to sleep at 11pm, using only 1mbps. At the end of a month Alice will have downloaded a huge amount of data and doubtless be tagged as bandwidth hog, yet contributed nothing to the congestion problem. Bob will be considered a normal user at the end of the marking period - but has a far more significant impact on the lower quality of service during peak hours than Alice does.

Targeting these alleged bandwidth hogs for having large total usage by restricting network access or raising rates doesn’t get at the real problem, which is congestion during times of heavy usage. These penalties are essentially punishing consumers for gaining extra utility from the service, particularly at non-peak usage hours, at no harm to the ISP or other users.

Hogging implies taking much of some resource for one’s self and preventing others from gaining access to that resource. If a customer is able to do this, then the network is not being managed properly. If the network is so constrained such that 5% of users can cause congestion, even during off peak times, then the infrastructure is clearly due for an update or the ISP has promised much more bandwidth than it can deliver.

Throttling everyone during peak usage is the only sensible solution to this problem (besides upgrading the network). Getting online and finding speeds to be slow during peak hours is akin to trying to place a cell call during especially heavy usage and getting denied service, it is an unavoidable degradation in quality of service which should not pose a problem if it happens infrequently.

Now if throttling during peak periods solved the problem well that would be fine. But long term it won’t. Here is the reason why. Automation. I or anyone with the inclination could set up a cron job with a list of the files I want. Set the time for midnight and let it fly. It could drag file after file till exhausted. The bandwidth demand just shifted.

The only solution is that the ISP need to start investing to increased the bandwidth. Not by a little but by at least a factor of 10 from its current levels.

Linky.

If there was ever any doubt about it, the USF as a means to provide service to the under served has been a complete disaster. From it’s beginning it’s be a money pot for the telcos and bureaucrats. According to a newly released GAO report, nothing has improved.

“There is a clearly established purpose for the high-cost program,” GAO concluded, “but the FCC has not established performance goals or measures.” Specifically, the agency hasn’t set across-the-board benchmarks for its recipients for “intermediate and multiyear periods.” Translation: the agency hasn’t established meaningful expectations at all.

But that’s not the worst of it. GAO basically says that the USF’s audits of carriers aren’t really audits. “Carrier data validation focuses primarily on completion and not accuracy”—a polite way of saying that USF auditors make sure all the data is submitted, but don’t check whether it’s accurate.

“These weaknesses could contribute to excessive program expenditures,” the GAO concludes. Uh, yeah—like a program that now costs over $4 billion a year.(Ars Technica)

For those of you who think the government should be involved in internet infrastructure, this may give you reason to doubt the wisdom of your position.

Under new management, Ebay continues their assault on the small sellers that made the company the world’s largest marketplace. Having first emptied Ebay of products like those sold by Buy.com with endless fee increases that drove away or bankrupted small sellers, Ebay has been listing Buy.com’s offerings at a big discount. While a great many who still sell on Ebay are crying foul, it’s a certainty that more small sellers will simply flee.

Consumers appear to be tiring of online auctions, and rivals like Amazon.com are attracting more shoppers with fixed-price listings, while eBay has been struggling for growth. To shift toward that model, eBay has struck a deal with the Web retailer Buy.com that allows the company to sell millions of books, DVDs, electronics and other items on eBay without paying the full complement of eBay fees.

The recent change is one of several under eBay’s new chief, John Donahoe, that is stirring rancor among the faithful who depend on the site for their livelihood. The deal with Buy.com has added over five million fixed-price listings to eBay.com since the beginning of the year — for items from Xbox 360 video game consoles to Weber grills.

Since eBay’s search listings favor larger sellers who can add perks like free shipping, which improve their feedback ratings, Buy.com’s presence has hurt many smaller sellers that compete in those product categories.

EBay is signaling that its future lies with big, reliable sellers, not the mom and pop shops that are objecting so vociferously to the Buy.com deal, said Tim Boyd, an Internet analyst with American Technology Research. “It’s a tragic ending to what was once a warm and fuzzy Silicon Valley story,” he said.

EBay says the Buy.com deal will fill gaps in its product offerings while making shopping more predictable. Wall Street will be paying close attention to whether people are indeed buying at eBay.com in greater numbers when eBay reports its second-quarter earnings on Wednesday. This task is made more difficult because while there are more listings, it is not clear that more people are buying. (New York Times)

The RIAA keeps claiming that artists are being kept in poverty by greedy radio stations who don’t pay for play, even though radio play is the industry’s top promotional tool, and bittorrent thieves. Outside of the “A” listers, very few artists have been paid much of anything by the big music companies who distribute their work.  Lyle Lovette provides a fine example of how even a top selling artist can come up short when dealing with the labels. Most would consider a 4.6 million album seller and “A” list performer who is treated well by big music, but even “A” listers come out empty handed in many cases.

 Lyle Lovett says he has “never made a dime” from album sales during his two-decade career, and hopes to rectify that situation when his contract expires. The eclectic country singer has two more albums on his deal with Curb/Universal, his home since 1985, and figures the horizons are wide open.

“The possibilities are very exciting, I think,” Lovett told Billboard.com. “I’ve never made a dime from a record sale in the history of my record deal. I’ve been very happy with my sales, and certainly my audience has been very supportive. I make a living going out and playing shows.”

Lovett, 50, has sold 4.6 million albums in the United States since 1991, the year when SoundScan sales data were introduced. His most recent release, “It’s Not Big It’s Large,” has sold about 145,000 copies since debuting at a career-best No. 18 on the Billboard 200 last September, according to Nielsen SoundScan. (Yahoo)

Lyle Lovette’s case is not new or unique. The RIAA’s public parading of indigent artists in their golden years to push ever more draconian copyright laws is a ruse to keep attention away from its members business practices. By in large, big music, not the consumer is most to blame for the lack of payment to artists for recordings. This has been case since the industry began.

Since the invention of magnetic tape, a small number of individuals have copied and exchanged music, and the music industry has blamed them for artist’s poverty. Do you have an obligation to pay for music you hold a copy of? Yes, unless the artist freely offers it without payment. However, if you paid for a copy of the artists work, you should be able to move it to and play it on any device you like without the need to buy a new copy for each device.

The music industry needs to start paying artists fairly before blaming piracy for their plight. Unfortunately, an unchecked parasite will kill its own host before curbing it’s appetite. If big music continues operates like a parasite, it will be responsible for its own demise.

If new data from the UK is on the mark, then the current access provider triple play push with slow/ high priced broadband is far from the mark. There is more competition in many parts of the UK than there is in the US, so broadband consumers are accustomed to having more choices. Beyond that, I see no reason to believe that US consumer sentiment will be any different.

Just over a quarter of all UK broadband customers are dissatisfied with the service offered by their provider, according to a survey from price- comparison site uSwitch.com.

In particular, customers are unhappy with their broadband connection speed, which they believe is often far slower than advertised.

USwitch found that many consumers who agreed to an “up to” 8MB broadband package were in fact only receiving 4MB. (The Independent)

According to a recent report the top reason for changing broadband provider changed from reliability to price between April and June of this year. Reliability has now become the third most common reason to switch providers, with the second now being the ability to bundle services – phone, broadband, and television.

In fact, there are many reasons why people decide to switch providers these days, and the report lists the top five reasons for making this move. The first, as mentioned, is the cost of the service, the second the ability bundle services into one package, and the third the reliability of the service. In fourth place was the level of customers service received from the broadband provider, with many switching because they receive poor service or cannot get through to the call centre when needed. (Broadband Expert)

While approval for the Sprint / Clearwire Wimax merger lingers in regulatory limbo, the two companies continue to activate service separately. Clearwire has announced new service in four more cities.

Portland, Oregon is about ready for testing right now while infrastructure is getting prepped for Las Vegas, Atlanta, and Grand Rapids in 2009. The Oregon area is already built out around 70%, so I’d gather that if the testing goes well, Oregonians will see service availability as early as year-end. (JK on the run)

Comcast’s woes over their network management practices seem to be without end. It would help if the company would just fess up, stop it and move on, but this has not been their strategy so far.

The head of the Federal Communications Commission said Thursday he will recommend that the nation’s largest cable company be punished for violating agency principles that guarantee customers open access to the Internet.

The potentially precedent-setting move stems from a complaint against Comcast Corp. that the company had blocked Internet traffic among users of a certain type of “file sharing” software that allows them to exchange large amounts of data.

“The commission has adopted a set of principles that protects consumers access to the Internet,” FCC Chairman Kevin Martin told The Associated Press late Thursday. “We found that Comcast’s actions in this instance violated our principles.”

Martin said Comcast has “arbitrarily” blocked Internet access, regardless of the level of traffic, and failed to disclose to consumers that it was doing so. (Yahoo)

There’s a deeper problem at work in all of this. It’s the endless ongoing effort by the cable guys and telcos to artificially create bandwidth scarcity. The only real scarcity is in the capacity their last mile infrastructure, which they have continuously refused to adequately upgrade. The larger internet continues to scale up exponentially, with operating costs in a free fall moving closer to zero every day. At the risk of repeating myself: more competition in the last mile will fix the problem without FCC intervention.