BelAir Networks today announced the BelAir100SN, a combined 802.11n/DOCSIS 3.0 unit that can be installed overhead on the cable operator’s distribution plant in less than 15 minutes. The BelAir100SN enables cable operators to leverage their available mounting, power, backhaul and other network assets to quickly and easily extend wireless services to their customers.

The BelAir100SN features:

• Policy management for personalized user experience and end to end QoS
• Edge-based security with central authentication
• Seamless integration with carrier-grade policy managers, scaling to 48,000 APs and 480 Gbps of traffic
• Business intelligence, including user experience insights and location-based personalization
• Massive-scale mobility proven in the world’s largest Wi-Fi networks

It uses the BelView Network Management Management System and the BelAirOS Operating System.

Already shipping to major North American cable operators, the BelAir100SN builds on BelAir Networks outdoor 802.11n and cable-optimized Wi-Fi solutions. The company introduced the industry’s first cable-optimized Wi-Fi AP, the BelAir100S, in 2005, and the industry’s first outdoor 802.11n APs, the BelAir100D and BelAir200D in February, 2008.

The BelAir100SN is running live at the CableLabs Winter Conference, February 7–9, 2010, at the Hyatt Regency at Colorado Convention Center. DOCSIS 3 enables downstream data rates of 160 Mbps or higher and upstream data rates of 120 Mbps or higher by ganging together 4 or more 6 MHz channels.

In the U.S., Cablevision Systems began rolling out DOCSIS 3 over its 5 million home footprint in April 2009. Cablevision’s Optimum Wi-Fi service began rekindling interest in municipal WiFi when it contributed to more than 70 percent sequential growth in Cablevision’s net subscriber additions.

Broadcasting & Cable, Corporate News, Municipal Wireless, Wi-Fi Deployments, Wi-Fi News | No Comments »

GOOGLE is developing software for the first phone capable of translating foreign languages almost instantly — like the Babel Fish in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

With the Nexus One, Google made voice commands an integral part of the phone’s user interface. In addition to voice searching — a feature on all Android phones — Nexus One users can also dictate e-mails, SMS messages, and use voice commands in Google Maps.

Google plans to make its Babel Fish a lot like a human translator; the software would analyze chunks of speech, and translate them in their entirety rather than translating word for word. Franz Och, Google’s head of translation services, said, “We think speech-to-speech translation should be possible and work reasonably well in a few years’ time.”

If anyone can pull it off, Google (and the NSA) can.

Android, Applications, Society & Telecom, VoIP & IP-TV, iPhone | No Comments »

Portland Mayor Sam Adams (@MayorSamAdams), at his annual State of the City Address this Friday, said the city will make available $500,000 for innovative small business ventures which may be matched by banks.

The city is creating a Portland Small Business Seed Fund in conjunction with the Sustainable Development Fund. Typically these investments would be in the $10-20,000 range.

The $500,000 seed fund will come from the Portland Development Commission, the city’s economic arm. The city will be loaning the money, not making equity investments, and the fund’s success will be measured through the number of jobs created by the companies that receive the funds.

The mayor says that the investment comes out of talks with the folks behind NedSpace, who have been campaigning for more public support for startups for some time.

How about a sustainable, community-based, public-service, solar-powered, Wi-Fi solution?

It could pay for itself in 3 years, stimulate jobs in new media and software development, and deliver emergency broadband communications throughout the city (and state).

The concept is simple: Solar powered kiosks in neighborhood parks provide free WiFi.

This public/private joint venture would provide:

• Free neighborhood Wi-Fi.
• Self-sustaining through advertising.
• Runs 24/7 on solar power and batteries.
• Uses Open Source software.
• Provides public safety alerts when The Big One happens.
• Uses Clear WiMAX or Verizon LTE for wireless backhaul.
• Incorporates an unbrella over a picnic table, a mobile router and a microprojector.
• Total cost per unit: $3,500.
• Estimated payback: 3 years.

Each kiosk would be a neighborhood node. A laser-based microprojector coupled to an iPad/iTouch provides a small, ruggedized display. The splash page would feature an interactive news map with localized Nozzl News, traffic and weather. Service could be customized using your cell phone.

Community-based advertising would provide $100/month revenue for each Kiosk ($20/mo times 5). Over 36 months, the $3,600 cost would be re-paid.

Haiti Live provides a free, open-source, real-time mapping model.

Open source Ushahidi could be the Wi-Fi splash page, showing real-time tweets, news feeds, newsmaps and videos. Interactive via cellphone. Real-time. Open source. Community driven. Inexpensive.

It could also SAVE taxpayers $400 MILLION in needless waste and bureaucratic empire-building.

Currently Oregon plans on spending more than $400 million of taxpayer money to build a state-wide, 700 MHz radio network for first responders. It is a very bad idea.

The state-wide infrastructure will be built anyway — at no cost to taxpayers. Cellular carriers, in conjunction with public service users, will build the 700 MHz network.

The new “D Block” 700 Mhz band will likely be auctioned this year. It will provide LTE service using an innovative joint public/private structure.

The “D Block” can provide the backbone for Kiosks everywhere, with voice and broadband access.

It’s a simple plan:

Borrow $15K, then build four, solar-powered info kiosks around the city.

Kiosks could be designed by artists to reflect their uses. Some would be like newstands and others like picnic tables. Some could be more organic, appearing like plants or animals. All would provide communications in the event of an emergency.

With the expertise of Eleven Wireless, Stephouse Networks, PersonalTelco, Intel, WiMAX Forum, SolarWorld and Open Source developers, taxpayers could save hundreds of millions of dollars, newspapers could thrive, and emergency communications could be delivered when The Big One hits.

Applications, Commentary, Conferences, EV-DO/HSDPA, FCC Actions, Grass Roots Wireless, LTE, Location Services, Municipal Wireless, Open Source, Public Service, Radio Policy News, Society & Telecom, VoIP & IP-TV, Wi-Fi News, WiMAX News, iPhone | No Comments »

AT&T’s new FamilyMap, allows you to track the location of your family members directly on your iPhone. Users can locate up to two phones on an account for a monthly subscription of $9.99, or up to five phones for $14.99 per month.

FamilyMap’s features, which until now were only accessible through a computer, include:

• Interactive Map: View whereabouts within an interactive map, including surrounding landmarks such as schools and parks; and, toggle between satellite and interactive street maps.
• Personalize: Assign a name and photo to each device within an account, and label frequently visited locations such as “Bobby’s house” and “School.”

Mobile and location-aware services are primed to become the next revenue battlefield as everyone from local newspapers to tech giants such as Google and Apple move into the market.

ReadWriteWeb reports that new data from Skyhook (pdf) suggests there are now more than 7,000 location-aware mobile applications available for the iPhone, Android and Blackberry devices combined.

On the iPhone about 75 percent are paid apps. The majority of iPhone apps are free, so that pricing disparity suggests location-aware services are a feature publishers believe consumers are willing to pay for.

Android, Applications, Cellular News, GPS, Location Services, iPhone | No Comments »

Supercomputer scientist Dan Reed notes that Microsoft and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) have announced a collaborative project where Microsoft will offer individual researchers and research groups free access to advanced client-plus-cloud computing. Their focus is on empowering researchers via cloud access to supercomputing.

I am very excited about this, as it is the fruit of nearly two years of planning and collaboration across Microsoft product and research teams, as well as many discussions with researchers, university leaders and government agencies. As part of this project, a technical computing engagement team, led by Dennis Gannon and Roger Barga, will work directly with NSF-funded researchers to port, extend and enhance client tools for data analysis and modeling. We also appreciate the support of the Microsoft Dreamspark, Technical Computing, Windows Azure, Azure Dallas, Public Sector, education and evangelism (DPE) teams, among others, to build and deliver this capability.

By extending the capabilities of powerful, easy-to-use PC applications via Microsoft cloud services, our objective is to broaden researcher capabilities, foster collaborative research communities, and accelerate scientific discovery by shifting the focus from infrastructure to empowerment. This is a potentially profound shift in how we innovate in the 21^st century.

At SC09, nVidia was in everything. Nvidia says Tesla server clusters deliver 10 times the performance than CPU-based clusters while consuming less power. Their CUDA parallel computing architecture powers 240 parallel processing cores in each Tesla processor.

At the show nVidia announced the Fermi featuring up to 512 CUDA cores. nVidia’s RealityServer (above) brings complex 3D graphics to virtually any netbook or smartphone by crunching numbers on a server.

Synthetic Aperture Radar on the Global Hawk UAV tracks cars and missiles with an onboard TeraFlop computer from Mercury Computer Systems. Mercury is also developing cellular multi-user detection with adaptive beamforming. Fine Detail Optical Surveillance seeks to develop a fundamentally new battlefield optical intelligence, that can provide ultra high-resolution 3D images to help identify targets in hostile environments. Next generation SensorCraft will require teraflops.

Synthetic imaging uses multiple small spacecraft, operating cooperatively, to synthesize the optical qualities of a much larger single spacecraft while head-mounted multispectral sensors require handheld supercomputers.

Space agencies are exploring Reconfigurable Computing, using FPGAs, such as the new Convey computer (left). The Center for High-Performance Reconfigurable Computing is comprised of more than 30 leading organizations in the field.

While interoperable supercomputer applications running on the cloud are still largely a pipe dream, The Cloud seems destined to enable a new generation of mobile devices running wild with image recognition, voice transcription, medical and geoscience applications — or video games.

Cloud computing and Yahoo pipes could enter the Twilight Zone at 100 Mbps.

A cluster of free-flying spacecraft modules wirelessly share resources and functionality to synthesize the capability of a much larger “virtual” spacecraft in Darpa’s F6 program (pdf) for Operationally Responsive Space.

System F6 incorporates an “open source” format, a new and radical concept in spacecraft systems. All software source code, interfaces, standards and operating systems will be available to everyone, including the public. Fractionated spacecraft bond together wirelessly. It may be incorporated into UAV swarms made by Aurora Flight Sciences and others.

At the Utah Technology Council’s Hall of Fame event in Salt Lake City last November (video), Google CEO Eric Schmidt described his vision of a 100-megabit broadband supercomputer in every pocket.

“A billion people on the planet are carrying supercomputers in their hands,” Schmidt said. “Now you think of them as mobile phones, but that’s not what they really are.”

“They’re video cameras. They’re GPS devices. They’re powerful computers. They have powerful screens. They can do many many different things, and oh, by the way, you can talk on them too.”

IDC predicts cloud computing services will be a $42 billion market by 2012. DARPA is developing brain-on-a-chip technology, scalable to biological levels. If genetic sequencers could be made available to regular physicians to sequence their patients’ DNA in-office, there could be a massive shift toward preventative medicine, lowering health care costs, says Venture Beat.

Related Dailywireless articles include; Supercomputer Application Store, Super Computer ‘09 News, World’s Most Expensive Computers, Supercomputer Clouds, Supercomputing Handhelds, Ocean Observatory Gets Funded, Ocean Observatories: The Ultimate Splash Page, Plug and Play Environmental Sensor Nets, Mobile Supercomputing,

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SpaceFlightNow, one of the top space news sites, has a special edition of “This Week In Space” with Miles O’Brien with a detailed look at President Obama’s sweeping changes for the U.S. human spaceflight program.

The Constellation program had already run through about $9 billion to develop a new crew capsule, Orion, and a new rocket, the Ares 1. Both are vaporized by Obama’s new NASA strategy.

Under the COTS test program, the SpaceX (Dragon) and Orbital (Cygnus) robotic spacecraft will demonstrate their ability to supply the International Space Station in 2010 and 2011, respectively.

Those companies’ human-rated proposals are based on variants of the unmanned versions of those craft.

The Augustine Commission submitted options to the Obama administration in October for the future of the human space program. The Augustine Commission saw no chance that Constellation could succeed in its goal of a 2020 landing on the moon.

Sierra Nevada Corp. was the big winner in NASA’s Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) competition, receiving $20 million of the $50 million in economic stimulus money meant to seed development of commercial crew transportation services.

NASA also announced that Chicago-based Boeing will receive $18 million; Denver-based United Launch Alliance will receive $6.7 million; Kent, Washington-based Blue Origin will get $3.7 million; and Tucson, Ariz.-based Paragon Space Development Corp. will get $1.4 million.

People in the eastern United States will have an opportunity to see the space shuttle Endeavour launched on Sunday morning, Feb. 7. It will also likely be the very last opportunity ever to see a space shuttle blast off at night. STS-130 will be the 32nd to rendezvous and dock with the International Space Station. It is the first of NASA’s five final shuttle missions this year before the fleet is retired in the fall.

Related DailyWireless stories include; Man on the Moon: Later, Beyond the Moon, Space Cold War, SpaceX: In Orbit, Chinese Destroy Satellite – Create Space Debris Field, Space Radar Launch, F.I.A. FUBAR, Satellite Jam, Lockheed CEO: Space is Broken, NRO Rides Again, T-Minus 10 for Space X, Space Capsule, Advanced EHF – Wait for It, EELV Rocket Program Merges.

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Deutsche Telekom is considering the future of its US mobile unit, T-Mobile USA, according to the Wall Street Journal, with options including an IPO, a partial spinoff of the business, or a merger with a US rival.

The WSJ claims that T-Mobile USA’s parent has recently held discussions with a number of banks such as Deutsche Bank about underwriting an IPO for the unit. The article claims the company could also spin-off some of the business, which would carve it into a separate entity with its own balance sheet, or merge it with a rival, although the report says this is a less likely option.

T-Mobile and France Telecom’s Orange have agreed to form a 50-50 joint venture that would grab the top spot in Britain with a market share of about 37 percent, ahead of current leader O2, owned by Telefonica, and Vodafone.

T-Mobile USA has only a 12 percent market share, well behind rivals Verizon Wireless, AT&T and Sprint Nextel. It has also been the subject of concern surrounding the inferiority of its network compared to competitors. Last September T-Mobile USA was reported to be in talks with Clearwire and MetroPCS regarding accessing extra network capacity to beef up its high-speed network.

Clearwire is starting 2010 with 25 4G wireless markets up and running. Its network is available to about 30 million people. By the end of 2010, it expects to be in 100 markets with the potential to serve 120 million subscribers.

By contrast, Verizon is hoping to reach 25 to 30 markets and 100 million potential customers with its LTE-based 4G network by the end of 2010 with more cities to be added the following year.

Meanwhile, the Coalition for 4G in America (MetroPCS, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile USA, Clearwire, Rural Telecommunications Group, and Access Spectrum, filed a letter with the FCC urging the Commission to expeditiously auction the Upper 700 MHz D Block for commercial use to promote widespread availability of competitive broadband services.

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After four delays, India’s 3G auctions are likely to take place this year. The auction is expected to take place in August-September this year. But the reaction of India’s mobile carriers is more fear than cheer, says Business Week. The government hopes to collect a total of $5.5 billion for four national and 22 regional licenses, but a price war has driven calling rates to well under 1 cent per minute, slowing the industry’s profit growth.

Currently, all services offered by Indian telcos, except select offerings by state-owned telcos BSNL and MTNL, are done using second generation (2G) networks which largely cater to the voice market. Following the auction of 2.3GHz and 2.5GHz licenses, 3G and 4G broadband will be available.

Carriers will need cash to bid on spectrum, and building a nationwide network will cost each as much as $4 billion. “Operators need to be realistic and not overbid,” says Naveen Mishra, an analyst at researcher IDC.

India’s state-owned BSNL, which the government allowed to launch 3G a year ago, now offers service in 300 cities, but has just 700,000 customers, and has cut tariffs at least twice. BSNL is the sixth largest cellular service provider, with over 57.22 million customers as of December 2009 and the largest land line telephone provider in India.

“Now we have to spend billions of dollars on a network that 2% of the country will use?” grumbles a senior finance official at Bharti Airtel, the country’s leading carrier, with 116 million customers. Bharti is now the world’s third-largest, single-country mobile operator. “It’s not like everybody in a village is carrying a BlackBerry (RIMM),” adds an executive, who asked not to be named because Airtel’s official policy is that it’s eager to offer 3G to the Indian masses.

India is the second-largest telecom market in terms of subscriber base, after China. As of end December 2009, the total subscriber base stood at 562.21 million, of which, mobile users accounted for 525.15 million. In the month of December, there was a record addition of 19 million mobile subscribers.

But some fear the auctions will lead to consolidation and greater foreign control of India’s cellular business. The top three operators hold just over half the market, while dozens of smaller players scramble for the rest.

Foreigners are eager to buy in. Some of the global giants — Telenor, NTT-DOCOMO, Etisalat DB, MTS have made their entry into the market recently. In 2008, Japan’s DoCoMo (DCM) paid $2.7 billion for 26% of Tata, the country’s No. 4 operator, and Russia’s MTS bought 74% of Shyama TeleServices. Norway’s Telenor took an interest in another small player last year.

The auctions for licences for 3G and WiMax wireless broadband services could raise 250 billion rupees (5.39 billion dollars) for the cash-strapped government, Communications Minister A. Raja said last August.

Currently, the number of people using broadband in India is relatively low. There are only 4.5 million users out of a population of 120 million. It’s a great opportunity for WiMAX operators to increase their coverage area. It is predicted that there will be 27 million WiMAX users in India before 2012, which would account for 20% of the worldwide WiMAX market.

India is divided into 22 major telecommunications circles based on geography. The Government has decided to assign by auction up to 3 blocks of 5×2 Mhz of paired in the 2.1 Ghz band in each of the 22 circles.

In other news, MVS Comunicaciones, a Mexican company, has reached a preliminary agreement with Clearwire to invest $700 million in WiMax technology in Mexico. The deployment will cover 23 Mexican cities.

MVS delayed the spectrum auction in Mexico, arguing that Secretario de Comunicaciones y Transportes should renew licenses in the 2.5 GHZ bandwidth before the process begins. The SCT is auctioning off space in the 1850MHZ-1990MHz and 1710MHz bands. Under the current rules, the government will have control over a total of 120MHz split into two blocks, with nine blocks of spectrum in the 1850-1990MHz band in eight of the country’s nine operating regions. Another seven blocks between the 1710MHz and 2179 MHz will be offered in all nine regions in a separate auction.

Deployment of the wireless broadband network, with the new technology, will take place by the second half of 2010, which is subject to its licenses being renewed.

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Super Bowl XLIV pits the American Football Conference (AFC) champion Indianapolis Colts (IndyStar coverage) against the National Football Conference (NFC) champion New Orleans Saints (NOLA coverage) to decide the National Football League (NFL) champion for the 2009 season.

It will be played at Sun Life Stadium (panorama, Google Earth, Google Maps) in Miami Gardens, Florida, and televised on CBS at 6:30 p.m. EST on February 7, 2010.

With an expected 150 million plus viewers in the United States, and millions more from 230 countries and territories worldwide, it is a premiere global television event.

Nearly two of three U.S. consumers now own an HDTV (pdf), and within the next year or two, that figure is expected to rise to three-quarters of all consumers.

CBS intends to make the most of it. They are deploying 50 high definition cameras with about 500 staffers and a convoy of production trucks. Pittsburgh-based mobile production company NEP will assist CBS, using a fleet of production trucks.

CBS will use NEP’s SS-24 as their main game truck, which is comprised of two 53-foot double expando units making it one of NEP’s largest mobile facilities. Here’s a rundown of production gear.

Sony HDC-1500 cameras are the backbone of CBS NFL coverage. The 50 HD cameras include 21 hard (stationary) cameras, four $118,000 Sony Super-Slo-Mos, three cabled handhelds, two handheld SloMos, two RF handhelds, one RF Steadicam, one Skycam robotic overhead camera, six ultra-high-frame-rate cameras, two robotic goal-post cameras, two robotic coach’s cameras, two booth-talent cameras (one robotic), one unmanned camera (for inside beauty shots), two clock cameras, and one robotic camera for outside beauty shots mounted on a nearby tower.

New for Superbowl XLIV:

• Six, X-Mo ultra-high-frame-rate cameras with a mass of networked EVS replay servers to record feeds from them and every other game camera. The modified Vision Research Phantom V640 cameras, from Inertia Unlimited will capture images at over 500 frames per second.
• Sportvision will provide a new tracking system which provides the virtual first-down line system. It will draw a virtual line extending up from each goalpost and provides a vertical look of whether the football crossed the plane of the goal post itself.
• Orad’s MVP (Motion Video Play) graphics tracking system and its HyperZoom feature, which can create a magnifying-glass effect over a portion of the screen.
• An internal Gig-E network at CBS allows the EVS systems to connect to two separate Avid Unity storage systems and receive edited packages as files at a data rate of 100 megabits per second, using Avid’s DNxHD mezzanine compression system.
• CBS will use Level 3 fiber for uncompressed high-definition (HD) television directly to CBS in New York, transported across the Level 3 Vyvx services platform. Comcast typically sacrifices HDTV quality to “sell” more channels than satellite TV. Avsforum viewers say FiOS provides the best picture.

3D stole the show at CES 2010 but don’t get out your glasses just yet. Super Bowl 44 is decidedly a 2D affair. Europe’s first dedicated 3D TV channel, Sky 3D will launch this April.

They previewed the new service on Sunday 31 January, becoming the first TV company to broadcast a live 3D sports event to a public audience.

Sony’s 4K Digital Cinema is waiting in the wings. New cameras like the Arriflex D-20 can capture 2K resolution images, while the Red One can record 4K redcode RAW. But you won’t be able to see it live.

Panoramic photography got a boost this year with the $180 Sony Blogger camera, which enables 360 videos. One will be given to every SuperBowl XLIV player. Here’s a live News Stream from Motorola.

CBC Sports bought an Immersive Video Camera for the Winter Olympic Games, which start February 12th.

Unlike NBC, which made a huge commitment to streaming technology at the 2008 Summer Olympic Games using Microsoft’s Silverlight, CBS and the NFL have turned a blind eye towards streaming. Nevertheless, Justin.tv, Ustream.tv or atdhe.net are expected to be live streaming (something).

Sirius XM Satellite Radio will have 14 game feeds in ten different languages for subscribers while NFL FieldPass will have pay audio feeds as well.

In the media room, Concept Matters will have six tech support specialists on hand to help fix reporter’s problems — like a computer crash in the middle of a story. They are also providing loaner laptops for emergencies. ProPublica reporter Marcus Stern will don his press badge at the Super Bowl this Sunday, but he won’t be covering the game. He’ll be looking for members of Congress who are there, figuring out how they got their tickets.

But the greatest demand comes from the tech-savvy fans. Cellphone carriers are tripling capacity near the stadium.

The last time the Super Bowl came to Miami, in 2007, organizers said it attracted more than 100,000 visitors. Halftime is especially stressful for cellphone carriers. All at once, practically everyone in the stadium will be sending photos, video and text messages to their friends.

Sprint’s NFL Mobile Live is available on more than 100 Sprint mobile devices, with in-depth playoff and Super Bowl XLIV analysis, big play audio coverage and behind-the-scenes access to Super Bowl XLIV parties. V-CAST Mobile TV from Verizon has exclusive Super Bowl coverage with packages start at $13 a month for a variety of channels.

Sprint has invested $2.3 million just on communication technology for the big game. During the last Miami Super Bowl, Sprint and Nextel’s call volume increased more than 275 percent and 325 percent, respectively, according to the company. Sprint is adding four COWs near the stadium and one in Miami Beach. AT&T said it is adding three in the parking lot, and Verizon has installed what it calls a permanent “super system” at Sun Life Stadium. There will be two base stations and extra antenna arrays on the stadium — the total project costing about $1 million.

Sunday will be the first time AT&T is adding a fourth layer of traffic capacity to its cell site inside the stadium, increasing the stadium’s support for AT&T customers by 280 percent. ADC installed the new microcells.

ADC’s InterReach Fusion, InterReach Unison, and FlexWave Prism provide a distributed antenna systems for voice and broadband. Unlike a Cell on Wheels, ADC’s system breaks the stadium into dozens of microcells, providing more throughput for users.

Security will be tighter than ever at Super Bowl 44. More than 50 law enforcement agencies — some of them having planned for as long as 18-months — will be involved in a massive effort to keep one of the world’s biggest sporting events safe from terror attacks. Coast Guard fast boats patrol the waterfront, while Homeland Security choppers and military fighters scan some 50 miles of coastline. On game day, they’ll enforce a 30-mile “no-fly” bubble around Sun Life stadium.

US Fleet Tracking will track scores of VIP vehicles coming and going with their $399 device. No one without a ticket or credential will be allowed inside the security zone. Bomb-sniffing dogs and high-tech devices will be used to detect chemical or biological threats. The Department of Homeland Security has designated it a ‘level one’ national security event. Katie Couric takes a closer look (video). BridgeWave will use its AR80 gigabit wireless gear to support video surveillance traffic.

CBS has sold all available spots for the broadcast. Prices for a thirty-second ad spot are between $2.5 million to $2.8 million, less than NBC’s high of $3 million during 2009, but demand has been stronger than expected.

Mancrunch’s attempt to land a Super Bowl spot with their gay dating site created controversy when CBS decided to air an anti-abortion ad starring football star Tim Tebow. The right-wing commercial was shot with a Red One Camera from Red One Florida. It will air five times during the Super Bowl.

Advertisers like ManCrunch are playing up their controversial Super Bowl spots in social media channels. It never made it to air, but scored bigtime anyway. Mashable says 2010 is the year social media and the Super Bowl are officially converging.

Some 148 million people are expected to watch the game in the U.S., 60 million of them women. That’s still not even half the country. Who are all those holdouts? According to ARS they over-index both as white and African-American. They’re less likely to have children. Some 67% are female.

Brands who have built platforms to engage consumers after the game is over are the real winners. Here’s a look at some of the more interesting platforms used by Superbowl advertisers.

Research from Burst Media found that the Web is now the place more people go for sports news, with more than a third of men (36.1 percent) and slightly less women in the study (32.7 percent). That’s followed by local TV programming (23.7 percent), national TV networks (15.1 percent), local newspapers (6.7 percent), national newspapers (3.6 percent) and sports radio (2.9 percent) — for both men and women.

Among the key age segments of 18-24 years and 25-34 years, the Internet far outweighs both local and national TV coverage as the primary source of sports news and information, according to a survey. Adults 55 years and older still turn to local TV news over the Internet. Yet despite all of the hype over online video services, more than one-half (55 percent) of all respondents indicated that they have never watched live streaming game coverage on the Internet.

Four of Nielsen’s top 10 programs of all time are Super Bowls.

Super Bowl XLIV business stats, page 2 show the numbers.

Tweets are available at @SB44, @SuperBowl, @ocnnfeed, @SuperBowl_2010 and @NFL. WSJ has a Guide to the Game. Here’s how to Watch Super Bowl XLIV on the Internet.

More info at ESPN.com, CBS Sports, NBC Sports, Fox Sports, Sports Illustrated, The Sporting News Sports Shooter, NYTimes.com, and other Sports Television Networks. Yahoo Full Coverage and Google News have additional news and links.

Broadcasting & Cable, Cellular News, Conferences, Corporate News, EV-DO/HSDPA, Mobile TV, Podcasting, Public Service, Security, Society & Telecom, Virtual Worlds | No Comments »

Man. Woman. Birth. Death. Infinity.
– Ben Casey

Comcast’s proposed deal to buy a 51 percent stake in NBC Universal from General Electric is having congressional hearings today. The proposal faces strong opposition from many consumer groups and competitors, although federal regulators are likely to approve it with conditions. The Republicans and Democrats are looking at the same deal, but seeing it quite differently.

“Many are concerned that this transaction could result in the best of NBC’s programming being transitioned to a pay-TV service,” said Henry Waxman, a California Democrat and chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, at the hearing today. Committee members also pressed Comcast on how they would treat video providers like Boxee, and to explain why Hulu, which is owned in part by NBCU, decided last year to stop Boxee from giving users its free, ad-based video content.

Boxee responded:

I’d like to set the record straight regarding Boxee’s access to Hulu. Boxee uses a web browser to access Hulu’s content – just like Firefox or Internet Explorer. Boxee users click on a link to Hulu’s website and the video within that page plays. We don’t “take” the video. We don’t copy it. We don’t put ads on top of it. The video and the ads play like they do on other browsers or on Hulu Desktop. And it certainly is legal to do so.

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts and NBC President Jeff Zucker promised to continue free broadcasts and enhance local news (pdf).

Comcast is doing well. Comcast’s video, high-speed Internet and voice customers totaled 47.1 million, reflecting 1.5 million net additions during 2009. Comcast’s Q4 2009 revenue increased 2.9% to $9.1 billion and operating cash flow increased 1.1% to $3.4 billion.

Meanwhile, Comcast said Wednesday that it will call its all digital cable service XFinity.

Digital cable channels have been typically allocated above 552 MHz. Between 552 and 750 MHz, there was space for 33 6-MHz channels (230–400 SDTV channels).

The math of analog reclamation is compelling, explains Cable Digital News. When a cable system converts 40 analog channels to digital and compresses them, it provides enough capacity for about 80 to 100 HD channels, HD VoD, and wideband at download speeds of up to 150 Mbit/s.

XFINITY will be the Comcast brand for this digital conversion. It enables Comcast to offer lots more pay channels and faster broadband, including 100+ HD channels, 50 to 70 foreign-language channels, nearly 20,000+ VOD choices, 50 Mbps cable modem speeds growing to 100+ Mbps, and thousands of TV shows

The new brand will roll out in 11 markets on Feb. 12. Portland was the first city where Comcast made its 100% digital transition, and is a frequent proving ground for new Comcast services, says Mike Rogoway of the Oregonian.

A new streaming video service is called Fancast XFINITY TV. It’s like Hulu. Fancast is a website where people may watch full-length network television shows, feature films, trailers and clips, as well as in-depth news and editorial content related to entertainment.

Fancast is a division of Comcast Interactive Media, the Internet division of Comcast. A wireless capability will likely be available using their WiMAX network called Comcast High-Speed 2go. NBC, an investor in Hulu, removed their content from Boxee.

About 105 million subscribers worldwide are currently connected to cable broadband services, representing 25% of all broadband users, with 65% hooked up via DSL and 11% fiber-to-the-home, according to market research firm ABI Research.

A recent survey conducted by Strategy Analytics found that about 47 percent of cable customers said they’d switch providers for a 10 percent discount on their service. And over two-thirds said they would jump ship for a 20 percent discount. “People are questioning why they should pay $60 or more a month for something they aren’t that thrilled with when they can replicate that experience with Hulu or an Xbox,” said Ben Piper, an analyst with Strategy Analytics.

Meanwhile, the O3B satellite network, backed by Google, is set for launch in late 2010. An ISP would install a pair of high-tech antennas capable of tracking multiple satellites and establish a 155-megabit per-second connection to the global Web. ISPs could use 3G cellular and WiMax towers for local connections. Each satellite in the network will have 10 spot beams, each delivering in excess of 1Gbit/s.

Interoperability between handsets and tablets will be enabled with ARM chips. Android and Chrome OS will be Google’s weapon of choice. Boxee will play multimedia files from a local CD/DVD or hard disk, or streamed over the internet from You Tube.

Google’s got the handset, the tablet and an advertising network for a global triple play. Comcast is a United States entertainment company. Won’t translate.

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