When Samsung unveiled two WiBro handsets, the M-8000 (a PocketPC phone) and the H-1000 (a clamshell handset, below) earlier this week in South Korea, it may have stimulated other companies to speed up their own mobile WiMax programs, reports DigiTimes.

DigiTimes says Nokia, which has been developing WiMAX-enabled solutions in cooperation with Intel, may push forward its launch of WiMAX handsets to 2007, instead of sometime in 2008 as originally planned, in response to Samsung’s launch of WiBro handsets, the sources expect.

Alvarion estimates 802.16e will be certified in the first quarter of 2006 with demo products available in 2006, trials in 2007 and commercial deployments in 2008.

Samsung plans to launch the WiBro devices with South Korea’s dominant fixed-line carrier, Korea Telecom, in the second quarter of next year. SK Telecom will also be offering WiBro service and handsets.

The planned launch of its WiBro, in the second quarter of 2006, is expected to push other leading handset vendors to accelerate their WiMAX handset roadmaps, according to Taiwan handset makers, reports Digitimes.

The WiBro handsets were shown at the on-going APEC summit meeting (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation), in Korea this week.

Meanwhile, this week Nokia started shipping their 770 WiFi Internet Tablet in the United States for $360.

The WiFi tablet features a 4″ touch-screen display with 800 x 480-pixel resolution, runs Linux, has 64 MB of RAM and a RS-MMC (reduced-size MultiMediaCard) slot for memory expansion. It’s available now in the United States.

Google and Yahoo! generated $4 billion in ad revenue last year–the same amount as the 10 largest newspaper companies combined. Maybe newspapers ought to look into devices like these.

WiMAX Deployments, WiMAX News | No Comments »

The city of Mountain View, California has accepted Google’s offer to blanket the city with free wireless Internet access (pdf).

Siliconvalley.com reports city leaders unanimously accepted Google’s offer (staff report pdf) Tuesday night to make Mountain View the first city in the Bay Area — and possibly the country — to get a full umbrella of free WiFi coverage.

Google will install as many as 400 access points the size of a shoe box on streetlamps throughout the city (Pole agreement pdf).

As part of a five-year contract starting by June, Google will test the system. In a matter of months, surfing the Web with a wireless laptop should be possible.

“It’s going to make us one of the first, if not the first, to have citywide Internet . It’s a pretty cool thing,” Mayor Matt Neely said. “We’re thrilled for all our neighbor cities who get to follow our lead.”

The council’s gleeful approval came despite concerns over radiation and privacy. Google maintains the radiation level is far below federal limits and that of most cell phones. The company also offered assurances about protecting users’ information.

Mountain View leaders say it’s only fitting that their city get free citywide Internet access, since Google sprouted in its back yard and has grown to become one of the world’s most powerful Internet search engines.

Google already has set up test centers at Kapp’s Pizza Bar and Grill on Castro Street in Mountain View and Airborne Gymnastics in Santa Clara. Most customers at Kapp’s didn’t even realize they could turn on their laptops and be online for free.

A flurry of e-mails between residents and city council members this week brought up a range of concerns about Google’s seemingly innocuous offer. Some said the hundreds of transmitters, about 20 to 30 per square mile, would emit radio waves with unknown health effects. Others had privacy concerns, saying Google might track their Web browsing and use it to sell tailored advertising.

City leaders say that’s beyond their realm; their involvement is limited to letting Google rent the city’s street lamps for $12,600 a year to place transmitters. People who don’t want to use the Google network system can simply opt out; users will have to take the initiative to log on.

The WiFi network will initially cover approximately 80 percent to 90 percent of the City. A portion of the City will not be initially covered due to the absence of City-owned streetlight poles in some pockets of the City. The base usage fee is $36 per pole, per year, adjusted annually per the CPI, resulting in approximately $12,600 or more in revenue to the City per year.

Google has agreed to equip the City’s new mobile Library services vehicle (Googlemobile) with mobile wireless equipment to allow customers to use the Internet.

San Francisco is considering a similar offer from Google.

Google’s San Francisco Wi-Fi network was created in partnership with Feeva, a free, ad-supported wireless service. According Feeva, they “identify, target and deliver relevant and useful information to the user, in collaboration with online media, content, advertising and search services”.

Other California cities are offering WiFi clouds, too. But an ad-supported free WiFi network would be something different.

In its offer, Google product manager Minnie Ingersoll said the company wants to use Mountain View as a test site to learn more about the cost and the challenges of building and supporting a wireless network, with the ultimate aim of driving more traffic to Google.

With 1,000 employees living in Mountain View, Google said it was a good place to test services and products and understand its emerging technology. The company also said free wireless gives access to people who can’t afford monthly Internet fees.

Google is going to encourage people to secure their connections, either through a free virtual private network connection from Google or others it’ll make available from outside vendors.

Other “free” city clouds are operational in Dayton’s Ohio (using Cisco gear), Saint Cloud Florida (using 300 Tropos nodes), and parts of San Francisco (using Google’s Location-Based Ads).

Related Dailywireless stories include; Dayton’s Ad-Supported Cloud, SF Tries Free, Ad-driven WiFi, FreeSpot Guides, Kentucky Parks Get WiFi, Ad Supported Wireless Net, Cellular Ads, Gizmondo’s Handheld Ads, Free Mesh Clouds, Iowa’s Highway Free Spots, Washington State Unwires Parks (& History), Ad Supported FreeFi, Directional Advertising Grows, Wireless Advertising on Buses, Streetcar Ads, Adware, FreeFi, AMD’s FreeSpots, DotSpot Ad Server, and Bridging the Divide.

Municipal Wireless | No Comments »

Tom Yager in InfoWorld says RF-ID is stupid. Here’s an excerpt:

We’ll soon live in a country where sensors outnumber people. If you believe what you read, RFID is a magical technology that will forever banish wires, grocery store scanners, credit cards and pocket change from our working and personal lives. There will be no more theft, no more injuries from improper medication, no more lost remote controls.

I have a lot of reasons for being no fan of RFID, but RFID has one serious, show-stopping shortcoming that trumps the others: It’s stupid.

A passive RFID tag is incapable of learning, logging, sensing the world around it, or doing anything on its own. If the tag is separated from the reader, or the reader is separated from the back end, the system is going to miss something.

Active RFID, which can incorporate sensor-like capabilities, requires a battery or other source of power. When you cross that line, you’re not in RFID-land anymore. You’re just sending and receiving wireless data. The cost rises, and smarter solutions are within reach.

To illustrate, consider the oft-cited use of RFID for hospital patients. Knowing whom you’re dealing with is dandy, but there’s a lot more you’d like to know about a patient, like heart rate, respiration, temperature, blood oxygen, mobility, and how much noise visitors are making. All of this data can be gathered and recorded by one microcontroller.

In modern commercial packaging, the core of this type of smart monitor, and the lithium battery that drives it (for as long as five years), would be weightless, and I’d estimate the per-patient cost to be about $4 using off-the-shelf parts.

A basic programmable ID bracelet could morph into an adhesive patch that’s placed on the chest to monitor heart rate, respiration, and chest sounds. A programmable sensor integrated into a chest tube could alert medical staff when it’s leaking. Yet nobody dreams of taking RFID that far.

If a technology doesn’t inspire you to dream big dreams of things you can’t do today, why invest in it? Dumping dough in RFID only takes money away from the R&D being done to create more capable, intelligent solutions.

But PanGo Networks has a second-generation active RFID tag that’s half as big and less expensive than the original version. PanGo’s system is primarily deployed in hospitals, where it uses Wi-Fi networks to transmit data captured by radio frequency identification (RFID) tags placed on medical equipment to a central location.

Other WiFi ID Tracking devices include Apriso and Aeroscout which might be just the ticket for Wireless grocery shopping — its embedded telemetry can store and forward multiple channels of data. RF-ID and streaming video were provided via WiMAX at the Ironman Triathlon World Championship in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. Wi-Fi based positioning systems, like PlaceLab work best where GPS fails - indoors.

WiFi RF-ID is also being used in Smart License Plates. But is that REALLY necessary?

RFID | No Comments »

Okay. Can we wrap this up now?

The telecommunications roadmap now looks clear:

• Cable companies and Sprint will team to provide quad play (video, voice, data and wireless). Cellular now, Mobile WiMax later.
• Clearwire and partners will deliver the other half of the 2.5 GHz mobile WiMax spectrum. Murdock, NBC, Microsoft, Google and others could be partners with McCaw.
• DirecTV will provide WiMax at 5.8 GHz with WiNetworks (if they have to). DirecTV will offer competing “quad play” services.
• City Clouds like Houston’s will pick up the slack. They will save cities money. Free, ad-sponsored networks will proliferate.

Where does this leave phone companies? Up shit creek.

They will have to build infrastructure with Fiber and IPTV, cut carriage deals, spend big on marketing and undercut cable and satellite. For what…15-25% penetration?

Do the numbers.

In the United States, cable subs total 73 million and satellite subs total 26 million. That’s 96 million total.

SBC’s Project Lightspeed may bring IP-based TV services past 18 million homes by the end of 2007. SBC’s IPTV service will be available in San Antonio next month. Verizon’s FiOS expects to pass 3 million homes by year end and pass 15 million homes by the end of 2008.

So the phone companies may pass 30 million homes in 2-3 years with fiber or IPTV. But how much are they spending?

SBC is investing $4 billion in Project Lightspeed while Verizon will spend $15-20 billion, says Business Week. How many will sign up?

Verizon’s FTTP penetration is only 12.4% in the 35 regions where it has marketed the service, says one telecom analyst. Forrester Research finds that only one-in-five households (17 percent) “are likely to switch” from their current cable or DBS service to FiOS TV, unless the price is significantly lower.

The phone companies plan to spend close to $30 billion to pass 30 million homes…then pick up 20%?

It’s over.

The White House and the FCC say they want universal, affordable broadband by 2007… via unregulation of the cable and phone companies. But SBC and Verizon will be asking for federal handouts, locking out internet competitors politically or closing out tv service just as soon the money runs out (if not before).

Give it 3-4 years, tops. Lack of “equal access” works against them.

Doc Searles has another take;

I’ve spent much of the last two weeks writing an essay that just went up at Linux Journal: Saving the Net: How to Keep the Carriers from Flushing the Net Down the Tubes. It’s probably the longest post I’ve ever put up on the Web. It’s certainly the most important. And not just to me.

VoIP & IP-TV | No Comments »

WiFi Planet mentions three new WiFi chip products with interesting features:

• Texas Instruments has announced new software for its WiFi chips. TI says the software, called G++, can provide twice the range and 50% better throughput. G++ makes sure the hardware uses higher power output, improves sensitivity and avoids interference from cordless phones and microwaves. TI says the bulk of its customers will end up using G++, but most are service providers who provide gateways. T.I. has an array of wireless chips for a variety of devices.
  
• Atheros says its new chip, the AR5007AP-G, puts the entire 802.11b/g access point on a chip. Just add the antenna and you’re virtually there. Atheros says it reduces components by 40% over the highly integrated AR5006AP-G. The $12.50 chip also supports full 802.11i/WPA2, 802.11e for Quality of Service, and the Atheros performance enhancements like eXtended Range (XR) and JumpStart (for fast security setup). The chips is in production with volume production early next year.
• SMC Networks is getting into MIMO using chips from Ralink Technology, says WiFi Planet. SMC will start shipping this new Barricade/EZ Connect family in December. They include a $140 broadband router, $60 CardBus adapter, and $60 PCI adapter for desktops. SMC says with MIMO-to-MIMO connections, speeds will be “up to 20 times faster than old 802.11b” while retaining backwards compatibility. They’ll announce other compatible products in early 2006.

Chips, Wi-Fi News | No Comments »

ArrayComm today announced that its Network MIMO software, which implements all antenna processing aspects of the WiMAX profiles, has been approved by the WiMAX Forum Mobile Task Group (MTG) for the IEEE 802.16e (Mobile WiMax) standard. The solution provides improved data rates, cell range, and network capacity for mobile WiMAX.

At the MTG meeting in Beijing last week, the WiMAX operator and manufacturer community finalized recommendations for the profiles for interoperable implementations of IEEE 802.16e. The profiles now proceed toward ratification by the WiMAX Forum Technical Working Group and Board.

IEEE 802.16’s Session #40 is taking place now, 14-17 November 2005, in Vancouver, BC, in conjunction with the IEEE 802 Plenary Session.

The WiMAX community selected a system architecture that incorporates both MIMO (multiple-input, multiple-output) and AAS (adaptive antenna systems, also known as beamforming). MIMO increases subscriber data rates, and AAS improves cell-edge link budgets, manages interference, and maximizes overall network capacity. Used in combination, MIMO and AAS yield a significant performance edge for WiMAX.

ArrayComm’s Network MIMO software implementates MIMO and AAS, working independently or in concert to deliver superior performance on all key operator metrics.

“I am delighted by the WiMAX Forum community’s selection of MIMO and AAS,” said Martin Cooper, ArrayComm’s Executive Chair. “This ringing endorsement of our long-held vision of smart antenna technology proclaims that smart antennas will drive the wireless industry’s broadband revolution. Smart antennas will be as significant in the history of wireless communications as the creation of the cell phone was 30 years ago.”

Here’s an interview with Arraycomm’s CTO.

From a radio performance perspective, WiMAX needs to provide greater coverage and capacity than the 3G alternatives. Adaptive antennas can help it do just that. (See figure.) Adaptive antennas can double the range and provide a 4x improvement in the throughput of WiMAX base stations as verified by a number of WiMAX equipment manufacturers and potential operators. This in turn reduces considerably the number of cell sites required.

Adaptive antennas can be applied to all two-way wireless systems, but it is possible to extract greater benefits in 802.16e than in WCDMA or 1xEV-DO because adaptive antenna support is tightly integrated into the 802.16e protocol.

Arraycomm and Intel are working together on a mobile WiMax implementation. ArrayComm and TeleCIS also announced a joint development agreement recently to create products for mobile WiMax. TeleCIS plans an integrated WiFi/WiMax chip.

Towerstream’s CEO says, “Motorola told me last week that they’ll have their (pre-standard) 802.11e gear in the second quarter of 2006.” After that, WISPs will start testing and deploying the pre-standard equipment and, more importantly, users will start using it.

WiBro, the Korean version of Mobile WiMax, launches in April. The IEEE 802.16e standardized version should follow in a year or two.

Related DailyWireless stories include; Samsung Demos WiBro, PicoChip: Livin’ Large, Airspan/Sequans Declares WiMax Interoperability, Adaptix to NYC, On The Road with Adaptix, 16e: Backward Compatibility - NOT, WiMax: On The Move, WiMax 16d+ Dilemma, WiMax: Will It Stay or Will It Go?, Navini’s Mobile WiMax, WiMax World Wrap, WiMax: HPi - Not, WiMax Procession, Korea Gets WiBro, WiMax Switcharoo, WiBro Three-Way, and IEEE Scores 802.16d.

WiMAX Deployments | No Comments »

Wireless clouds enveloping Philadelphia, Houston, Los Angeles and New York are huge. Billion dollar wireless plans that cover whole countries, are even bigger. But the $20 billion plan to network the United States government — Networx — may be the biggest of them all.

Networx is a massive government communications contract that will serve the Department of Defense, the U.S. Postal Service, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Department of Energy. The contract covers about 15,000 locations, mostly in the country, but it also requires connections for about 200 non-combat military and U.S. government locations overseas. Essentially, it’s a telephone contract for the U.S. government.

Managed by the General Services Administration, the request for proposal for Networx is 1,000 pages long. It asks for the usual voice, video and data connection capabilities that were in the old government contract, called FTS2000. But Networx adds a wireless component; fixed and mobile satellite communications, IP-based videoconferencing, and wireless and wireless Internet capabilities.

Several giant telecommunications carriers have bid on it. Deadline to bid on the Networx Enterprise contract was Oct. 24th. The GSA plans to award the contracts in the summer of 2006. It’s worth about $20 billion over the next 10 years.

As Wireless Week explains:

Wireless services, while an important and growing area for government communications, ultimately will be only 25 percent of the total services provided to government users under the new contract, says Tony D’Agata, vice president of federal government operations at Sprint Nextel, one of the bidders on the contract.

The GSA is not specific as to wireless technology’s role in the overall contract as the agency is in the middle of evaluating bids.

In addition to the wireless services expected by the Networx Program, GSA also has introduced Satcom-II, which will provide a range of satellite services to augment the wireless services provided by Networx.

Sprint Nextel is counting on its experience as a wireless carrier and as an incumbent on the current FTS2000 contract to help it win a piece of the Networx contract, according to D’Agata. “GSA is looking to have wireless become part of the [Networx] contract. It will allow some of its other wireless contracts to expire and possibly roll them into Networx,” he says.

Other bidders are looking to leverage wireless services and have incorporated wireless and other partners in their bids. AT&T Government Solutions’ bidding team includes Northrop Grumman Information Technology, EDS, GTSI Corporation, SRA International, Cingular Wireless and Global Crossing. MCI, which has the governmental go-ahead to be acquired by Verizon Communications, is partnering with Verizon Wireless.

The history of GSA’s telecom contracts takes on a near-epic sweep. The initial FTS 2000 award went to AT&T and Sprint in 1988. That contract’s replacement (FTS 2001), was awarded to Sprint and MCI in 1998 and 1999, and now the impending award of Networx will be awarded next year.

Of course The Treasury is planning their own massive global network.

The $10 billion Integrated Wireless Network (IWN), a joint effort between the departments of Justice, Homeland Security and Treasury, is envisioned to support about 80,000 federal officers in all 50 states. The IWN design is based on VHF, Project 25 radios with a packet switched Internet Protocol (IP) backbone.

If the agencies cannot agree to work together, then the Office of Management and Budget will decide the matter.

Public Service, Security, Space & Satellites | 1 Comment »

And if you should survive
to a hundred and five
look at all you`ll derive
out of being alive…

TechWeb recently had a contest for The Best Independent Tech Blog of 2005

After vetting the nominations for non-tech and non-independent blogs, we disqualified any that were obvious attempts to cram the process. Then, we sorted the remaining by number of nominations (descending), viewed, reviewed, and re-reviewed each nominated blog.

Here are the top Independent Tech Blogs.

• Andy on Enterprise Software (andyhayler.blogspot.com)
• Day in the Life of an Information Security Investigator (blogs.ittoolbox.com/security/investigator)
• Gear Live (www.gearlive.com)
• Gizmodo (www.gizmodo.com)
• MuniWireless (www.muniwireless.com)
• Oh Gizmo! (www.ohgizmo.com)
• RealTechNews (www.realtechnews.com)
• SmallBizTechnology.com (www.smallbiztechnology.com)
• TechCruch (techcrunch.com)
• TechNudge (www.technudge.com)

CMP, which sponsors this contest, publishes EE Times so you’d think it wouldn’t be an email harvesting scam. Also check out Business Week’s Best of the Web, News.com’s Blog 100, Feedster’s Top 500, the WSJ list of favorite blogs and Walt Mossberg’s favorite sites, too. Technorati and Memeorandum can find a ton of relevant blog hits while DiggVsSdot and GoogleFight are just for fun.

My current favorites include Russell Beattie and John Battelle (excerpts). I’m sure you can think of dozens of others (why not add them to the comments).

Alan Meckler, CEO of JupiterMedia, says to check out John Patricks’s thoughts on Blogs.
John is the “father of the Internet at IBM” and is well known as a profound tech thinker.

To wit:

Blogging is not limited to traditional documents or notices. For example, a patient on a hospital gurney moving from the ER to the recovery room can generate important information as the patient is wheeled through the doorways of the hospital. An RFID tag could trigger a short posting which gets delivered to the primary care physician’s Patients folder. A periodic glance at the doctor’s blog reader would incidcate whether there are any new postings advising of patients whereabouts.

The bottom line is that it will become very hard to justify publishing any kind of information in anything other than a blogging format. What is the blogging format?

…The dominant format for blogging is called RSS — really simple syndication. Some will argue that Atom is going to supersede RSS.

Syndication is a fancy word and it is a hallmark of blogs. There are some sophisticated definitions of syndication but the significance and subtlety for most of us is that it provides a way to “subscribe” to something without providing your email address. Every blog has a “feed”. I call the feeds “webtocs” because in effect a feed is a weblog table of contents.

The webtoc contains the date, author, subject, categories, and content of the stories that the blogger has written. The blogger decides whether the webtoc will contain a list of everything they have ever published or, more likely, the latest fifty or the latest thirty days worth of postings. Web sites where blogs reside normally contain an orange icon .

Blog syndicates might be the future for newspapers. Why not one hundred, targeted sections updated daily? Every neighborhood. Every interest.

Rupert Murdock Gets It:

Someone the other day said, “It’s the biggest thing since Gutenberg,” and then someone else said, “No, it’s the biggest thing since the invention of writing.”

The fact is that everybody now is empowered: Anyone can buy what they want, shop where they want, talk to anybody in the world (and) state their own opinions. There’s no mystery to a blog: Put up your thoughts (and) find friends. And the younger people are, the more time they’re spending on it — it’s extraordinary.

…I do think we have got to develop an interactive broadband connection to the home. You’ve got Sprint and Nextel together; they’ve got the frequencies. WiMax is the thing of the future.

…and here is the best part…you have a head start.

Commentary | No Comments »

The city of Houston, with a population of 2 million, will begin looking in March for a company to build and operate a city-wide wireless Internet network, reports the Houston Chronicle.

By having a private company behind the project, Houston Mayor Bill White believes he can avoid some of the battle cries from telecommunications companies opposed to municipal WiFi.

White said no tax dollars would be used to create a broadband wireless network. Instead, the city will issue a request for proposals seeking a company to build and operate it.

In turn, city government would have free access to a variety of broadband applications, like enhanced communications, a high-tech parking meter system and increased telecommuting for city workers.

It could also mean increased Internet access for low-income residents.

The plan calls for a private company to pick up the entire tab at a cost of about $1 million to install the equipment downtown and less than $100 million for the 620 square miles that make up greater Houston.

Telecommunications giants like SBC Corp. and Time Warner, which are locked in a tight battle in Houston and elsewhere to supply high-speed Internet services, have long fought such municipal projects, complaining that they create an atmosphere where government is competing with the private sector.

Such grumblings won’t stop White, who, when announcing his support for Houston’s WiFi project, told a recent gathering of technology leaders that the city would fight back against companies that try to interfere.

In a recent interview, he said companies like SBC or Time Warner have “no good reason to fight it unless we were going to try to finance the system with taxpayer dollars, which we’re not proposing to do. We’re not trying to compete with any private business, and we want to make this technology option available.”

Like SBC, Time Warner is watching closely as the project develops. The company said it is concerned that signals coming from a municipal WiFi network will interfere with its own wireless Internet products used in area homes and businesses.

“We see a citywide WiFi deployment as very problematic for whomever tries to operate such a network because of all the interference issues that will be encountered,” Time Warner spokesman Michael Bybee said.

“I would like Houston to be where Seoul, South Korea, is — an urban center that is a recognized world leader,” White said. “The law of physics aren’t different in Korea.”

The City of Corpus Christi Texas is using a Tropos MetroMesh network with the primary function of automatically reading the utility meters throughout the 147 square miles of the city. Intel did a case study (284KB PDF), for Corpus Christi (pop 281,000). The Corpus Christi Cloud uses Tropos mesh networking (which Intel also has an investment in).

Houston plans to acquire thousands of electronic parking meters, similar to Portland’s. Houston wants to replace their 800,000 meters with some 100,000 “smart meters”. Seven vendors, ACS, Cale Systems, Clancy Services, Parkeon, Rhino and SGR Controls are competing for the contract. Let’s see…100,000 meters times $35/month. Humm…

At $12/month, WiFi might save taxpayers $20 million every year. No wonder Cingular thinks it’s a bad idea.

HP and Nortel are building a WiFi Cloud in Taipei, Taiwan. They plan to deliver wireless services to almost 90 per cent of the capital’s population, nearly three million people. Taipei plans to spend $70 million on infrastructure, setting up 15,000 to 20,000 access points around the city.

DailyWireless has more on The Corpus Christi Cloud and Intel’s Digital Cities Initiative.

Municipal Wireless | No Comments »

Warner Brothers and AOL are preparing an Internet service that lets fans watch full episodes from more than 100 old television series, reports the New York Times. The service, called In2TV, will be free, supported by advertising, and will start early next year. More than 4,800 episodes will be made available online in the first year.

Programs on In2TV will have one to two minutes of commercials for each half-hour episode, compared with eight minutes in a standard broadcast. The Internet commercials cannot be skipped.

America Online, which is making a broad push into Internet video, will distribute the service on its Web portal. Both it and Warner Brothers are Time Warner units. An enhanced version of the service will use peer-to-peer file-sharing technology to get the video data to viewers.

Warner, with 800 television programs in its library, says it is the largest TV syndicator. It wants to use the Internet to reach viewers rather than depend on the whims of cable networks and local TV stations, said Eric Frankel, the president of Warner Brothers’ domestic cable distribution division.

Other recent internet video offerings include a deal with ABC and Apple iPods for $1.99 downloads of hit tv series. NBC and CBS also announced last week that they would sell reruns of their top new shows for 99 cents an episode through video-on-demand services. CBS is working with Comcast and NBC with DirecTV.

The NY Times says next month AOL will introduce TMZ, an entertainment news service, in a joint venture with another Warner Brothers division, Telepictures Productions. TMZ, named for the 30-mile zone around Hollywood that is mentioned in some film-union contracts, will mix breaking entertainment news and gossip with a database of information and video about celebrities.

TMZ and most of AOL’s programming effort, so far, have been built largely around short video segments, reflecting the conventional view that Internet users are less likely to want to watch full-length programs on a computer screen.

AOL will offer a version of the service meant to be watched on a television set connected to a Windows Media Center PC, and it is exploring a similar arrangement to link the Internet programming to television through TiVo video recorders.

For those who want to watch on a big screen, AOL is introducing optional technology called AOL Hi-Q. To use the technology, viewers will have to agree to participate in a special file-sharing network. This approach helps AOL reduce the cost of distributing-high quality video files by passing portions of the video files from one user’s computer to another. AOL says that since it will control the network, it can protect users from the sorts of viruses and spyware that infect other peer-to-peer systems.

AOL is using file-sharing technology from Kontiki, a Silicon Valley company providing a similar system to the ambitious Internet video program of the BBC.

Other recent VOD announcements include:

• Cingular Wireless introduced a radio service for its mobile phone customers today, using about 40 channels of commercial-free music from Music Choice and MobiTV’s streaming media service. The Cingular service runs over their data connections service. Cingular also plans a song download service similar to Sprint’s. MobiTV also delivers video clips to Cingular and Sprint mobile phones.
• Yahoo and TiVo are teaming up to blend TV and the Web. The service will allow TiVo users to program their DVRs remotely using Yahoo’s web site.Yahoo TV offers show times, program descriptions and cast photographs as well as exclusive content like information from “Entertainment Tonight” and others. Subscribers with a TiVo Series2 box and a standard Yahoo ID may use the service, the companies said. TiVo has some 254,000 subscribers, down from 288,000 a year earlier. Key to that drop was a 5 percent decline in new customers from DirecTV, its biggest source of new customers, which has said it plans to cease marketing TiVo’s product.
• Comcast and CBS are teaming for VOD. Beginning in January, Comcast digital cable customers will be able to view episodes of popular shows anytime after midnight on the nights the shows air. Comcast will charge $0.99 a pop for each on-demand episode.
• DIRECTV and NBC announced a deal for programming on demand. It will give consumers access to the top programs of NBC and its cable entertainment networks, USA, SCI FI and Bravo, within hours after they air, commercial free, for 99 cents. The programs will be available on demand through the new DIRECTV Plus interactive DVR which will be available at retailers such as Best Buy and Circuit City this month.
• Last month Disney announced a pact with Apple to make several ABC and Disney Channel shows available for download via iTunes for $1.99 per episode.
• Google’s Video search beta will search through archives of recent closed caption television broadcasts. At present the service is limited to a handful of US television stations - ABC, PBS, Fox News and C-SPAN.
• Yahoo said it plans to move video search to its home page and introduce its own closed-captioning text search, partnering with content providers Bloomberg and the BBC. Unlike the Google service, Yahoo’s offering will let users watch 60-second video clips.
• AOL Video enable you to search for and play back thousands of free video clips.

Other movie download services include the studio-backed MovieLink, Walt Disney’s over-the-air MovieBeam, Starz Encore, CinemaNow and soon Netflicks.

Related Dailywireless stories include; Telco’s Left Behind in IPTV Armageddon?, Google TV, The Free Triple Play, NY Times Blinkx, CBS/Comcast Broadband, Global Mobile Television, The FeedRoom, Ad Supported Wireless Net, Cellular Ads, Localizing Content, Microsoft CoLocates, Intel: Cloud Apps R Us, Rebuilding Media, Revolution in Mobile Services, Ad Supported FreeFi, Wireless Advertising on Buses, Dayton’s Ad-Supported Cloud, DotSpot Ad Server, Bridging the Divide and WiMax Handsets.

Broadcasting & Cable, VoIP & IP-TV | No Comments »