Broadband Jungle Blog

Internet Metering - Back to the good old bad days?

During peak times, 5% of Internet users are hogging 50% of the bandwidth?

How to reply if you're a service provider? Metering? Open access? Tiered plans?

Mark Cuban already cast his vote and kicked of a thunderstorm: Why Tiered Broadband is a Wonderful Thing and ASIVS.

'Leave and take your bit torrent client with you.'

While cable giants like Comcats and Time Warner and telecoms like AT&T are figuring out how to add valves to their pipelines to reign in some of their hard-core users, industry mags like Mediapost's Blogs have long been engaging in the debate.

Now the New York Times is weighing in with a clarifying survey from Brian Stelter.
His article from June 15 compares the potential of 'Internet metering' to the industry's clumsy business models from the early days:

'The Time Warner plan has the potential to bring Internet use full circle, back to the days when pay-as-you-go pricing held back the Web’s popularity. In the early days of dial-up access, America Online and other providers offered tiered pricing, in part because audio and video were barely viable online. Consumers feared going over their allotted time and bristled at the idea that access to cyberspace was billed by the hour.'

Stelter compares some of the plans in discussion and the perspective is grim: Bandwidth allotments appear to favor the very casual Internet user simply sending e-mail and reading the news.

Streaming an hour of video on Hulu, which shows programs like “Saturday Night Live,” “Family Guy” and “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” consumes about 200 megabytes, or one-fifth of a gigabyte. A higher-quality hour of the same content bought through Apple’s iTunes store can use about 500 megabytes, or half a gigabyte.

A high-definition episode of “Survivor” on CBS.com can use up to a gigabyte, and a DVD-quality movie through Netflix’s new online service can eat up about five gigabytes. One Netflix download alone, in fact, could bring a user to the limit on the cheapest plan in Time Warner’s trial in Beaumont.   

What this could mean to our fledgling rich media loving industry is pretty obvious:

“We hate it,” said a senior executive at a major media company, who requested anonymity because his company, like all broadcasters, must play nice with the same cable operators that are imposing the limits. Now that some television shows are viewed millions of times online, the executive said, any impediment would hurt the advertising model for online video streaming.

Yahoo's Steve Mitgang new Veoh CEO

Has Dmitry Shapiro's pioneering VeohTV broadband network finally found who it needs to  turn into a portal that really matters? Niche talk is on.

Abbey Klaassen writes in AdAge: Yahoo Veteran Looks for Veoh's 'Great Business'

Steve Mitgang arrived at Yahoo via its Overture acquisition in July 2003. aBut now as Veoh CEO, he believes there's a big business in online video advertising. That is, if marketers can figure out how to target the intentions of viewers.

Ad Age: Why has it been so hard to create a viable business around online video? It seems to be wildly popular among consumers.

Mr. Mitgang: According to the reports, YouTube only sold $30 million in ads last year because they didn't build a system to support ... that healthy tension between editorial and advertising. They just didn't build it.

The flip side of understanding those user behaviors and recommendations is for targeting purchases. We can say, look at the car enthusiasts ... [these ones] are primarily interested in German cars or muscle cars. Being able to tell that to the brand manager of Mustang or Mini, we'll be able to help them better than anyone else. Whether watching user-generated or premium content we'll help target against the right users.

MediaPost goes SciFi and looks back

Here's a very clever analysis of things to come in a TV Board post dropped by Joe Mandese, editor in chief at the reliable MediaPost. Camouflaged as a report filed in 2009, Looking Back predicts successful TV and Internet video convergence for 6 months from now in all our living rooms.

"Who would have thought when we launched this discussion board of industry thought leaders back in 2006 that television would go the way of the telegraph and become one of the few mass media to actually become extinct?"

Speaking my mind exactly. Here's how Mandese envisions the shift finally taking place:

"The turning point came 18 months ago when Google acquired Gemstar TV Guide and merged the universal remote control with its Universal Search service, once and for all ending the need for channel surfing or dial flipping."

Couldn't agree more. Until these or similarly equipped forces finally merge, all that's left to help us connect video from several portals is GoGooroo, which is why we started the whole thing. Couldn't find anything!

"My right thumb still twitches with phantom muscle memory every time I pick up my Apple iRemote to change the channel — er, video screen platform — even though the nifty new device relies solely on a retinal interface. And I’ll never get used to those Eyebuds. I don’t care how freakin’ cool they look, they keep falling out."

Sounds like a Philip K.Dick novel?  He's not quite done yet:

"Google’s server farms simply spider the content directly from the master control systems of local stations, and the satellite uplinks of networks reroute video programming to the screen of a user’s choice."

A brilliant book waiting to be written. Enjoy!