Light Reading has a report on the keynote delivered by Brian Roberts, Comcast’s Chair and CEO, at the Consumer Electronics Show.
The address spoke about Project Infinity, an initiative that will rollout more than 1000 HD choices to consumers by the end of the year.
The article says this is a response to Verizon’s fibre to the home. How will other telcos respond to cable TV powering multi-set HD devices in a household?
Is there an alternative to Verizon’s architecture of building FTTH?
A report out of CES says that the FCC is planning to investigate Comcast’s practice of managing Bit Torrent traffic. The article says that groups asked the FCC to levy heavy fines against Comcast: $195,000 for every affected subscriber.
Is it fair game to manage all torrent traffic equally?
Late in December, I wrote about Yak filing applications with the CRTC to “protect Canadians against consumer gouging“, referring to a new network access charge being levied by TELUS to customers who had no long distance plan.
The CRTC had received 600 consumer complaints about the charge and so it had started its own investigation. TELUS responded to initial CRTC interrogatories in late November although I found at least one of the answers somewhat tough to decipher.
It is still unclear to me if a consumer can use casual calling (101XXXX+) if they are forced to sign up for toll blocking in order to avoid being hit with the TELUS network charge.
The two processes were blended into a single Type 2 proceeding, one that is expected to involve multiple parties or raise significant policy issues. The charge is yet another example of a “system access fee”.
Under the CRTC’s guidelines for such proceedings, we may not have a decision until September, 2008.
The CRTC could rule the charge to be illegal and force a refund. As such, will there be a potential liability growing on the books?
Before the holidays, an ITAC study reported that 95% of Canadians still turn to traditional media for their trusted general news reporting, despite two thirds of households having broadband internet connections.
More than 80% still rely of conventional media for breaking news.
The study found that only 11.5% believe that online media is unbiased, and 12% believe that online media is accurate. (The news release didn’t report on the trustworthiness of traditional media.)
We will be exploring new media content on a couple panels at The 2008 Canadian Telecom Summit: Consumers in a Multi-screen World and Content & Entertainment over Broadband.
How many people bought new HDTVs over the holidays and are now signing up for new packages from their cable companies and satellite service providers? Renting or buying new HDTV set top boxes, PVRs and signing up for enhanced programming packages?
A lot, I’ll bet, generating lots of new revenues for broadcast distributors.
Otherwise, there are a lot of distorted images coming across their screens – short, fat hockey players according to one of the TV commercials.
Many of those new TVs have sophisticated tuners, picture-in-picture and timing capabilities that go completely to waste because there is currently no standard way for manufacturers to build an integrated digital tuner for the cable industry.
Well, today, ahead of a speech at the Consumer Electronics Show, and ahead of FCC intervention, Comcast is announcing that there will be an industry standardization initiative, tru2way, to enable open development of new services and features that rely on two-way communication over the cable network.
Comcast plans to roll out the new platform to all of its markets later this year and Time Warner cable is said to be ahead of Comcast. Panasonic plans to announce a compatible Viera plasma HDTV set this year.
Is there any activity on this front in Canada? Is it even on the regulatory radar screen?
