As previously published, broadband providers employ various mechanisms to restrict the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) activity on their networks.  Today, AT&T (Etilities Forum) joins the fray by threatening to disconnect users from leveraging bandwith-heavy application, often known at P2P.  The difference, however, is that AT&T plans to take these steps on its newly-activated 3G wireless network, which provides service to mobile devices including cell phones and the Apple, Inc. iPhone.

So…what does this mean?  For once, I think this indicates a favorable step.  It means that the wireless 3G network is approaching “broadband” status.  This means that more choices for high-speed network access are being rolled out by providers, which will drive down prices due to the added options available to consumers.  However, it appears that the technology needs to mature somewhat in order to be as robust as regular fixed communications mechanisms.  The real “good news” will be when P2P and other bandwidth-intensive applications are NOT curbed by providers.  Until then, we’ll have to wait and see.

©2008-2009, Gallop Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

The way media finds its way from producers to consumers is ever-evolving. It used to be clear which medium was delivered through what product: newspapers produced written content and radio produced audio content. You would have never expected your radio to provide you written news because it was just never built with that end in mind.

Fast forward about 70 years and all the sudden the lines are not so clear. More and more the trend is for all products to provide all different types of content. For example, you probably only expect your gaming console to play video games. But there has actually been a recent push to make them deliver more than that, for example movies that are streamed through your internet connection and that you can choose and watch without leaving your couch or even having to power up your DVD player.

Netflix (Etilities Forum) announced during this year’s E3 plans to partner with Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) in order to turn the XBOX 360 into a streaming media center. Last week, Tivo (Etilities Forum) also announced that it was partnering with Amazon (Etilities Forum) to allow customers to shop for media online without leaving their couch.

This constitutes a clear trend of essentially ‘making your hardware do more’. You should expect more and more that the functional boundaries around physical products are going to be going away, and that long gone will be the days when the only way to watch a TV show was to tune in to the right channel at the right time and sit through 20 minutes of commercials per hour.

Although it was already possible to hack your existing products to make them do more, the difference here is that the big names are streamlining this concept and making it a supported industry solution as opposed to a hazardous hobby that is likely to cost you more in voided warranties than it is worth.

Now what does this all do for us consumers? Well, for one more choices, and that – of course – means more competition which inevitably leads to lower prices and higher quality.

©2008-2009, Gallop Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

Variety reports that Time Warner Cable (NYSE:TWC) is reducing the time between releasing the physical DVD and Blu-Ray versions of movies and the corresponding online, on-demand versions of the same titles in order to fight piracy.  Certainly, By increasing the availability of their material, this move – albeit late by several accounts – is anticipated to reduce the “need” to steal it.

The article explains how and why Time Warner is implementing this program and the competing offerings from other companies who have teamed up with Comcast (Etilities Forum).  It also provides an excellent high-level view of the video rental/sale/download market.  The only question left unanswered is how cable providers will reconcile the fact that it’s good business for them to make more material available online while at the same time restricting the bandwidth available to customers.

It certainly seems that by doing this, the cable operator hopes to charge you for downloading a movie and charge you again for exceeding your allocated bandwidth – a definite concern of consumers.  What’s also left to be seen is how the FCC may view the next logical (and, at this time theoretical) step, which would be that a cable provider only allows fast or unmetered access to online rentals of movies by its own studio.  For example, Time Warner Cable and Warner Brothers Studios are both subsidiaries of Time Warner, Inc. (NYSE:TWX).  This kind of self-favoring treatment would clearly run afoul from the hopeful environment of network neutrality.

©2008-2009, Gallop Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

A recent Wired article highlights AT&T (Etilities Forum) slowing growth in new customers.  While there is some worry about this slowdown, I think it may actually be promising news for consumers.

A slowdown in broadband means several things to you, the consumer.  The first reason is price.  Following the basic economic principles of supply and demand, a reduction in demand (fewer consumers signing up for broadband service) with a constant supply (same Internet distribution network remains in place) will result in lower prices.  As we’ve covered before, unlike oil, we know that there is plenty of supply of broadband (at least in major cities).  Therefore the slowdown in new demand may very well indicate that we’ll see prices fall in the near-to-mid-term future.

The second important factor to note is the fact that this slowdown of new growth indicates a certain level of maturation which will lead to further commodization of bandwidth.  This is important in the sense that it will lead to a broader use and availability of services such as video into the home, real-time business and personal user-to-user interaction, and other bandwidth-intensive applications.

Although a much larger issue to be covered in future articles, widespread global interconnectivity will increase global prosperity by delivering information services to nearly every citizen of the world.  This is precisely the reason that Gallop Services, Inc. was founded.  The bottom line: This slow down means that your providers will have to work harder to earn your business, and that is always good news for you and I as consumers!

©2008-2009, Gallop Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

Hopefully, you’ve had a chance to consider an overall backup strategy for your data. Now let’s get started on actually implementing it!

This article, the second of four, will look into the hardware available for use in establishing a local backup of your data.  That is, a backup or series of backups that are stored at the same location as your primary computer.  For sake of argument, we’ll say this is “in-house” storage, meaning that it resides somewhere within your home.  We’ll compare and contrast three of the most common options, giving you the background needed to establish your own set of requirements and to select a suitable solution.

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©2008-2009, Gallop Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

The seemingly unending debate over network neutrality heated up this week as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) blasted Comcast (Etilities Forum) regarding their undisclosed limitation of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) traffic.  This type of traffic is often used to exchange large files and media, and generally requires a tremendous amount of network bandwidth.  In the past, Comcast had targeted certain P2P applications such as BitTorrent, LimeWire, and Vuze, degrading the performance of their consumers’ Internet connections for those and similar applications.  Such targeted enforcement violates the fundamental premise of the “net neutrality” concept.  That concept, although simple, strives on the idea that a provider should not restrict access to specific content, sites, or platforms.

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©2008-2009, Gallop Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

Webster defines a commodity as “A good or service whose wide availability typically leads to smaller profit margins and diminishes the importance of factors other than price” and “One that is subject to ready exchange or exploitation within a market“.  Wikipedia offers more of a plain-English definition, stating that  ”a commodity is anything for which there is demand, but which is supplied without … differentiation across a market.”  Basically, when you identify that something has such widespread availability that paying for it is a ‘given’, you’ve got yourself a commodity.

Looking back, the commoditization of computing equipment has been inevitable since Moore’s law was first stated in 1965.  Following a massive consolidation of the industry, computers are everywhere and the healthy competition between vendors generally translates into minor differentiation between products of the major manufacturers.  In fact, the differences are so minor that large computer companies such as Dell (NASDAQ:DELL), and Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ) are all beginning to adapt their business lines by focusing on the services behind their products, which generally to bring in higher margins and provide more distinct differences between options that consumers choose.

What few people know about is that there is a law that applies to bandwidth, just as Moore’s law applies to general computing power.  The bandwidth law is known as Butter’s Law of Photonics.  Gerald Butters, former president of Lucent’s Optical Networking Group, states that the volume of data we can push down an optical fiber is doubling every nine months.  Thus, the cost of transmitting a bit through an optical network is halved every nine months.

Just as computers have become commodities we use in our everyday lives (whether on our desk, watch, cars, planes, or fridge), so will bandwidth.  Along with that major shift, the customer will benefit from the market change that results – competitors will differentiate their service by factors other than price, because the unit price will be so low as to be indistinguishable.

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©2008-2009, Gallop Services, Inc. All rights reserved.