This week in etilities, Comcast (Etilities Forum) tries to expand its footprint, Kazaa decides to become a law-abiding entertainment provider, and Microsoft moves its Office flagship to the cloud.

Comcast releases iPhone app, brings premium content to the web

Comcast is starting an online offering trial where if you are subscribing to HBO or Cinemax you can now watch some of the content online. There will be initially about 750 hours of content available, with both movies and TV shows.

Later in the week, Comcast also released a neat iPhone application that lets you check your voicemail, email, see TV listings, and even let you schedule on-demand rentals.

Microsoft announces Office 2010

It’s been a very exciting few weeks for the tech media with the increasingly apparent showdown in between Google and Microsoft. This week it’s Microsoft’s turn to strike with the announcement of Office 2010, which will be free, web-based, and obviously a direct jab at Google Docs.

Kazaa turns away from the dark side

I have many fond memories of Napster and Kazaa in college, providing countless hours of ‘free’ entertainment. This seems the end of an era indeed as Kazaa has announced a new offering with unlimited mp3 downloads for $20 a month. We wish them the best of luck with this new business model.
©2008-2009, Gallop Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

This week in etilities: companies keep competing for dominance in the internet TV market, the case is made for and against Google Voice, and your last excuse not to back up your data is taken away.

Comcast, Time Warner, Netflix still going after Hulu

Comcast (Etilities Forum) and Time Warner Cable (Etilities Forum) are working on a response to the Hulu (Etilities Forum) phenomenon with the development of a ‘TV Everywhere‘ service that allows users to view content that they pay for via subscriptions on their computer. The main differentiator here with Hulu is obviously the fact that you need to be paying for a subscription. If, like me, you find yourself increasingly unable to tolerate advertisement, and if Comcast and Time Warner manage to keep the costs associated with this reasonable (this is where I’m not so hopeful), this could be the beginning of an appealing alternative to ad-supported TV.

Meanwhile, Netflix (Etilities Forum) is also looking ahead, projecting that the number of subscribers for its DVD-mailing service will slowly decline over the next ten years. Their answer? Boost the number of titles available for streaming, as well as their quality. Great idea on paper; the trick will undoubtedly be to sell the big studios on it.

The case for and against Google Voice

PC World put out a great piece this week on the five reasons to use Google Voice, and the five reasons not to. What it allows you to do is centralize the control of all of your phone numbers in a single location so that, for example, calling your cell phone number also makes your phones in your home and office ring. You can also manage your voicemails, SMS messages, and much more. According the PC World, the possible downsides mainly fall within two categories: privacy and reliability.

You can now afford to keep your data safe

Do you want a place to safely store your ripped DVDs and other large amounts of data at an affordable price? You may be in luck. Gizmodo came out this week with the review of a great new product from Western Digital: the My Book World Edition II. For $700, you can buy a 4TB networked storage book with 2TB of usable storage space (the other 2TBs back up the first 2TB). Unless you have a bigger media library than I do (yeah, right), that is more than enough space and you can sleep soundly and know that your data is safe from a hard-drive failure.

You no longer have an excuse not to back up!

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

An Oregon Senator has escalated the rhetoric about net-neturality rules and specifically the lack of clarity about them as the internet continues to grow.  The culprit, according to Senator Ron Wyden, is the Federal Communications Commission and its complete lack of focus on the issue.  Comcast (Etilities Forum) and other providers have had issues with the FCC’s rulings and authority to enforce poorly defined rules in the past.  As the pressure steps up, we hope that the FCC will provide providers and consumers alike additional clarity on net-neutrality concepts, rules and enforcement authority.

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

As we were researching Comcast (Etilities Forum) and its DOCSIS 3.0 service, or for those of you who had to look it up, their “Fastest Fast” service, we ran across something fairly unusual.  In searching for the availability of Comcast at our location, the company returned the following message:   “Comcast is not a provider in your area, [...] Maybe you should move to a place where you can get Comcast.”  There are many reasons to move: new jobs, significant others, family, cost of living, adventures…but Comcast?  We do have to appreciate their sense of humor!  

After all, if you are a speed junky and are looking for one of their plans including the “Ultra” 22Mbps plan running for $63 or the “Extreme” 50Mbps for $140 we’ll be the last ones to say anything.

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

Charter Communications (Etilities Forum) apparently didn’t want Comcast (Etilities Forum) to have all the fun, recently announcing they will place monthly bandwidth caps on their cable Internet customers. Entry tier users (15Mbps) will have just 100GB per month – less than half that of Comcast. Customers at the next tier up will be capped at 250GB (on par with Comcast), while those at the brand new 60Mbps tier will enjoy fully unmetered access.  That last privilege comes at a price of $130 or more per month, though.

These caps will affect all Charter customers effective Monday, February 9th.  Charter has not yet announced plans on how they will address overuse.  Extra fees, decreased network speeds, or even loss of Internet connectivity could be on the table.

As with all bandwidth caps, consumers will see the impact as they increase the use of their Internet connections by voice and entertainment services.

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

It seems that Comcast (Etilities Forum)’s troubles with the FCC over net neutrality are not over. Although the matter of its network management practices has been settled, there is now an ongoing debate on whether Comcast favors its own VOIP offering over similar services provided by companies like Skype (Etilities Forum) and Vonage (Etilities Forum).

The issue here is that VOIP communications typically goes over your internet pipe just like any other IP-based traffic. Therefore, when the network is very congested, your calls may sound choppy. If you have Comcast as a VOIP provider, however, network congestion will not necessarily result in a problem with your calls since they operate on a different pipe, dedicated to voice.

The FCC argues that given that both pipes are IP-based, this consitutes preferential treatment by the provider for its own VOIP service over others. Comcast refutes this by saying that they are two seperate services, one being only for its own VOIP and the other being for the rest of the internet world. Comcast justifies this in part by saying that you can sign up for their voice service without signing up for their internet service and that they are therefore indeed seperate pipes.

Read the rest of this entry »

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

Given the infamous head-to-head in between Comcast (Etilities Forum) and the FCC last year over the practice of bandwidth throttling based on traffic type, one might be surprised to hear that Cox Communications (Etilities Forum) is going down the very same road. Indeed the company announced on Tuesday a “Congestion Management” program that will essentially divide all traffic into two lanes: time-sensitive and non-time-sensitive. If you are using your bandwidth for non-time-sensitive transmissions, then Cox will slow them down. Time-sensitive traffic includes Web, Voip, Email, IM, Streaming and Games, while non-time-sensitive includes P2P (surprise surprise), Network Storage, FTP and Software Updates. Cox will begin experimenting this new policy in Kansas and Arkansas in February.

Read the rest of this entry »
©2008-2009, Gallop Services, Inc. All rights reserved.