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Wednesday, August 31
NextWeb still adding to WISP holdings
by
Mike
on Wed 31 Aug 2005 08:07 AM PDT
NextWeb still adding to WISP holdings NextWeb, the Fremont, Calif., wireless ISP that has acquired or merged with a handful of fellow ISPs over the last few years, announced it has acquired the assets of 1st Universe, a fixed-wireless service provider in Southern California's Orange County. The addition will compliment NextWeb's existing network in the Los Angeles area.
Graham Barnes, CEO and founder of NextWeb, said his company already has "an established network in the Southern California area as a result of our SkyPipeline and WorldWide Wireless acquisitions. With our acquisition of 1st Universe, we now have a significant footprint and valuable market share that will allow us to increase capacity, coverage and availability for NextWeb."
The acquisition will combine 1st Universe's coverage area in the greater Orange County, CA area with NextWeb's extensive network throughout California and Nevada. NextWeb currently provides service to more than 2,500 corporate accounts in the largest metropolitan markets in California and Nevada including the San Francisco Bay Area, the Greater Los Angeles area, Orange County and, most recently, Las Vegas.
While NextWeb has been expanding its network, it also has continued to raise new funding, most recently picking up $3.5 million in new financing. Meanwhile, Barnes said that Sean Loftis, president and CEO of 1st Universe, grew his company into a strong competitor with virtually no outside investment. "We have chosen NextWeb to take the company to the next level as it continues to strive for the widespread deployment of broadband fixed-wireless service in Southern California and beyond," Loftis said in a statement.
Microsoft Buys Skype Rival
by
Mike
on Wed 31 Aug 2005 07:41 AM PDT
Microsoft Buys Skype Rival
As if VOIP sector watchers didn't have enough to tax their brains at the moment, Microsoft Corp. has added to the IP telephony frenzy by announcing the acquisition of privately held startup Teleo, which has developed VOIP technology very similar to that of Skype Technologies SA Financial details weren't disclosed.
The news follows hot on the heels of: last week's announcement of an online voice service from Google talk that voice over broadband specialist Vonage Holdings Corp. is looking to cash in on its initial success; and wild estimations of Skype's value.
It also follows Yahoo Inc.'s acquisition of VOIP service provider Dialpad Communications Inc., announced in July
So what is Teleo? A very similar beast to Skype, in that it provides downloadable software that enables free, SIP-compatible Teleo-to-Teleo voice calls, and the ability to make calls to, and receive calls from, the PSTN from a PC.
Earlier this year, VOIP industry commentator Irwin Lazar described Teleo as "Skype on steroids" and noted that Teleo's ability to integrate with Microsoft's Outlook and Internet Explorer applications, and the fact that each user is assigned a regular phone number, potentially make it an attractive option for business users. It also seems to have made it attractive to Microsoft.
Teleo offers its users the ability to route incoming calls to any phone, fixed or wireless, and includes a click-to-call function that allows users to make a call by right-clicking on phone numbers listed on Web pages.
However, Teleo is way behind Skype in terms of feature development -- for instance, it doesn't offer an instant messaging client. It also charges $4.95 per month, whereas using Skype is still free.
Teleo completed its beta testing in July and had wound down its service for further application developments and enhancements. Skype, meanwhile, is the P2P voice pioneer, with more than 50 million registered users and more than 2 million subscribers to its paid-for SkypeOut and SkypeIn services.
Monday, August 29
Canceling AOL? Just Offer Your Firstborn
by
Mike
on Mon 29 Aug 2005 08:10 AM PDT
Canceling AOL? Just Offer Your FirstbornThree years ago my brother died (officially missing, presumed dead - no death certificate)," wrote an anonymous contributor last week at gripe2ed.com, a consumer complaint Web log. "At that time I was able to cancel his credit card, gas, insurance - everything except his AOL account."
It seems that America Online, not entirely irrationally, needed a screen name and other account information to properly cancel the subscription - something this consumer, under the circumstances, did not have handy. Collection notices for payments past due soon followed. The consumer was not amused.
"Maybe other people have resorted to faking death in order to get out of their AOL accounts?"
Probably not, but last Wednesday the office of the New York attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, announced that it had reached a settlement with America Online, which is owned by Time Warner. The agreement requires AOL to "remove obstacles consumers face when seeking to switch or cancel service," suggests that breaking up with AOL, which admits to no wrongdoing in the matter, is hard to do.
As part of the settlement, the company must pay refunds to disgruntled New York subscribers, $1.25 million in fines and costs to the state and stop providing incentives to customer service representatives who generate "saves" by talking subscribers, sometimes relentlessly, out of canceling their accounts.
Nicholas J. Graham, a spokesman for America Online, said in an e-mailed statement that the company was "pleased to have reached agreement" with Mr. Spitzer, and that new customer care practices would "assist with the verification of certain member intentions online."
Whether the agreement will stick remains to be seen. After all, smooth-talking "retention specialists" are a staple of corporate customer service everywhere (Monster.com, the classified jobs board, lists thousands of openings). America Online's settlement with Mr. Spitzer comes after a scuffle with the Federal Trade Commission in 2003 over similar charges, and an agreement with the Ohio attorney general in June to give refunds to customers there for improperly billing after cancellations.
Whatever the long-term outcome, the challenges apparently being faced by some users seeking to quit America Online have fed a healthy subgenre of cybergriping and online solution-sharing for years. And while faking one's death or feigning lethal madness (see below) might go well beyond the necessary, the following excerpts do suggest a communication gap in which both company and consumer share some of the blame.
Should ISPs Pay for Music?
by
Mike
on Mon 29 Aug 2005 08:07 AM PDT
Should ISPs Pay for Music?
ISPs would do well to offer content to their subscribers, said Andrew Parker, CTO of CacheLogic, a Cambridge, England-based firm that monitors and reduces ISP bandwidth usage.
“ISPs can’t squeeze bandwidth because they’re still in a land grab,” he said, referring to the intense competition to offer high-speed Internet. “The emotional relationship is with content. The danger is to become a mere conduit.”
And this week’s announcements of Verizon and SBC’s partnerships with Yahoo (see Verizon, Yahoo in DSL Hookup, Yahoo, SBC Team on Music, and Yahoo Fueling DSL Demand) show that ISPs are seeing the value of Mr. Parker’s thinking on the matter.
But ISPs and Hollywood are not quite buddies, as high-speed Internet revenues have been largely driven by illegal file-sharing.
“At least 60 percent of activity on broadband networks is file-sharing,” said PlayLouderMSP CEO Paul Hitchman. He contends his 18-month-old company is “flipping the traditional relationship of resentment between ISPs and content owners.”
PlayLouder is especially focused on replicating the social nature of file-sharing networks by allowing customers to trade songs. However, the DRM details are not yet settled, said Mr. Hitchman. It’s unclear whether subscribers will be permitted to burn CDs, download songs to their portable players, or keep songs after canceling their PlayLouder service.
The bargaining power of one ISP may not be enough to get music labels to allow these kinds of flexibility. And Mr. Hitchman notes that his negotiations are limited to the United Kingdom; his company will have to find outside partners to make the deals available internationally.
But there does seem to be international support for the idea of ISP-sponsored music, at least in theory. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris advocated such a system in its recent commentary on the digital music industry.
“If ISPs charge a few euros or dollars a month, it would be larger-than-average revenues from regular CD purchases,” said OECD economist Sacha Wunsch-Vincent.
“Deploying broadband or 3G is a huge investment,” he added. “It needs to be recuperated somehow, and the only way is with value-added services.
“There’s win-win situations between the ISPs and the consumer content providers which haven’t really been seized yet.”
Internet service survey doesn't net any winners
by
Mike
on Mon 29 Aug 2005 08:05 AM PDT
Internet service survey doesn't net any winners
Consumer Reports' survey of subscribers' satisfaction with their Internet service providers (ISPs) failed to reveal a clear winner among the many contenders.
Broadband, of course, is the fastest type of Internet link, offering near-instantaneous connections and swifter downloads than slower — albeit cheaper — dial-up Internet service. Availability of broadband is growing, with virtually all cable-TV companies now offering the service and telephone companies wiring more neighborhoods for digital subscriber line (DSL) service.
In the magazine's spring 2005 survey of nearly 26,000 readers, the highest-scoring cable and DSL providers offered comparable, fairly high levels of satisfaction, while the least satisfactory of each received equally ho-hum ratings. Cost, meanwhile, was the main attraction for dial-up users: Prices ranged from $10 to $25 a month, compared with $40 to $50 a month for cable and $30 to $45 a month for DSL.
If you use the Internet mainly to check e-mail and occasionally to surf online, a dial-up connection may suffice. That said, even casual surfers will notice Web pages loading more quickly with broadband service. And the more time you spend online either downloading large files or uploading data to Web sites, the more you'll notice the speed differences with dial-up service.
While dial-up services are available nationwide, your choice in broadband providers will depend on where you live — right down to your neighborhood or even street, in some cases. Most cable companies now offer broadband, though they may not yet have wired their entire coverage area for the service. Major phone companies also typically offer DSL service in their most densely populated markets, but not yet in every neighborhood.
CR's survey showed a fairly narrow range in overall satisfaction for both cable and DSL providers. If high speed is your priority in an Internet connection, consider the cable service that's available in your area. Although cable will likely cost more than DSL, you'll probably realize some savings if you bundle cable-TV service with your Internet.
For the best value in broadband service, CR's survey points to two DSL providers: SBC Yahoo! and Verizon. Each costs about $30 a month, and there's a good likelihood that one or both are available where you live. (Note that Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, provides online content to — and sells subscriptions through — Yahoo!, AOL and MSN.) Neither SBC Yahoo! nor Verizon yielded the high satisfaction scores with service reliability and tech support of the better cable companies, yet both were reliable enough.
Reliability scores for dial-up providers were no better than average, while information about tech support was scanty. Overall, the magazine found the best value in dial-up service to be Juno which costs about $10 a month but satisfied CR subscribers as well as the pricier EarthLink.
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