Category Archives: Media ecology

AT&T: Internet to hit full capacity by 2010

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From ZDNet…

U.S. telecommunications giant AT&T has claimed that, without investment, the Internet’s current network architecture will reach the limits of its capacity by 2010.

Speaking at a Westminster eForum on Web 2.0 this week in London, Jim Cicconi, vice president of legislative affairs for AT&T, warned that the current systems that constitute the Internet will not be able to cope with the increasing amounts of video and user-generated content being uploaded.

“The surge in online content is at the center of the most dramatic changes affecting the Internet today,” he said. “In three years’ time, 20 typical households will generate more traffic than the entire Internet today.”

Cicconi, who was speaking at the event as part of a wider series of meetings with U.K. government officials, said that at least $55 billion worth of investment was needed in new infrastructure in the next three years in the U.S. alone, with the figure rising to $130 billion to improve the network worldwide. “We are going to be butting up against the physical capacity of the Internet by 2010,” he said.

He claimed that the “unprecedented new wave of broadband traffic” would increase 50-fold by 2015 and that AT&T is investing $19 billion to maintain its network and upgrade its backbone network.

Cicconi added that more demand for high-definition video will put an increasing strain on the Internet infrastructure. “Eight hours of video is loaded onto YouTube every minute. Everything will become HD very soon, and HD is 7 to 10 times more bandwidth-hungry than typical video today. Video will be 80 percent of all traffic by 2010, up from 30 percent today,” he said…

Social netw…, er punishment

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Calling all parents of teenage kids. See this from Good Morning Silicon Valley…

When Beth, a single mom from Richmond, Va., told her 13-year-old boy to stop playing on his Xbox and do his chores, and the youngster’s ill-advised response was to break the vacuum cleaner, she decided to hit him where it hurts (and her resolve only hardened after she found porn site cookies on his computer). According to Gizmodo, Beth first put the boy’s Xbox up for sale on eBay. Then she password-protected his computer so he couldn’t get online. And finally, in the unkindest cut of all, she posted a Snoopy cartoon on his MySpace page, making him look decidedly uncool. “Apparently I’m the meanest mom in the world, were his words,” she told Gizmodo. “I’m a single mom. I can’t let them walk over me or I might never get up.” Cruel? A bit. Unusual? For now. Effective in reducing recidivism? Time will tell.

Dongles ‘R Us

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From The Register…

Maverick mobile operator 3 UK says it’s seen a 700 per cent increase in data traffic since it launched its price-busting dongle last October. Average data throughput on the network rose to 1,400 mbit/s by February, a steep ramp from 200mbit/s when the offer was introduced.

The dongle is available to pay-as-you-go customers for £70, with 1GB for a tenner, or 3GB for £15. T-Mobile and Vodafone have followed suit with aggressive dongle deals.

3’s UK CEO Kevin Russell said it had conjured half a million customers “from nowhere”, as he gave details of the networks roadmaps for higher higher 3G speeds, and how it will share infrastructure with T-Mobile.

But we weren’t alone in wondering the aspiration of becoming the king of mobile broadband was something to wish for. Data networks don’t make money – ask a British ISP – and the new investment in fibre is coming from taxpayers or is being cross-subsidised by TV. So what’s the masterplan?

Russell told us it was all about incremental margin. He didn’t think mobile broadband was going to display fixed broadband by 2012 – a figure we plucked out of the air – and preferred to see it as a new marketplace, rather than one of substitution.

“Data becomes valuable as a leverage into increased share of the handset business,” he said. “We have a different strategy from the other four operators.”

So, give away the data and make more on handsets. It seemed rude to point out that you can walk out of a 3 Store with a dongle, but no handset.

Another reporter asked the same question, phrased differently. Nobody makes money from data – “so isn’t your business model running on empty?”

Russell said he didn’t understand the question.

Personally, I don’t much care what 3’s business model is: my 3G USB dongle has already proved a Godsend — especially since Pipex and BT began to ‘regrade’ my DSL line, thereby making it chronically erratic.

Survival

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Steve Lohr has an interesting piece about the survival of the mainframe.

IN 1991, Stewart Alsop, the editor of InfoWorld and a thoughtful observer of industry trends, predicted that the last mainframe computer would be unplugged by 1996. Last month, I.B.M. introduced the latest version of its mainframe, the aged yet remarkably resilient warhorse of computing.

Today, mainframe sales are a tiny fraction of the personal computer market. But with the mainframe facing extinction, I.B.M. retooled the technology, cut prices and revamped its strategy. A result is that mainframe technology — hardware, software and services — remains a large and lucrative business for I.B.M., and mainframes are still the back-office engines behind the world’s financial markets and much of global commerce.

The mainframe stands as a telling case in the larger story of survivor technologies and markets…

Bill Bragg on ‘the Royalty Scam’

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Songwriter Bill Bragg was struck by the news that Bebo co-founder Michael Birch has walked away with $600 million after the site was bought by AOL. Bragg has some ideas about what Birch should do with the money:

I heard the news with a particular piquancy, as Mr. Birch has cited me as an influence in Bebo’s attitude toward artists. He got in touch two years ago after I took MySpace to task over its proprietary rights clause. I was concerned that the site was harvesting residual rights from original songs posted there by unsigned musicians. As a result of my complaints, MySpace changed its terms and conditions to state clearly that all rights to material appearing on the site remain with the originator.

A few weeks later, Mr. Birch came to see me at my home. He was hoping to expand his business by hosting music and wanted my advice on how to construct an artist-centered environment where musicians could post original songs without fear of losing control over their work. Following our talks, Mr. Birch told the press that he wanted Bebo to be a site that worked for artists and held their interests first and foremost.

In our discussions, we largely ignored the elephant in the room: the issue of whether he ought to consider paying some kind of royalties to the artists. After all, wasn’t he using their music to draw members — and advertising — to his business? Social-networking sites like Bebo argue that they have no money to distribute — their value is their membership. Well, last week Michael Birch realized the value of his membership. I’m sure he’ll be rewarding those technicians and accountants who helped him achieve this success. Perhaps he should also consider the contribution of his artists.

The musicians who posted their work on Bebo.com are no different from investors in a start-up enterprise. Their investment is the content provided for free while the site has no liquid assets. Now that the business has reaped huge benefits, surely they deserve a dividend…

Picture this

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This morning’s Observer column…

Flickr is a classic Web 2.0 story. In the first place, it was an unintended outcome of another project. Its co-founders, Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake, were designing Game Neverending, a massive multi-player online game, and realised that they would need a photo-sharing module. In the end, the photo-sharing took on a life of its own and the gaming project was quietly shelved. Secondly, it required no complex technical infrastructure, and could be marketed virally as users began to circulate Flickr links in email and instant messages.

Flickr’s designers also displayed a shrewd grasp of the essence of Web 2.0 thinking – namely that the big rewards come from making it easy for other developers to hook into your stuff. So they were quick to publish the application programming interface (API), the technical details other programmers needed to link into Flickr’s databases. This then made it easy for bloggers and users of social networking sites to create links to their Flickr ‘photostreams’. The results are clear for all to see. On 12 November last year, Flickr images passed the 2 billion mark. At present, between three and five million photographs are uploaded to the service every day…

Harry’s war

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Hooray for Marina Hyde…

On the one hand, it was nice to see Prince Harry in a British army uniform, as opposed to one of Hitler’s. It’s a little bit like Pokemon, really. I’m hoping he’ll give us a highly collectible Hutu warrior snap soon. Gotta catch ’em all! On the other, is there anyone over Pokemon-playing age who believes it was really worth it? The sheer number of man-hours and money lavished on allowing one young man to experience job satisfaction is mind-boggling. It has to be the most fatuous use of Ministry of Defence resources since Geoff Hoon.

According to the executive director of the Society of Editors, who helped establish the controversial media blackout, it was not designed to mislead readers and viewers but to ultimately give them “a deeper insight into a new side of Prince Harry”. But how completely intriguing. And yet, is he basically still a fairly dim, fairly affable chap, you might ask? It would appear so. But he’s being fairly dim and fairly affable in Afghanistan. Or rather, he was until the news broke, at which point a detailed, prearranged plan to get him out – how many logistical brains are wasted on this nonsense? – was mobilised. So at least we have an exit strategy for Prince Harry, if not for the actual war…

Through the keynote

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On Tuesday, I went to Torquay to give the opening Keynote at the Naace Annual Strategic Conference. I confessed at the beginning that I was never sure what the purpose of a Keynote was, but said that I thought it was akin to a sermon, which reminded me of a passage from Trollope’s Barchester Towers that I’d been reading in the train on the way down.

There is, perhaps, no greater hardship at present inflicted on mankind in civilised and free countries, than the necessity of listening to sermons. No one but a preaching clergyman has, in these realms, the power of compelling an audience to sit silent, and be tormented. No one but a preaching clergyman can revel in platitudes, truisms, and untruisms, and yet receive, as his undisputed privilege, the same respectful demeanour as thought words of impassioned eloquence, or persuasive logic, fell from his lips.

I then launched into my farrago of “platitudes, truisms, and untruisms” about our changing media ecosystem and was heard respectfully. It was blogged live by Ian Usher, who did a remarkable job. For which, many thanks.