Broadband Fact of the Week

By IIA

Broadband-enabled IT applications reduce energy consumption and cut greenhouse gas emissions. Broadband is already contributing to greater energy efficiency. Broadband applications will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than a billion tons by 2018 -equivalent to reducing oil imports by 11 percent.

Eisenach, PhD. Jeffrey. The Telecom Sector and the Economy, How U.S. Broadband Policies are Working for America. (Washington DC: Empiris, LLC). September, 2008.

More facts about broadband and the environment.

Making Korea Faster

By Brad

While the U.S. House and Senate differ over how fast next generation broadband should be (is it 45 mbps or 100 mbps?), South Korea is leaping ahead. As Gizmodo reports, the Korea Communications Commission is promising 1 Gbps broadband by the year 2012. How fast is that? Downloading an entire movie in 12 seconds fast.

Boosting Hawaii

By Brad

The state of Hawaii, currently ranks a lowly 49th when it comes to broadband speed. Now state government leaders are trying to change that:

As set out this week in proposed legislation before Hawaii’s Senate and House, the plan calls for the establishment of a Hawaiian Communications Commission that would be a combination regulatory agency and consumer-industry advocate. The plan would be to create broadband access at speeds comparable to Japan’s and Korea’s blistering speeds. Japanese broadband users can get speeds up to 1,000 Mbps, while Hawaiian users are lucky if they can get 10 Mbps from their broadband access.

Ironically, the University of Hawaii created Aloha Net in 1970, which proved to be a foundation for Ethernet technology.

Online Silver Lining

By Brad

It may seem like it’s all doom and gloom when it comes to the current state of the U.S. economy, but thanks to eCommerce it’s not all bad news:

Amazon.com beat Wall Street’s fourth-quarter revenue and earnings expectations, as the e-commerce giant posted strong holiday sales amid a weak economy.
Amazon’s revenues jumped 18 percent to $6.7 billion for the quarter compared with the same period a year earlier. Wall Street had been expecting Amazon to generate sales of $6.4 billion for the quarter, according to Thomson Reuters.

The company reported a 9 percent increase in net income to $225 million for the quarter, or 52 cents a share. Wall Street was expecting a net profit of 50 cents a share, excluding stock options expenses.

The Online Generation(s)

By Brad

According to a new report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, so-called Generation Y are the largest group of Internet users. That’s no real surprise. But other generations are quickly getting in on the act.

Some highlights from the report:

• Between 2006 and 2008, the largest increase in Internet users came from people aged 70-75.

• 74% of users over the age of 64 use the Internet primarily for email.

• Generation X (ages 33-44) are numero uno when it comes to shopping online.

The full Pew report can be found here. (Via Ars Technica.)

Across the Pond

By Brad

As the U.S. seeks to boost its broadband development, our allies in the United Kingdom are hatching plans of their own.

Britain plans to provide universal broadband access along the lines of the post and telephone services in a bid to make the country more competitive and help drag it out of recession.

A report by Communications minister Lord Carter said Britain would work to provide Internet access to the whole country at around 2 Megabits per second (Mb) through a mixture of fixed and wireless connections by 2012.

At the moment, around 99% of the UK has access to broadband, with an estimated 60% of the country actually using it. Many of them, however, don’t have access to service at the required 2 Mb speed.

Conservatives and Broadband

By Brad

Conservatives generally see no positive role for government in promoting the growth and expansion of America’s dynamic high tech sector. Yet that is a mistake, particularly with respect to the deployment and adoption of broadband Internet, where the conservative cause cries out for a national broadband strategy.

The above quote is from an op-ed in Real Clear Poltics titled “The Conservative Case for Broadband.“ Its author was none other than IIA Co-Chairman Bruce Mehlman. You can read the full article here.

One Source to Rule Them All

By Brad

As Internet video becomes more and more popular, navigating the various online formats is getting more complicated. Now, as the New York Times “Bits” blog reports, a push is being made toward standardization:

The Mozilla Foundation is trying to open one of the last proprietary parts of the Web: Video standards. The group behind the Firefox browser announced that it is giving a $100,000 grant, by way of the Wikimedia Foundation, to help develop an open-source standard for Internet video.

$100,000 isn’t exactly a large chunk of change, but now that we can watch streaming video on our TVs, computers, phones, and handheld gaming devices, standardization seems like a logical step.

Grants vs. Credits

By Brad

Recently, the House Committee on Appropriations revealed an economic stimulus package that included $6 billion in grants for high-tech companies to bring broadband to rural and underserved areas. That the funds came in the form of grants proved to be a bit of a sticking point, as high-tech companies stated their preference for tax breaks instead.

Now, as the Wall Street Journal reports, the Senate Finance Committee has come out with a stimulus plan of their own, one that raises the dollar amount for broadband buildout to $9 billion, and offers a 10% tax credit for investing in current-generation broadband, and an addition 20% for investing in the so-called “next-generation” of the Internet.

Whether grants or tax credits will win out is still up in the air, but according to Business Week, the House plan may have the upper hand.

Streaming for Success

By Brad

Given the state of the economy, many companies are hurting. The online DVD rental company Netflix is not one of those companies:

Netflix ended the fourth quarter of 2008 with approximately 9,390,000 total subscribers, representing 26 percent year-over-year growth from 7,479,000 total subscribers at the end of the fourth quarter of 2007 and 8 percent sequential growth from 8,672,000 subscribers at the end of the third quarter of 2008.

One reason for the company’s growth has been its move into online video streaming. In fact, as NewTeeVee reports, Netflix’s streaming service is growing fast:

Netflix, while announcing its recession-beating fourth quarter profit (up 45 percent!) today, described expanding its video streaming business as its core focus. CEO Reed Hastings said the company is starting to see a “substitution effect” among subscribers, in which users who stream online rent fewer DVDs. “Millions” of subscribers are taking advantage of the company’s “Watch Instantly” service, which is available in unlimited form for most subscription plans.

Hastings, who said Netflix is already one of the movie studios’ largest sources of digital revenue, noted growth in streaming bodes well for the company’s profit margins since postage and packing costs will become less relevant. But that savings will be offset to some extent by higher content acquisition costs.

This is all good news for Netflix, but as as Ars Technica notes, streaming video over broadband doesn’t bode well for traditional physical media:

Outside of Netflix and the online video niche, the trend can only mean bad things for physical media like traditional DVD and Blu-ray. Customers have shown that they’re willing to settle for high-definition (and, in some cases, standard-definition) online offerings—either in the form of streaming from places like Netflix, or VOD and downloads from Amazon or the iTunes Store—in place of walking to the corner Blockbuster or even waiting for a DVD in the mail from Netflix. Why wait when you can get what you want now from the comfort of the perfectly butt-shaped dent in your couch or computer chair? And in HD, no less?