business

Where did all the subscribers go?

Microsoft was mysteriously silent about the performance of its MLB.com deal. In my first blog entry I pegged the MLB deal as a hallmark in online sports programming, despite its $40 million price tag over two seasons. Might I have to eat crow?

During a presentation to analysts in its Redmond-Wa. headquarters, MSN Chief Yusuf Mehdi last week remained mum about it??s the division's subscription businesses. Instead, the veteran of Microsoft's many Internet campaigns focused his presentation on search. Knowing Microsoft, any significant uptick in broadband subscriptions would make top billing to investors.

I don't … Read more

Candidates take Jibs and Jabs

For a less-partisan piece of broadband comedy, check out "This Land" from the offbeat animators at JibJab. Talking heads of Bush and Kerry sling insults at one another while singing to the tune of Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land." Here's a clip.

Bush: "?? I'm a Texas tiger, you're a liberal wiener??"

Kerry: "?? I'm an intellectual, you're a stupid dumb-ass??"

The parody is a hoot. Bush and Kerry are animated like the talking Saddam Hussein in "South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut." Credit … Read more

George Bush, with hammer and sickle

Whatever your political persuasion, you must go watch this video of Will Ferrell reprising his SNL role as George Bush. (Remember "strategery?") This time, he's filming a fake political commercial on a farm. With assorted farm implements. And a horse. And a Gameboy. It's hilarious.

Gloomy Monday for Net phones

It's a VoIP kind of day. Or not, I guess. Vonage had an hour-long service outage that sent emails streaming into our tip boxes here at News.com. Not a good thing for a company that's trying to compete with ordinary phone service which ?? for all the phone companies' problems ?? very, very rarely goes out.

Then the New York Times publishes a big piece looking at how Net voice service is very hackable. "Tapping phones by hacking into servers and hard drives is easier than wiretapping, which requires special equipment and more effort. Now, hackers can eavesdrop … Read more

Smuggling Internet phone service across borders

Another installment in the Internet's ability to route around regulations that are inconvenient. Apparently governments in Latin America heavily tax or even ban Internet voice services like Vonage. But now people in the U.S. have taken to signing up for Vonage accounts for their relatives, and then sending the appropriate equipment south of the border to people who have broadband accounts.

Vonage says it doesn't officially sanction the practice, but didn't have any limits on how many accounts people could set up. "There are no limits on how much toothpaste you can buy, right?" … Read more

China passes US in broadband subscribers

China now has more than 31 million broadband subscribers, according to the China Internet Network Information Center. That's more people than the United States' 26 million (as of the first quarter) ?? though of course the penetration rate is much higher in the U.S. Yet another non-U.S. place to watch for innovations in how people are using the high-speed Net.

Utopia is on its way!

Utopia, a project that will connect homes and businesses in 11 cities in Utah with fiber, has just taken a major step forward.

Today, organizers announced that they have secured $85 million in bond financing to start the first phase of the project. Phase I, which begins in August, will include the build-out of fiber in six cities. Phase II, which will require additional financing, will include homes and business not completed in the first part of construction along with customers in the remaining five cities.

People have been watching Utopia closely, since it is one of the biggest fiber-to-the-premise … Read more

Building the new railroad

Roseville, Calif. is an unlikely place to view the merits of fiber-to-the-home deployment. My brief visit there showed a region marked with its former glory as a turn-of-the-century railroad town. Maybe the city's history represents a metaphor for the transformation of its long-staid Roseville Telephone Company, renamed SureWest Communications in 2001, into the builders of the modern railroad.

Who knows if SureWest's fiber gambit will pay off. At a price of $12 million, the investment was a steal. And just like what Baby Bell Verizon believes will become the leading edge of communications infrastructure, the slow roll-out of … Read more

Broadband slugfest

I've been hearing a lot about the mudslinging between polar-opposite loudmouths Bill O'Reilly and Michael Moore. Today, I got to see what the fuss was all about.

Thanks, Fox News, for letting me re-live the fireworks.

Since I was playing softball last night (my team is appropriately named The Muckrakers), I missed Moore's surprise appearance on the O'Reilly Factor. The story goes that O'Reilly jumped out of his car when he spotted Moore walking down a Boston street and landed the controversial filmmaker as a guest on his show. So I went to Fox News' … Read more

Feds give $9 million for rural broadband

Bush's Agriculture Department is releasing another $9 million in grants for rural broadband projects. This is part of a Farm Bill project that passed a few years ago, and the program is now in its third year. The administration is suddenly casting the project as part of Bush's overall broadband vision -- but more power to him for supporting the project (although technically Congress has required a broadband component to rural development since 1995). Rural areas desperately need more network access.

Another thing the administration could do is support municipalities building their own networks.