« February 2005 | Main | April 2005 »
March 29, 2005
The day of reckoning
Today, the battle over the future of the Internet will be fought in Washington, DC. The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in two cases: BrandX and Grokster, that could have deep repercussions.
BrandX deals with the treatment of broadband. The FCC has tried to classify the cable modem platform as an "information service", not subject to various regulatory obligations. The courts have, so far, taken a different view.
Grokster deals with peer-to-peer file-sharing. The music industry sued several P2P software vendors on the grounds of contributory copyright infringement, a legal strategy that was successful in driving the original Napster out of business. Yet this time around, the courts refused to hold the software vendors liable. The new generation of distributed services, like Kazaa, have no central server that tracks who has which music files.
In these two cases, the Supreme Court has an opportunity to map out the landscape for the next-generation broadband Internet, what some are calling "Web 2.0." In the Internet of applications, open platforms for innovation, competition, and user empowerment are critical. If gatekeepers can control what goes on the network, at what price, under which circumstances, the entire digital ecosystem surrounding the Net will be the poorer for it.
Both BrandX and Grokster concern battles over, as I put it in a Release 1.0 issue three years ago, who controls information? Control is power. It is also a limit on all sorts of downstream innovation and market growth, ultimately hurting everyone, including the erstwhile controller.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:25 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
March 28, 2005
Sicky Wicky
One of the least enjoyable aspects of two small kids at home is that everyone -- and I mean, EVERYONE -- gets sick a lot. The four of us have been ping-ponging colds and other sundry illnesses back and forth non-stop for at least a month. My wife was even in the hospital a couple days last week with pneumonia. She's fine, back home and pretty much recovered, but going into the hospital is never fun.
Now it's my turn. I've had a lingering cold/flu thing since the tail end of last week, which seems to have settled in my sinuses. Nothing too serious, yet it's still not a pleasant experience.
I can't wait for Spring.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 6:55 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
March 26, 2005
Social TV
Tom Coates, who works for the BBC, spins out a vision of the future of television that incorporates social software into the experience.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 8:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
It all comes together
Adam Bosworth has a nice post linking together the "Web 2.0" notion of the Web as an open platform for
applications with search and syndication. Oh, and for good measure, he wraps in the vibe of tech conferences (ETech and PC Forum) as well as the challenges of privacy and spam. Adam -- a really smart guy -- was a senior technologist at Microsoft before co-founding a startup that was acquired by BEA, and he's now VP of Engineering at Google.
Something that gets me quite jazzed these days is the way so many innovations are linking up and leveraging one another. It's not just, "hey, check out that cool company!" Blogs, search-based innovations, tags, and so forth allow both new startups and established platforms like Google, Amazon, and Yahoo! to build on one another. The emergent whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 8:18 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 22, 2005
The End of Broadband Service
The FCC reached a decision this week that could effectively end broadband service as we know it. The order hasn't officially come out yet, but the result was leaked.
The FCC granted a petition by BellSouth to pre-empt state regulators from requiring "naked DSL." The procedural aspects are convoluted, so the effect of that action may not be clear. Here's what the FCC is saying. The local phone companies (and, although the ruling doesn't specifically cover them, cable companies) are free to force customers to pay for phone service in order to get broadband. Whether or not you use the phone company's voice service is immaterial -- you have to pay for it. Although there are a few telcos willing to sell DSL as a stand-alone service (notably Qwest), one wonders if they will continue to do so.
The FCC ruling makes broadband an extension of phone service, rather than the reverse. It ties the data applications of the future to the anchor of the public switched telephone network. That's perverse. Voice is the application, not connectivity. We'll never have real competition if the incumbents get paid even when customers want to switch to a competitor.
I want to pay someone for high-speed data connectivity, with the opportunity to use (and pay for) innovative applications on top of that pipe. To me, that's broadband service. After the FCC decision, that may no longer be available. That's what I mean by the end of broadband as we know it. For the privilege of buying broadband, I'll have to buy phone service or something else I don't need, raising the effective price. This is the way to promote broadband adoption in the US?
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 21, 2005
Supernova 2005 blog
I'm pleased to announce that the Supernova 2005 weblog is now up and running. You can subscribe to the RSS feed here.
The blog is an integral part of Supernova, which is coming up June 20-22 in San Francisco. Over the next three months, I'll split my time posting here and on the conference blog. As Supernova approaches, we'll be adding additional features and participants to this blog, which is powered by our friends at SilkRoad. We'll also unveil additional online community tools that enhance and extend the physical event.
Frankly, I can't imagine doing a conference these days without a blog. Yet I still see lots of events, even those focused on emerging technologies, that want everything to be a hermetically sealed box around the conference venue. The success of Supernova, along with other "extended" events like ETech, SXSWi, and PC Forum, should be pretty convincing.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 8:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
WiFi apples and oranges
The Economist has an article (subscribers only) quoting me about municipal WiFi networks, like the one Philadelphia is proposing. Local phone and cable companies have been fighting these proposals, even pushing legislation banning cities from deploying broadband connecting for their residents.
The point I make in the piece is that a city-wide WiFi cloud in an urban area is not identical to the wired broadband networks companies like Verizon and Comcast are deploying. In other words, free or cheap WiFi municipal access doesn't automatically kill the private broadband market, because these municipal systems don't provide the same throughput, reliability, or indoor coverage. They help at the margins, for areas that are under-served by the existing broadband options or where those options are too expensive. And they expand the scope of broadband access beyond the home, by covering outdoor areas and public places. They just aren't equivalent to what the private sector is building, and shouldn't be precluded on that assumption.
In case it's not clear from the piece, I'm well aware that nothing about WiFi technically prevents it from being used as a broadband access technology, across large distances. Hundreds of wireless ISPs, mostly in rural areas, use it to provide connectivity where cable modems and DSL aren't available. In a city, though, the environment is different. WiFi can be a piece of the broadband puzzle there too, which is why municipalities are getting involved. I think that's a great thing. However, we should be clear on exactly what capabilities those systems provide.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 8:04 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 17, 2005
Spillover
John Markoff has a piece today, based on O'Reilly's ETech conference, about how the Grokster case could dampen innovation in areas well beyond music file sharing.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 11:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Open Platforms Rock
This is an example of the amazing things that happen when people can build on open platforms. It's an app on top of the Flickr photo sharing service, that uses Flickr's open protocols to auto generate a photo montage spelling any word you like:
![](http://photos2.flickr.com/3842594_3a780bba27_t.jpg "O\\"U\\"T"){kind=small}
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 7:30 AM | TrackBack
March 16, 2005
Congratulations, Kevin
So Kevin Martin has been named the new Chairman of the FCC. This is not exactly a surprise, although I'm a bit curious why it took so long -- there must have been some Congressional horse trading in the background.
As a told a reporter earlier this afternoon, Kevin has all the tools to be a successful FCC Chairman. He knows the agency and the White House, and he's more flexible and intellectually sophisticated than people give him credit for.
On the other hand, Martin has his work cut out for him. Michael Powell is a tough act to follow. And many critical issues raised during Chairman Powell's tenure -- from regulation of voice over IP to spectrum policy to universal service reform -- remain unresolved.
Moreover, to be an effective FCC Chairman in the 21st century, you have to grok technology. Deep down, you have to appreciate how quickly the world can change, and how many of the assumptions the communications industry is based on will likely be overturned. This doesn't mean being a professional technologist. Powell got it. So do some executives who come from the telephone business, like Jim Crowe and Dave Dorman.
Martin is certainly smart enough and interested in what the tech sector thinks, but the question is whether he's willing to step out of the FCC's Beltway box. Listening to what the telcos say about fiber deployment isn't the same thing as promoting technological innovation. I'll keep my fingers crossed.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 4:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 10, 2005
Michael Powell's farewell
Anyone cynical about government, the FCC, bureaucrats, or outgoing FCC Chairman Michael Powell should go watch Powell's sign-off at the end of today's FCC Meeting. (Powell's remarks start at 1:14 into the broadcast, and run about 3 minutes.)
Yes, he's on the verge of tears. No, it's not an act.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 12:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 4, 2005
The FCC stands up for VOIP
The FCC announced an order and consent decree fining a small local phone company for
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:13 AM
| Comments (1)
| TrackBack
I speculated idly the other day that Tivo had a significant patent portfolio. Turns out it has 70 patents granted, with 106 more pending. Sounds pretty significiant to me, given how ubiquitous digital video recording is bound to become.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 11:58 PM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
March 1, 2005
That answers my question