A New Nail in the Video over Internet Coffin
Two stories of interest this week.
The first story is about the FCC's decision to open the so called "white space" spectrum, to allow for new wireless services. This is good news for those hoping for more competition in the broadband market, and has been long anticipated by companies such as Google, Dell, and other companies. The decision wasn't without caveats. For instance, since wireless mics use the same spectrum, in larger cities, white space broadcast services cannot be located near stadiums or theaters.
This is about the only positive glimmer of news to those of us who also heard this week that AT&T is now testing broadband caps in the Reno, Nevada market. Broadband caps which will, most likely, be rolled out to the rest of the country early next year.
The caps are aggressive, too. For instance, Comcast set its cap at 250GB, but AT&T is looking at only 20GB for its lowest subscriber plan, and 80GB for its highest vanilla DSL account. You only get the 150GB cap the company mentions most frequently in the press releases, bundled in with the company's Uverse services.
How will this impact on services such as Netflix's WatchNow, which has also been so much in the news, recently? Especially with the new Netflix WatchNow HD offerings on XBox 360 and Tivo?
