Is cord cutting actually a trend or is it simply a threat that consumers are sending to cable companies? What’s your take? Please share.

According to a report from ISI Group, cable went from having more than 53 percent of the video market in 2010 to less than 50 percent in 2011:

While it appears that cord cutting is a growing trend, a couple of other reports actually indicate the opposite. Bernstein Research found that pay-TV subscribers grew last quarter. Although the increase (0.2 percent) wasn’t significant, it’s enough to raise some questions about the so-called trend of cord cutting.

What’s more, Business Insider Intelligence found that there was “no meaningful evidence to bolster the much-heralded ‘decline of TV.’” (Emphasis not added.) Alex Cocotas explained that, while cable has lost some subscribers, bundled Internet, telephone, and TV packages have grown.

It’s clear that a lot of consumers are unhappy with cable options, but these recent reports can’t help but make one wonder what is actually happening. According to Bryan Gonzalez, the Director of Social Entertainment Labs at the Entertainment Technology Center at USC, there are many challenges to cord cutting.

Services such as Netflix, Hulu, and Apple TV can be very effective, but there is a downside to some Internet options. For instance, with March Madness in full swing, basketball lovers may not be able to find all their favorite games online. In addition, a lot of the Internet services don’t have current content, which is a problem for some consumers.

As Gonzalez explained, many consumers are trying to get away from cable and are looking to Internet and satellite options instead. However, some appear, as the above charts suggest, to be going back to traditional content even though they aren’t completely happy with their choice.

Time Warner’s CEO Glenn Britt, in a move to counter some of the negativity from consumers, recently laid out a plan for a low-cost package of channels to offer. This experiment has yet to be implemented but some, including Gonzalez, believe that it could be effective.

“By creating these smaller, cheaper packages, you’re really gonna bring back some of the folks who might have gone away for a little bit,” he said.

Another challenge to cord cutting is bandwidth issues. Unfortunately, this is a problem that is expected to increase as more devices such as the new iPad come out. With these types of devices combined with growing families, consumers are going to need more bandwidth.

Britt also discussed a second experiment that Time Warner is working on that addresses bandwidth issues. According to him, Time Warner is testing a metered-usage Internet subscription plan in Texas, which means that tiered data cap could be proposed in the future.

“As soon as you start to limit that, I think that they’re gonna run into that wall pretty quickly,” said Gonzalez.

“You’re gonna see a lot of consumer pushback on that,” he added.

Over on InverstorPlace, Anthony John Agnello issued a warning to Time Warner in regards to this experiment:

“Time Warner needs to tread very carefully, though, or it will lose more than just cable subscribers. For years now, Web users have been vocal opponents of usage-based billing and attempts to cap data. Time Warner attempted to introduce usage-based billing in 2009, but consumer outrage prompted the company to abandon its plans. The same thing happened to competitor Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA) when rumors swirled that it intended to start billing based on usage, but Comcast gave up those plans by December 2010. As reported by Stop the Cap, a consumer advocacy group devoted to blocking usage-based data plans and data caps, Comcast applauded Time Warner’s announcement but shied away from saying whether or not it would follow suit in the future.”

In an effort to solve some of these challenges and bring cable and Internet streaming together, Netflix attempted to partner with Comcast but was rejected. According to FierceCable, Comcast issued this response to the offer:

“We have no plans to offer access to Netflix to our customers through our Xfinity TV service, no matter what device,” said Comcast spokeswoman Alana Davis.

The marriage of the companies was a puzzle to many since Netflix has, for a long time, distinguished itself as an alternative to cable. Gonzalez told us that, even though the companies did not reach an agreement, it was encouraging that an attempt was made. Furthermore, without Netflix’s existence, products such as TV Everywhere would probably not be around either.

“Before Netflix, Comcast and Time Warner would have never offered that or thought about that,” he said.

In other words, the advent of Internet alternatives has brought more choices to consumers. While the issue of cord cutting is still being debated, it is clear that these services will play a large role in the future of pay TV. In fact, Avner Ronen, the CEO of Boxee, told WebProNews that the trend toward viewing content online would increase going forward.

“The transition toward more video over the top that’s coming over the Internet such as Netflix and Hulu and iTunes is inevitable,” he said.

(Here’s the full interview:)

Gonzalez agrees that Internet options will be significant but believes that consumers will ultimately gravitate toward some sort of combination of online and traditional services.

“In the short term, I think cable and satellite and broadcast are still… the most effective way and efficient way to distribute video,” he said. “However, I see the future more as a hybrid.”

What would you like to see going forward? Are online services the answer, or, do you still need what cable and satellite operators offer? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

A University of Pittsburgh team has generated a frequency comb with more than a 100 terahertz bandwidth as a means to process communications data at a remarkably rapid speed.

Many of the communication tools of today rely on the function of light or, more specifically, on applying information to a light wave. Up until now, studies on electronic and optical devices with materials that are the foundations of modern electronics—such as radio, TV, and computers—have generally relied on nonlinear optical effects, producing devices whose bandwidth has been limited to the gigahertz (GHz) frequency region. Thanks to research performed at the University of Pittsburgh, a physical basis for terahertz bandwidth—the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum between infrared and microwave light—has now been demonstrated.

In a paper published March 4 in Nature Photonics, Hrvoje Petek, a professor of physics and chemistry in Pitt’s Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, and his colleague Muneaki Hase, a professor of applied physics at the University of Tsukuba in Japan and a visiting scientist in Petek’s lab, detail their success in generating a frequency comb—dividing a single color of light into a series of evenly spaced spectral lines for a variety of uses—that spans a more than 100 terahertz bandwidth by exciting a coherent collective of atomic motions in a semiconductor silicon crystal.

“The ability to modulate light with such a bandwidth could increase the amount of information carried by more than 1,000 times when compared to the volume carried with today’s technologies,” says Petek. “Needless to say, this has been a long-awaited discovery in the field.”

To investigate the optical properties of a silicon crystal, Petek and his team investigated the change in reflectivity after excitation with an intense laser pulse. Following the excitation, the team observed that the amount of reflected light oscillates at 15.6 THz, the highest mechanical frequency of atoms within a silicon lattice. This oscillation caused additional change in the absorption and reflection of light, multiplying the fundamental oscillation frequency by up to seven times to generate the comb of frequencies extending beyond 100 THz. Petek and his team were able to observe the production of such a comb of frequencies from a crystalline solid for the first time.

“Although we expected to see the oscillation at 15.6 THz, we did not realize that its excitation could change the properties of silicon in such dramatic fashion,” says Petek. “The discovery was both the result of developing unique instrumentation and incisive analysis by the team members.”

Petek notes the team’s achievements are the result of developing experimental and theoretical tools to better understand how electrons and atoms interact in solids under intense optical excitation and of the invested interest by Pitt’s Dietrich School in advanced instrumentation and laboratory infrastructure.

The team is currently investigating the coherent oscillation of electrons, which could further extend the ability of harnessing light-matter interactions from the terahertz- to the petahertz-frequency range. Petahertz is a unit of measure for very fast frequencies (1 quadrillion hertz).

This research was funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

For more information on Petek’s research, visit www.ultrafast.phyast.pitt.edu/Home.html.

Just ask the Internet Archive.

Much like Wikipedia, the folks at Archive.org are also looking for funding, but they aren’t going about it with creepy images of editors that stare at you for the duration of your visit. Sure, there are prompts over at the Internet Archive asking people to donate, but the manner in which they go about asking isn’t anywhere near as intrusive as other sites. To put it another way, the way in which the Internet Archive is asking for donations has not become a Reddit meme where people poke fun at the monetary requests.

While I mention bandwidth in the article’s lede, it’s not the only reason for the donation requests, something the Internet Archive blog post reveals quite well:

In the last year, the number of people using the Internet Archive has increased to two million people every day, and our collections of free books, music, video, and web pages have also grown by twenty to twenty-five percent. This is great news, but we are doing it all on a shoestring budget.

This year we need your help.

The word “help” is linked and when clicked, visitors are taken to a donation page where you can contribute as much or as little as you can. Considering the role the Internet Archive provides, asking for a little funding is perfectly acceptable, especially for a site/service that offers this description as its primary goal:

We digitize books, collect video, music and the World Wide Web, and take contributions of digital media from anyone who would like their materials preserved.

We provide access to these vast collections to millions of people each day. All for free. {Emphaisis added]

So yeah, asking for donations to keep bringing such content to the masses is understandable, especially when the service is free. With that in mind, perhaps Archive.org could look into official sponsorship, or, who knows, maybe sell themselves to Google or Microsoft. Considering their massive amount of content, there could be some great opportunities for targeted advertisements.

If you’d like to donate to the Internet Archive’s cause, you can do so here.

Worse yet, apparently, he/she doesn’t seem to mind one bit. From AT&T’s perspective, their customers want the higher bandwidth users to pay more, therefore, “justifying” the upcoming cap rule.

Forgive the aside here, but why is it up the heavy bandwidth user to foot the bill for the mysterious cost of bandwidth usage when the company’s infrastructure may not be adequate enough to handle their rapidly increasing customer base? As more and more users enjoy the conveniences and pleasures of streaming video in high definition, high-end PC gaming, and other robust Internet tasks, the company needs to adapt in order to support this growth, instead of resorting to punishing its power users, or “hogs” for lack of a better term.

Another consideration is, as pointed out by Wired.com, there isn’t a great deal of information concerning the congestion issues these caps are supposed to prevent. In other words, there’s no proof AT&T or Comcast even need these caps to begin with.

Different subjects for a different day, apparently. As for the upcoming AT&T cap, the details are as follows: DSL customers will have a 150 gigabyte per month usage limit. Those that exceed the cap will be penalized an extra $10 for every 50 gigabytes they go over.

Needless to say, reaction to AT&T’s wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing approach to such a sensitive subject has set off a firestorm of reaction around the Internet. Endgadget’s post has over 3000 comments and Reddit’s is somewhere around the 600 mark by now. As one might expect, there aren’t many supporters of the upcoming cap.

Though the vitriol is fast and fierce, the first comment on Reddit’s thread stood out to this writer:

“I love it when people who use the services they paid for and were promised are referred to as “hogs”. Kills me every time.“

(via enderpanda)

Too bad such negative reaction won’t impact AT&T’s decision in anyway, shape or form. At this point, only a mass exodus would reverse this particular course. That being said, it would be nice to actually meet some of these ubiquitous customers AT&T keeps referring to.

The new cap makes its long-awaited debut on May 2nd, in what will no doubt be a red letter day… at least for AT&T

Will this affect you and your Internet usage? Let us know your thoughts.

DSLReports has learned that AT&T users will start receiving notices, about the change to the terms of service, sometime between March 18 and March 31. AT&T customers who exceed their usage cap will be charged a fee of $10 for every 50GB. (It should be noted is that the AT&T U-Verse TV Service WON’T count towards the GB cap).

Engadget has an interesting statement from AT&T…

“We are committed to providing a great experience for all of our Internet customers. Less than 2 percent of our Internet customers could be impacted by this approach – those who are using a disproportionate amount of bandwidth. We will communicate early and often with these customers so they are well aware of their options before they incur any additional usage charges.

The top 2 percent of residential subscribers uses about 20 percent of the bandwidth on our network. Just one of these high-traffic users can utilize the same amount of data capacity as 19 typical households. Lopsided usage patterns can cause congestion at certain points in the network, which can slow Internet speeds and interfere with other customers’ access to and use of the network. Our new plan addresses another concern: customers strongly believe that only those who use the most bandwidth should pay more than those who don’t use as much. That’s exactly what this does – and again, 98% of our customers will not be impacted by this.”

What are your thoughts on AT&T’s cap? Tell us what you think.

The majority (94%) of respondents see value in broadband service providers (BSP) that dynamically allocate premium bandwidth for some types of traffic, such as video, VoIP, and gaming.

More than half (54%) would actively seek to change service providers if another BSP offered this service and 26 percent would be willing to pay additional fees for premium bandwidth services.

The overwhelming majority (81%) are opposed to the idea of establishing a bandwidth cap and charging for use above the cap. Fifty-one percent would try to change service providers if their BSP implemented bandwidth caps. Light and moderate users are even more against capping and metering than heavy users.

Eighty-three percent said they either don’t know what a gigabyte is or have no idea how many they use. Ninety-five percent said that those who use more bandwidth should not have to pay more.

"While some of the results of this survey were in line with expectations, others were significantly at odds with prevailing wisdom," said Matt Davis, director of multiplay research at IDC.

"Specifically, consumers continue to be protective of their privacy but are adamantly opposed to bandwidth caps and keenly interested in premium bandwidth services. These last two points may come as a surprise to those believing that bandwidth caps are inevitable and that consumers are unwilling to pay more for better services."

Huh? Right. Last I heard the legislature had not addressed robots.txt, but it’s possible I missed it. Bygones and on with it. Though it’s unclear which sites are participating, if any, social media users may encounter a notice that they’ve been blocked. Some of the reasoning is as follows:

"The users of sites such as Digg, Netscape, Reddit and StumbleUpon openly endorse Ad Block Plus, a plug-in that blocks advertisement on web sites, and are well known for providing no value to the sites they visit. Software that blocks all advertisement is an infringement of the rights of web site owners and developers. Numerous web sites exist in order to provide quality content in exchange for displaying ads, Digg users who don’t click on these ads are stealing bandwidth without paying for it and website owners deserve a method to block this unauthorized bandwith theft.

"Since social media sites do not allow website owners a method for excluding content and do not obey robots.txt law, abiding webmasters are forced to block all users from social media sites."

I suppose also if one were to visit "abiding" webmasters’ sites without Ad Block Plus and chose to ignore them they would also be guilty of "theft." Does that also apply if I go to the bathroom or kitchen during TV commercials? It would seem so.

But this article can’t be closed without a third opinion, and why not just quote one of the original opponents of WhyFirefoxIsBlocked.com, the webmaster behind WhyIsFirefoxedBlocked.com:

"Why is firefox blocked?

"Because some douche wants to infect your computer with popups, search bars and endless ads, the same kind of douche that made you get Firefox in the first place because of horrific popups, search bars and endless ads."

For a detailed explanation of why the logic of blocking social media sites is flawed, give Muhammad Saleem a visit. 

The more-bandwidth argument has been made most convincingly (read: most unemotionally) by British Telecommunications, when the company’s CTO Matt Beal opined that with enough bandwidth, there would be no need for traffic shaping, or prioritizing traffic, a goal that is exactly what has gotten the pro-Net Neutrality movement up in arms.

Let me put that simpler: Increase bandwidth capacity and the argument that traffic prioritization is necessary is moot.

With that in mind, it seems rather convenient that three of the five authors of a study comparing the costs of "differentiated" and "undifferentiated" networks are employed by AT&T.

This type of thing isn’t rare, companies commission studies all the time. Just when everybody was down on AOL’s enlistment of Goodmail’s services, Time Inc. released a study about the benefits of CertifiedEmail. Last month, Pitney Bowes, a company that bases its business around snail mail, played an interesting numbers game with a survey about email.

And who could forget Senator Ted Stevens’ Verizon-funded Net Neutrality poll disguised to be a poll about TV?

The point is, words and numbers can be put together to say anything you want. But for the remainder of this article, we’ll assume an AT&T-sponsored study on one of the core technical issues of the Net Neutrality debate hasn’t been doctored up.

“The study makes clear that there are substantial additional costs for the extra capacity required to operate networks in which all traffic is treated alike, and carrying traffic that needs to still be assured performance as specified in service level agreements (SLAs),” said principal investigator Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, professor of electrical, computer, and systems engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the institution AT&T made out the check to.

About 60 to 100 percent more costly in terms of extra capacity, according to the press release about the study.

“Clearly, an undifferentiated network in this context is less efficient and more expensive,” said coauthor K.K. Ramakrishnan of AT&T Labs. “We believe understanding the real impacts of the alternative strategies is important as the debate about network architecture unfolds.”

However, TechDirt CEO Mike Masnick, who’s been keeping track of exaggerations on both sides of the issue, notes:

It also doesn’t consider all the costs associated with a non-neutral network.… requiring 60% more bandwidth does not mean 60% additional cost. Furthermore… the cost of bandwidth keeps dropping, so it actually gets cheaper and cheaper over time. However, the cost of labor associated with setting up and maintaining a non-neutral network is likely to increase over time.

And that doesn’t even begin to address the limitless capacity fiber will offer once available everywhere (in the US, most likely 10-15 years later than the rest of the world), which the incumbents will own…

"I believe it is important for companies like Google to establish a place of meaningful dialogue with the general public," he writes, "and to open our policy advocacy role to outside analysis — and yes, criticism."

Following is a quick summary of Whitt’s main points.

What Type of Network control is okay for access providers?

1.    Manage their network with content-neutral practices to neutralize "objective network harms," like denial of service (DOS) attacks, viruses, and worms.

2.    To prioritize packets of a certain application type, like video, because there are tangible end-user benefits such as video quality.

3.    Prioritization based upon objective criteria such as latency or jitter, applied in an even-handed manner.

Not okay.

Prioritization used for discriminatory purposes, such as degrading or prioritizing certain applications based on an intention to impair the offerings of competitors. "[S]uch practices should be prohibited as unreasonable," said Whitt.

AT&T’s Full of It

Former AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre complained that Google and others would have to pay to use his "pipes." However, Whitt confirms what everybody knew. They already do pay for it:

Web companies must arrange with network operators to: carry the data traffic from company facilities to their Web servers over local telecom lines (the “last mile”); carry the data traffic from the Web servers into the Internet over high-speed, high-capacity data lines (“special access”); and carry the data traffic over the numerous interconnected networks that make up the Internet (the “Internet backbone”).

To accomplish these important connectivity and transport functions in a fast and effective manner, Internet companies collectively pay many billions of dollars per year to network operators, which fully compensates them for their network investment.

There Is No Competition In the Broadband Market

1.    Phone and Cable companies control 99.6% of the broadband market
2.    Alternative broadband does not compete in terms of speed, price, or availability.
3.    Entry costs are enormous.
4.    Switching costs for consumers are too punitive.

"Together, these salient factors — excessive market concentration, no viable competitors, considerable consumer switching costs, and substantial barriers to entry — should lead policymakers to conclude that there is a major competition problem in the broadband market."

Check out Whitt’s full, detailed posts on the broadband market, type-based differentiation, and paying for bandwidth.

The FCC required AT&T to offer DSL at this price for two years, as well as adhere to Net Neutrality principles. They didn’t, though, say they had to promote the cheaper offering, or offer it to everyone.

Reuters points out that the service is listed fairly deep in the website and is only available to new subscribers, meaning loyal customers are stuck paying the standard 40 times bandwidth price they’re already paying.

Reuters still hasn’t figured out the value of linking, so the Consumerist has picked up the slack. Writing for the Consumerist, Meghann Marco advises:

Keep an eye out for the next concession, so-called "naked DSL." Within 6 months, AT&T will be required to offer DSL with no local phone service. The treasure hunt to find that one on their site should be equally fun.