Comcast gained 278,000 new broadband customers last quarter, with more than two-thirds migrating from DSL service, the company said today.
The report comes on the heels of reports that Verizon lost 100,000 DSL subscribers (though many of those replaced their DSL service with Verizon's FIOS) and that AT&T added only 46,000 new DSL customers.
So, even though DSL connections aren't as appealing as they once were, the good news is that broadband use is still growing. But the bad news is that demand is outpacing capacity, especially as more and more people turn to the Web for bandwidth-intensive video.
In fact, it's questionable how many of those new Comcast subscribers will be any happier with their broadband service than they were when they used DSL connections. DSL and cable modems are both considered broadband, but cable modems -- at least theoretically -- sometimes have higher top speeds than DSL lines.
In reality, cable providers aren't able to offer as much bandwidth as people currently want. Comcast has already admitted it slowed peer-to-peer traffic to manage congestion on its network -- actions that spurred net neutrality groups to complain to the FCC that Comcast violated net neutrality principles. The FCC is expected to officially rule against the cable company on Friday.
Comcast's peer-to-peer throttling might be the most high-profile example of the consequences of network congestion, but it's not the only one. A recent study by the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems in Germany showed that Cox also was blocking users from file-sharing sites.
At the same time, demand for bandwidth is only going to grow in the future. A new Integrated Media Measurement Inc. study shows that more than 20% of viewers now watch prime-time television online, up from 6% last fall.
While Comcast should be glad that people are signing up for its Internet service, the company, like other service providers, still must figure out how to make sure those subscribers can use the bandwidth they're paying for.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Monday, July 28, 2008
Cuil Touts User Privacy
A group of Google vets are taking on their former employer with the launch of a new search engine, Cuil.
The engine, unveiled today, boasts it indexes 120 billion pages -- or three times Google's 40 billion. But these raw numbers aren't all that useful when determining whether a search engine can return pages related to users' queries. Index size also isn't an especially reliable metric, because different companies sometimes use different tallying methods.
Regardless, Cuil certainly isn't the first would-be Google rival. The search giant's success has spawned a host of entrants into search, but none have come close to putting a dent in Google's commanding market share.
Cuil also had some crashes this morning, but that's not necessarily a bad sign; sites often need to get some bugs ironed out when they launch.
In some ways, what's most notable about Cuil is that the company is touting itself as privacy-friendly. The home page contains just two links -- "About Cuil" and "Your Privacy." Users who click on the privacy link land on a page that states, "We do not collect any personally identifiable information, period. We have no idea who sends queries: not by name, not by IP address, and not by cookies." Cuil also states it doesn't store logs of users' activity on the site.
If nothing else, Cuil's move shows that privacy considerations are top of mind in Silicon Valley these days. Companies might disagree about the wisdom of storing IP addresses, but there's no real question that query logs can reveal users' identities, as the world learned two years ago AOL released three months' worth of query data for 650,000 anonymized users. One such user, Thelma Arnold, was identified in a matter of days by The New York Times.
Google insists that it needs to store query logs to improve its search results and to guard against click fraud. But the emergence of companies like Cuil calls into question whether Google needs this information as much as it says it does.
The engine, unveiled today, boasts it indexes 120 billion pages -- or three times Google's 40 billion. But these raw numbers aren't all that useful when determining whether a search engine can return pages related to users' queries. Index size also isn't an especially reliable metric, because different companies sometimes use different tallying methods.
Regardless, Cuil certainly isn't the first would-be Google rival. The search giant's success has spawned a host of entrants into search, but none have come close to putting a dent in Google's commanding market share.
Cuil also had some crashes this morning, but that's not necessarily a bad sign; sites often need to get some bugs ironed out when they launch.
In some ways, what's most notable about Cuil is that the company is touting itself as privacy-friendly. The home page contains just two links -- "About Cuil" and "Your Privacy." Users who click on the privacy link land on a page that states, "We do not collect any personally identifiable information, period. We have no idea who sends queries: not by name, not by IP address, and not by cookies." Cuil also states it doesn't store logs of users' activity on the site.
If nothing else, Cuil's move shows that privacy considerations are top of mind in Silicon Valley these days. Companies might disagree about the wisdom of storing IP addresses, but there's no real question that query logs can reveal users' identities, as the world learned two years ago AOL released three months' worth of query data for 650,000 anonymized users. One such user, Thelma Arnold, was identified in a matter of days by The New York Times.
Google insists that it needs to store query logs to improve its search results and to guard against click fraud. But the emergence of companies like Cuil calls into question whether Google needs this information as much as it says it does.
Friday, July 25, 2008
A new deal between the U.K. record labels' group and six British
Internet service providers calls for the ISPs to start taking action against subscribers who allegedly download pirated material. Under the arrangement, the ISPs will send warning letters to users suspected of sharing copyrighted material.
After a set number of warnings, it's possible that ISPs will start throttling traffic, but there's no agreement yet on this point. One ISP, Carphone Warehouse, has gone on record as saying it won't implement any sort of "three strikes" rule that would cut off subscribers' connections after several warnings, according to PC Pro.
The U.K. record labels' organization, BPI, seems happy with this deal, calling it "a groundbreaking agreement.... on measures to help significantly reduce illegal filesharing."
But the reality is that this plan is likely to do nothing other than highlight how hard it is to detect online piracy. An April study showed that filters are routinely stymied by encryption techniques.
And three University of Washington computer scientists reported last month that they received hundreds of takedown notices wrongly accusing them of infringing copyright. "Our results show that potentially any Internet user is at risk for receiving DMCA takedown notices today," they wrote in the report ""Challenges and Directions for Monitoring P2P File Sharing Networks -- or -- Why My Printer Received a DMCA Takedown Notice."
When innocent users start getting notices that they're suspected of piracy -- and it's inevitable that they will -- the record labels will face an even bigger public relations problem than at present. And users who are infringing copyright might learn that they need to use encryption technology, but there's no reason to think they will stop trading files. If anything, this deal just escalates a brewing battle between Web users and the record labels, while doing nothing to encourage people to pay for music.
After a set number of warnings, it's possible that ISPs will start throttling traffic, but there's no agreement yet on this point. One ISP, Carphone Warehouse, has gone on record as saying it won't implement any sort of "three strikes" rule that would cut off subscribers' connections after several warnings, according to PC Pro.
The U.K. record labels' organization, BPI, seems happy with this deal, calling it "a groundbreaking agreement.... on measures to help significantly reduce illegal filesharing."
But the reality is that this plan is likely to do nothing other than highlight how hard it is to detect online piracy. An April study showed that filters are routinely stymied by encryption techniques.
And three University of Washington computer scientists reported last month that they received hundreds of takedown notices wrongly accusing them of infringing copyright. "Our results show that potentially any Internet user is at risk for receiving DMCA takedown notices today," they wrote in the report ""Challenges and Directions for Monitoring P2P File Sharing Networks -- or -- Why My Printer Received a DMCA Takedown Notice."
When innocent users start getting notices that they're suspected of piracy -- and it's inevitable that they will -- the record labels will face an even bigger public relations problem than at present. And users who are infringing copyright might learn that they need to use encryption technology, but there's no reason to think they will stop trading files. If anything, this deal just escalates a brewing battle between Web users and the record labels, while doing nothing to encourage people to pay for music.
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