Global broadband prices revealed
Broadband users in 30 of the world's most developed countries are getting greatly differing speeds and prices, according to a report. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report says 60% of its member countries net users are now on broadband. The report said countries that had switched to fibre networks had the best speeds at the lowest prices. In Japan net users have 100Mbps lines, 10 times higher than the OECD average. Japan's price for broadband per megabit per second is the lowest in the OECD at $0.22, said the report. The most expensive is Turkey at $81.13. In the US, the cheapest megabit per second broadband connection is $3.18 while in the UK it is $3.62.

Grouper reborn as talent agency
The online video site Grouper, which Sony bought last year for $65 million, is exiting the crowded and risky user-generated video business and focusing on finding professional talent for Sony's film and TV studios. The site, which will change its name to Crackle, will serve as an online talent agency, grooming budding professionals, funding productions and connecting the best video writers, producers and directors with contacts at Sony Pictures and a variety of partners, including the Improv comedy clubs. The user-generated market is dominated by Google's YouTube and News Corp.'s MySpace, with Yahoo and AOL, a unit of Time Warner, also gathering homemade videos. It is becoming increasingly hard for smaller players to stand out and deal with the many copyright issues that arise when users upload unauthorized clips of films or TV shows or use music in the videos without permission. The Each year, one animated video will be chosen to run theatrically, making it eligible for an Academy Award.

Rural cell users may get break on roaming
Customers of rural wireless companies would be able to roam in more cities and at lower rates under new rules likely to be adopted soon by the Federal Communications Commission. Rural carriers complain that the large national carriers often charge them exorbitant roaming fees and sometimes refuse to let them roam on their networks at all. The strategy has squeezed many rural providers out of the market, says the Rural Telecommunications Group (RTG), a small-carrier association. Kevin Martin, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, is recommending new rules requiring carriers to offer competitors roaming agreements at "just and reasonable rates," FCC officials say. The officials asked to remain anonymous because the five commissioners have not yet voted on the proposal. But the proposal stops short of a request by rural companies for a hard cap on roaming fees. Perhaps more significant: It does not cover roaming for broadband services, a fast-growing market. Roaming lets a carrier's subscribers use another company's network where the first carrier doesn't have coverage. In recent years, big companies such as Verizon and Sprint Nextel have installed antennas along major highways in rural markets, reducing their reliance on small companies for coverage. But rural-company subscribers still must use national carriers' networks when their customers travel to nearby cities to shop or work, or across the country. The big companies have used that leverage to extract roaming rates of 35 cents to $1 a minute from their rural rivals, says the rural association says. The fees are often passed to customers.

Industry body created for podcasters
Leading lights in the podcasting community have formed the Association for Downloadable Media (ADM) to promote the standardisation of audience measurement and advertising for downloadable media. The ADM will focus primarily on podcasting, downloadable media and portable content that is monetised by advertising and sponsorship. It will also create a 'landscape' that facilitates the commercialisation of this growing audience. The organisation will focus specifically on any content downloaded by consumers, and will work in collaboration with related industry organisations, publishers and agencies such as the Interactive Advertising Bureau and the American Association of Advertising Agencies. The ADM will address issues including revenue generation from advertising and sponsorships of podcasts, video-casts and other audio/video digital content distributed via RSS, Atom, peer-to-peer, mobile devices and downloads from websites. It will support publishers, producers, advertisers, agencies, vendors and research/measurement companies, as well as hardware and software manufacturers involved in the production or distribution of downloadable media. Monetisation of podcasts is a growing opportunity for such parties, and the ADM will "support the momentum of this channel through the collective mindshare of its members", the organisation said. The ADM will launch with an interim board of representatives from Apple, BlogTalkRadio, Kiptronic, LibSyn, IndieFeed, National Public Radio, Nielsen NetRatings, Personal Life Media, Podbridge, PodTech, PodShow, Podtrac, Porter Novelli, Rev3 and Vogele Law. The organisation believes that there has been a need for industry standards in the "podosphere", and will help accelerate its growth into a commercially viable medium. Spending on podcast advertising is forecast to quintuple over the next five years, from $80m in 2006 to $400m in 2011.

Study Projects Greater Reliance Of Cable-TV Subscribers on DVRs
U.S. cable-television providers increasingly are relying on digital-video recorder technology to compete against satellite-television broadcasters, according to a new report. Growing acceptance of personal video recorders by cable subscribers -- with so-called DVRs projected to be used by roughly half of those customers by 2010. The study forecasts that the number of cable homes with DVR devices will roughly double to around 32 million, versus the current 17.6 million. By contrast, the number of satellite-television customers with such devices is projected to total about 17 million, up from today's 10 million, over the same period, according to the report. Currently, the report estimates another 1.3 million or so users are buying their DVRs directly from retail outlets or getting them from telephone companies. And the report projects this segment also will grow significantly. The development could put the nation's satellite-broadcasters, which originally championed the use of DVRs, at a disadvantage as cable operators capitalize on their size and marketing prowess to adopt and push the same technology for their own purposes, according to the report. "This is a remarkable turnaround for cable," according to the report. Initially considered a market discriminator for satellite-TV, the latest projections suggest that DVRs instead could end up providing a significant boost for resurgent cable systems, particularly if the devices eventually are marketed in conjunction with burgeoning video-on-demand systems. DVRs permit viewers to record, store and playback video programs on their home television systems, skip over commercials and offer other enhancements to the viewing experience.

Top 10 e-commerce developments of the decade
Google has topped a list of the 10 most significant e-commerce developments of the past 10 years, as chosen by staff of the Software & Information Industry Association, a trade association for the software and digital information industry.

SIIA's Top 10
Google (September 1998): Google did more to fundamentally change the way we use the internet than any other event in the last 10 years. Americans conducted 6.9 billion searches online in February 2007 and nearly half of those were on Google.

Broadband penetration of US internet users reaches 50% (June 2004): It took broadband roughly four years to reach 50% – but it is estimated that it will reach 90% penetration of internet users by the end of 2007.

eBay Auctions (launched September 1997): The launch empowered hundreds of thousands of power sellers to quit their day jobs and work exclusively online. Individuals could also compete directly with each other in ways unimaginable in a physical market.

Amazon.com (IPO May 1997): Amazon showed the world what an online store would look like and made online shopping popular through its ease of use and wide selection. Amazon's public offering told the world that online commerce is legitimate and here to stay.

Google AdWords (2000): Keyword advertising has become the biggest online advertising vehicle, representing 40% of that market and $6.8bn in revenue.

Open standards (HTML 4.0 released 1997): The standards for the web embodied in HTML are overseen by the World Wide Web Consortium, which is not controlled by any company or government. The formats are open, well documented and designed to work with different software and hardware. It has probably been the most influential and important data standard in the history of publishing.

Wi-Fi (802.11 launched 1997): The development of Wi-Fi removed the limitations of desktops and cables and shifted focus toward mobile solutions.

User-generated content (YouTube launched 2005): At first a playground for kids with video cameras, YouTube is now the embodiment of Web 2.0.

iTunes (2001): In the aftermath of Napster and the P2P battles, iTunes legitimised the digital music industry, revolutionising the music industry. The importance of CDs declined while music as digital content grew, leading to developments in everything from Digital Rights Management software to increased bandwidth use. Today, more than $2bn worth of music was sold online or through mobile phones in 2006 (trade revenues), almost doubling the market in the last year. Digital sales now account for around 10% of the music market.

BlackBerry (1999): The BlackBerry makes communication instantaneous, and mobile. A comprehensive communications device creates a new mobile business culture.

One in Three Americans Wants an iPhone
Apple's iPhone could emerge as the most successful product introduction of the 21st century, new research suggests. Lightspeed Research surveyed 39,000 people on its U.S. online panel in the days following the launch of the device on June 29-- and the research findings are staggering. 32% of those surveyed who do not currently own an iPhone stated that they do intend to purchase one, with 8% planning to purchase in the next three months and 22% planning to purchase "some time in the future" the researchers said. Respondents ages 44 and under plan to purchase at a rate higher than those ages 45 and over. Forty% of respondents ages 18 to 24 said they are planning to purchase an iPhone some time in the future, followed closely by 25 to 34 year olds (36%) and 35 to 44 year olds (33%). Apple has achieved notoriety for the device. Nearly 90% of respondents have heard of the device. Lightspeed Research claims those who live in the Pacific region were nearly twice as likely as those who live in other regions to purchase an iPhone. The New England and Mid-Atlantic regions also showed above average purchase levels. In an additional survey of 34,000 respondents conducted by Lightspeed Research on 5 July, nearly half of those who would like to own an iPhone stated that the benefits of having music, movie, internet and wireless all in one was the top reason.

Backers Thrive On B2B Firms
Silicon Valley investors, searching for their next Google-size windfall, still are pouring money into consumer-focused Web sites and technology companies that do online video and "social-networking" Web sites where like-minded people meet and chat online. But the big paydays are being realized elsewhere. In the past 18 months, 45 initial public offerings of stock by technology companies backed by venture capitalists in the U.S. have raised more than $10.2 billion. A big chunk of the profits for VCs has come from less-glamorous, business-focused companies selling such products as telecommunications equipment and computer storage. Some of the nearly 20 such companies that have gone public now sport market capitalizations of more than $1 billion each. Last month alone, four telecom and data-storage companies -- Starent Networks, Limelight Networks, Infinera and Data Domain -- launched initial public offerings. Another telecom company, ShoreTel, debuted early this month. The shares of all five have risen at least 30% since the IPOs; shares of Infinera are up 98%. Venture-capital firms such as Highland Capital Partners, Matrix Partners, Accel Partners, Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which backed some of these companies, have been big beneficiaries. For many firms, it marks a stark turnabout from the bleak days of 2002 and 2003, when many venture capitalists were killing off failing companies in their portfolios rather than counting profits. Battery also has stakes in Netezza Corp. and BladeLogic Inc., two data-center companies that have filed for IPOs. The profits generated by the dozens of stock debuts of these work-horse, business-focused equipment companies dwarf the venture returns of the handful of recent consumer deals, such as Google Inc.'s $1.7 billion purchase of YouTube.com, which had been backed by just one venture-capital firm. Indeed, of the 79 technology IPOs in the U.S. since January 2006, only a handful involved companies directly serving consumers.

Firefox now a serious threat to IE in Europe
Mozilla's Firefox web browser has made dramatic gains on Microsoft's Internet Explorer throughout Europe in the past year with a marked upturn in Firefox use compared to IE over the past four months. A study of nearly 96,000 websites carried out during the week of July 2 to July 8 found that Firefox had 27.8% market share across Eastern and Western Europe, IE had 66.5%, with other browsers including Safari and Opera making up the remaining 5.7%. The July market share represents a massive 3.7% rise since a similar survey in March. A particularly worrying sign for Microsoft is that in some key European markets Firefox is threatening to overtake IE as the market leading browser. In Slovenia (47.9%) and Finland (45.4%) FF usage has reached parity with IE, while in Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Croatia and Ireland, FF has either reached or is nearly at 40% market share. Countries where Firefox market share has now reached 30% or more include, Austria, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Estonia and Latvia. Strong gains for Firefox were also reported in France, Sweden and Switzerland where in all three countries Firefox is now approaching 25% market share. Although clear market share gains for Firefox were reported in every single European territory, countries where IE still has not reached 20% market share include Britain, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Ukraine, Norway and Denmark. Australasia, already a strong FF market, has also seen big gains in Firefox market share over the past four months, with an increase in Firefox usage from 24.8% in early March to 28.9% in early July.

London gets free wi-fi network
A free metropolitan wi-fi network has been launched in London, continuing the gradual trend towards free public wireless access in Europe and the US. The free-hotspot.com group and wi-fi network infrastructure company MeshHopper have joined forces to offer free wi-fi access to businesses and the public along a 22km stretch of the River Thames. MeshHopper is the company behind the paid-for Thames Online wi-fi network, which went fully commercial last year and which covers the same stretch of the river, from Millbank in central London to Greenwich in southeast London. The free network, which has been branded as "online-4-free.com", gives users free access if they agree to view a 15 to 30 second advert every 15 minutes. If users don't want to view the adverts, they are charged one of a range of tariffs, including £2.95 per hour or £9.95 per month. The free service operates with modest download speeds of 256Kbps. The paid-for services operate at a faster 500Kbps. Free-hotspot.com has set up 1,500 smaller networks in buildings and open spaces around Europe but the Thames service is by far its biggest network. The network will be extended to 36km by August. The online-4-free.com service follows the launch in summer 2006 of a free city-wide wi-fi network in Norwich, which is supported by the local council to help generate inward investment. It is understood that a free network will be launched in August in Manchester city center, in direct competition with a paid-for network built by BT. Paris is currently building a free citywide wi-fi network in partnership with Alcatel-Lucent and mobile operator SFR. The network will be offered to both citizens and visitors to the French capital. BT has built a number of citywide wi-fi networks up and down the UK in partnership with local councils, and the City of London has backed a similar network for the financial community in partnership with operator The Cloud but all these networks charge for access. An increasing number of US towns and cities offer free or subsidised wi-fi access, including Mountain View, Philadelphia, Raleigh and San Francisco.

Swedish granny gets 40Gbps broadband line
A Swedish grandmother has become the fastest surfer on the web with a 40Gbps broadband connection delivered straight to her home. Sigbritt Löthberg, 75, had never owned a computer until recently, despite being the mother of Swedish internet guru Peter Löthberg. Her son set up the line with the local council's Karlstad Stadsnät network infrastructure arm. The new line will enable Sigbritt to watch 1,500 high definition television channels simultaneously or download a high-definition DVD in two seconds flat. The connection was made possible using a modulation technique that allows signals to be sent 2,000 kilometres without transponders over fibre. "I wanted to show that there are other methods than the old fashioned ways such as copper wires and radio, which lack the possibilities of fibre," said Peter Löthberg, who now works at Cisco Systems.

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