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Newspapers unbroadband speed

Austrian´s newspaper DerStandard has an interesting article about broadband in Japan - while we (in Austria) are at broadband maximum speeds of up 20 Mbps, Japanese citizens enjoy speeds of 60 Mbps up to 100 Mbps. Interestingly, that articlbe already appeared in late August in the WashingtonPost. So, yes very interesting news, but not really new.

Anyway, note this excerpt from the OECD December 2007 broadband statistics:

• Japan leads the OECD in fibre connections directly to the home with  7.9 million fibre-to-the-home subscribers in December 2006. Fibre subscribers alone in Japan outnumber total broadband subscribers in 23 of the 30 OECD countries.
• The total number of ADSL subscriptions continues to fall in Korea and Japan as more users upgrade to fibre-based connections.

So - depending on what statistic you will look into - Japanese DSL number might look worse that overall broadband numbers should be. According to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation's "Assessing Broadband in America" (PDF) report  (via ars technica), average speeds differ even within the US - with California at 1.5 Mbps and Rhode Island at 5.0 Mbps. All together, the US has or had (at that time) an average broadband speed (download speed) of 1.9 Mbps - compared that to Japan´s average 61.1 Mbps.

Onward to the future.

End of the month

I hate the end of the month. Why? With my xDSL account, I may use up to 4.25 GB per month, I may even - but only 4 times a year - reach 4.5 GB but I may not cross that limit, take unused data transfer into the next month or use up the last dozen megabytes through midnight of the month´s last day.

Therefore no matter what there´s else to do I have to use up almost all of the included 4.25 GB up to the last-but-one day, the 29th of June this time and then only leave a minor usage for the last day. Usually this means downloading some music from sources such as De-Bug (but not from BitTorrent).

Or I could forget about it all!

Broadband Statistics

Just today we were talking in the office about how much narrow band users should be taken into account when designing a web page. So I took a short look at my recent entry on OECD broadband statistics - published in June 2005 with data from December 2004.

Now there´s an update called the OECD Broadband Statistics, June 2005 (published in October 2005). Korea still leads with 25.5 subscribers (per 100 inhabitants), with the top countries in Europe being the Netherlands, Denmark, Iceland and Switzerland.

Austria is listed at OECD rank 15 with a total of 12.5 (7.0 DSL, 5.4 Cable, 0.1 Other). EUROSTAT (Juli 2005) lists 23% (of all households). A quick & dirty look at customer numbers: Inode 100.000, UPC chello 261.000, TA 424.000 Retail ADSL, 101.000 Wholesale ADSL, 960.000 narrow band customers (PDF Q3/2005). Thats all for this hour.

T-Online hu?

hu? What? Can somebody tell me what this is? T-Online Hungary. A subsidiary not listed here. Nor here. They even sell ADSL.

Ok, it´s the internet branch of Magyar Telekom (formerly Matáv, owned by Deutsche Telekom AG). The internet branch was formely know as Axelero. Till may 6th.

Podcast in legal terms

In legal terms - related to the Austrian media law update 2005 (Mediengesetznovelle 2005), a podcast may be called a:

Ereignishörfunkprogramm

Interesting, but heavy reading (in German).

2006 FIFA World Cup

Avaya chief technician Doung Gardner has a 2006 FIFA World Cup™ Blog, featurin´ the IT-side of the world cup: RFID, wlan, IT security and more.

OECD Broadband Statistics reviewed

The OECD has published a new OECD Broadband Statistics report with data from December 2004. I always like to counter-check some data, and it´s interesting how much statistic you can look up on the internet without being a journalist or a professional researcher.

First, a few interesting numbers: total broadband users 118 million, adding 34 million in 2004 (41% growth), equaling 10.2 subscribers per 100 inhabitants. Korea leads (24.9 subscribers per 100 inhabitants), followed by Denmark (18.8, note the gap!), Iceland and Canada.

Now, the local numbers: Switzerland 17.3 (10.4 DSL, 6.5 cable, rank#6), Austria 10.2 (5.5 DSL, 4.7 cable, rank #15), Germany 8.4 (8.1 DSL, 0.2 cable, rank #18). A much better ranking than at the Eurovision Song Contest. :-) Poland 2.1 (rank#25), Czech Republic 1.6 (rank #26). (Note that the OECD has higher number that Eurostat, the latter reporting 6.7 for Germany and 8.7 for Austria (data from July 2004). ECTA, further below, also reports 10% for Austria.

Counter-check: Austrian subscriber numbers are given at 827.675 subscribers, resulting in about 446.295 DSL users and 381.378 cable users. Telekom Austria reported for year-end 2004 383.600 ADSL lines (ADSL retail plus ADSL wholesale), however Telekom Austria also reports 59.385 unbundled lines, resulting in a sum of 442.985 DSL users. Roughly the same as in the OECD report.

Q1 update: Telekom Austria has add 60.300 ADSL accounts, UPC Chello only 7.500 internet accounts (comparing numbers here and here).

Update 3/6/05:
Regarding the numbers of unbundled lines: the number of 59.385 ULL TA lines is a rough estimate based of percentage figures given in the Telekom Austria report. The regulator (RTR) has reported about 72.000 ULL lines in Austria (per year-end 2004), of those 80%, which would be around the TA figure.

[...] nimmt der Anteil der breitbandig genutzten entbündelten Teilnehmeranschlussleitungen laufend zu und liegt im Q4/2004 bei rund 80 %.

-0.28

Good design. And triple play too. Tomorrow is the shareholder meeting - I´m no longer one. Annual report.  It was great - once. Well, still is - in a way.

New/old offers

Tele2UTA has announced it´s new broadband offers (PDF). I didn´t find them yet at their website (except for the press release), so let´s compare them:

Product	old	new
Complete 600MB 768/256 kbit/s	-	€ 29,90
Complete 1 GB 768/256 kbit/s	€ 39,90	€ 34,90
Complete 2 GB 768/256 kbits/s	-	€ 39,90
Complete 5 GB 1280/256 kbit/s	€ 49,90 (4 GB)	€ 49,90
Complete 10 GB 1280/256 kbits/s	€ 59,90	€ 59,90

The 1 GB product gets a €5 price cut, an additional 2 GB level is introduced at the old price of the 1 GB product and the 4 GB product is updated to 5 GB. No changes to the 10 GB product. Additional data volume is priced at € 2,90 per 100 MB (cheaper then Telekom Austria surcharge of € 3,90 per 100 MB, but still pricey). TA also offers 250 MB at € 7,90 (which would roughly corresponds with Tele2UTA´s surcharge price).

Clearly, the 600 MB product addresses the Telekom Austria´s aonSpeed product priced at the same price, but to the aonSpeed product voice services charges  (POTS €15,98) have to be added. Thus, a good offer for the low and middle data transfer segment of the market. Can the €29,90 price lure customers on the broadband track? Even those that use the net only ocassionally? Not sure - it depends. Clearly, the always-on characteristics of broadband internet pay of, but is it worth the price?
Let´s see: € 29,90 minus € 15,98 POTS = € 13,92. With narrowband AonFlash (as an example) usage in the evenings & on week-ends (€ 0,013 per minute) this means 1070 minutes or over 17 hours per month (or even close to 22 hours with AonFlash 20). Hm.

TV pull down menu

Time Warner is testing a "new" technology using on-screen digital navigation tools that let users click on pull-down menus during live broadcasts to channel surf to other offers. Heck, that´s nothing new. You can see that in any decent MTV music video or any science fiction movie. :-)

Broadband market review started

The Austrian telecoms regulator has issued a paper on the broadband wholesale market under the long title:
Öffentliche Konsultation des Entwurfes der 8. Verordnung der Rundfunk und Telekom Regulierungs-GmbH, mit der die „1. Verordnung der Rundfunk und Telekom Regulierungs-GmbH, mit der die der sektorspezifischen ex-ante Regulierung unterliegenden relevanten nationalen Märkte für den Telekommunikationssektor festgelegt werden (Telekommunikationsmärkteverordnung 2003 – TKMVO 2003)“ geändert wird.

Worth reading. Note that broadband means DSL technology (= wholesale ADSL), CATV (cable), WLL/WLAN/WiMAX and FTTH. Unbundled phone lines (ULL), UMTS, PLC, internet over satelite are not in the scope of this document.

Der Transport des Datenstroms zwischen Teilnehmer und Schnittstelle zum Vorleistungsnachfrager erfolgt ohne Verfügungsgewalt des Vorleistungsnachfragers über die dafür notwendige Netzinfrastruktur des Zugangsnetzes (z.B. Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer-DSLAM bzw. Cable Modem Termination System-CMTS) bzw. die benötigte Infrastruktur des Transportnetzes, durch den Vorleistungserbringer.

Skype in and out

Skype adds incoming phone numbers (SkypeIn) and voicemail. (via Martin Röll)

Skype-killer?

A product strategy for taking VoIP into the mass market would be: a) take a popular instant messaging service b) add Skype c) add some extra features to differentiate the product.

Now AOL is going to launch VOIP within a month. The service is be called AOL Internet phone service and will leverage the buddy list used in the AOL instant messenger (AIM). What´s added? Support for existing phones, which can be plugged into the broadband router.

Certainly you can expect some form of VoIP support at every IM products soon? Microsoft (Office Communicator 2005) ? Yahoo? More open protocols (SIP) ?

A long way to IPTV

Light Reading has some juicy tech stuff on how SBC is preparing it´s networks for supporting IPTV service (with a FTTH net up to 20 Mbit/s or 39 Mbit/s) within the next 3 years.

SBC video distribution network will contain

two national content aggregation centers (master headends), one in Los Angeles and one in the Midwest; 40 IP video hubs (regional headends); and 140 IP video serving offices (local distribution points)

Content will be added at the master headons, with local channels, commercials and regional programming added at the regional level. Compression-wise it will use MPEG4 (maybe H.264 with QT perhaps?) or Windows Media 9 with DRM. Estimates for one channel of high-definition video or 20 Mbits/s for MPEG2, 8 for WM9 and 6 for MPEG4 (does that mean that Deutsche Telekom will use MPEG4, too? But, well, they currently only do VoD). As note elsewhere, to provide TV networks the security they expect for their revenue streams, DRM will block fast-forwarding commercials.

VoD full speed ahead

heise online reports in their Cebit special on T-Online VoD services, hightlighting their cooperation with CBS Paramount International Television and SevenOne Intermedia (tv sation Pro7/Sat1) - proving about 600 movies (summer 2005).

Nach Angaben von Burkhard Graßmann, Vorstand Medien der T-Online International AG, werden derzeit über 70.000 Filme pro Monat aus einem Angebot von 180 Titeln abgerufen - mit steigender Tendenz. Der Nutzer kann diese 24 Stunden lang ansehen. T-Online zeigt auf der CeBIT den Download von HDTV-Produktionen, für die DSL-Anschlüsse mit einer Bandbreite von 6 MBit/s notwendig sind. "Über die neuen Bandbreiten gibt es viel versprechende Möglichkeiten", so Graßmann. Zwar sei die Rechtesituation schwierig, doch Graßmann bezeichnete es als "valide Option" die Kabel- und Satellitenbetreiber Ende 2006 bis 2007 anzugreifen.

A short english translation: According to Burkhard Graßmann, member of the board of management at T-Online International AG, currently 70.000 films out of 180 movies are downloaded per month. The user can watch this movies up to 24 hours. Coming up are HDTV productions - to be presented at CeBit - which will be downloaded over ADSL connection at 6 Mbit/s (available from Deutsche Telekom´s T-Com in summer 2005).

Broadband Austria

Fancy reading some stuff about broadband adoption in Austria? Here is some stuff I´m reading:

• Un-bundling offer Telekom Austria ("Zugang zur Teilnehmeranschlussleitung") PDF, german
• Breitbandstatusbericht by RTR (the regulatory body; hailed as the broadband status report, however, a bit out-dated even if it´s only May 2003), PDF, german
• KommBericht 2003 by RTR, PDF, german - don´t they have anything from 2004? Chapter 5.2. is especially most interesting.
• cable network operators (currently 1,25 million customers, more also here on AD++)

Note: SMP - significant market power (guess who added it here?).

TV does the Net

Worth reading (but when?):  Broadcast_TV_and_Broadband_Video (PDF). Tagwords: P2P, HTTP, VoD (video on demand), DVR, STB and more.

Just add Skype

AOL wants to become the next Skype (Vonage et al.), CNET reports in AOL: You've got VoIP. After all, brand name does matter (also in VoIP).

Dust TV

What´s a TV? A tv set need a television license, where as a computer doesn´t need one, even if you watch streaming video on it. But only in the UK according to Ofcom, UK´s telecommunication regulator.

In Austria, you might even pay for your vacuum cleaner:

Alle technischen Geräte, mit denen man Radio- und Fernsehprogramme empfangen kann, bezeichnet das Gesetz als "Rundfunkempfangseinrichtung". Dabei ist es egal, was diese Geräte sonst noch können. Ob sie meldepflichtig sind oder nicht, hängt ausschließlich davon ab, ob sie Rundfunkkonsum ermöglichen. Deshalb sind auch rundfunktaugliche Computer (z.B. mit TV-Karte) oder sogar ein Staubsauger mit einem eingebauten Radio grundsätzlich meldepflichtig.

Broadcasting reception equipment (TV, radio etc.) are all technical appliances which are designed to directly receive broadcasts. The type of equipment is therefore not the issue at hand, the decisive factor is that this equipment can receive TV and radio broadcasts.

At least in the UK watching tv over the internet is free (for now) - an extra benefit for telecom operators triple play.

Broadband penetration

From today´s DerStandard:

Kroatia 0,7%
Czech Republik 4%
Germany 10,3%
UK 13,5%
Austria 19,0%
Sweden 21,2%
Belgium 22,3%
Netherlands 22,8%
USA 23,0 %
Switzerland 25,7%

Not mentioned there:
South Korea 70%+ (!!)

(sources: DerStandard.at, MorganStanley, APA, ADL, Global Broadband Report 2003)