Entries Tagged 'Time Warner Cable' ↓

The licensing dispute between Fox and Cablevision which kept the Giants game from coursing across the Cablevision network at kickoff today shows us yet again why closed licensing models based upon licensing aggregation simply are not in the best interest of consumers.  As I highlighted in a previous post, I’m not a fan of having my cable company providing content contingent upon my letting them negotiate on my behalf without my input.  By restricting my choices, by forcing itself as an unwanted middleman, it holds me hostage as a bargaining chip.

It’s not uncommon within traditional media, and it’s being forced upon new forms of media consumption and distribution.  Proprietary methods of licensing, securing, and distributing content seek to retain control, while purporting to solve the problem of enabling fair compensation for copyright holders.

Large media companies are in the business of exploiting economies of scale to monetize content.  Aggregating customer demand and simplifying its own job of authorizing access to content by providing as uniform a product as possible, cable companies both remove the market choice for content, subsidizing what it provides at its own discretion, and with limited provider choice in most markets, provides service that’s "good enough".

I remain convinced that what will ultimately destroy large media companies will be the disintermediation of forced relicensing schemes by the establishment of an open content authorization standard, and service providers which compete on the basis of the quality of their service instead of the exclusivity of their agreements.  An open content authorization standard, complete with near-real-time analytics, support for cryptographically-secure delegation of authorization (to allow for voluntary relicensing schemes), and an ecosystem of disinterested authorization providers can enable a new transparency in the media supply chain.

If Greenpeace can force Timberland into transparency about the sources of its leather purchased from Brazilian suppliers, why is the relative exploitation of both producers and consumers of copyrighted materials free of such transparency when it’s so incredibly simple to track the provenance of digital assets?  Should I be able to filter the content I’ll pay for based upon the business practices of the company providing it?

This past week, I listened to Tim Armstrong, CEO of AOL, giving a keynote speech about the future of his company.  Two things stuck with me from what he spoke about — one being my introduction to the AOL property Seed, the other being his description of what was needed to create "offramps from the internet", programming.  Seed is a site for writers and photographers to create freelance content from which AOL can draw, while compensating contributors.  His reference to programming was to evoke the notion of television or radio programming, what most new media types refer to as content curation.

AOL’s building its businesses and brands around content curation, it’s doing so by sourcing its inputs directly from independent contractors, placing thousands or millions of tiny bets in a marketplace that can’t be controlled by its competitors.

An open, transparent authorization system could still be used to allow exclusive licensing access to a single customer, should the copyright licensor choose, but an open platform provides the opportunity for new revenue models based upon ubiquitous access, low transaction costs (at high volume), and simplifying consumption.  Authorization policies can allow new methods of consumption, entitlement to value-added content, and clarity on policies for derived works.  One can easily imagine a "cover" of a popular song inheriting obligations from the original, but allowing a new performance by an amazing coffeehouse talent to distribute her performance in ways that still ensure that the songwriter’s licensing restrictions (say, a royalty of tenth of a cent per play) are respected.  Content curators, such as those doing the "programming" would have an incentive to add value.  Content distributors would have an incentive to compete on the value offered by their distribution service, and not on their ability to negotiate licensing deals.

People can run from the comfort of Comcast/Cablevision/Time Warner/Verizon/DirectTV/Dish to the comfort of iTunes, but they’re simply exchanging one master for another.  Eventually, even Netflix will face its day of reckoning — its model still relies upon large-scale aggregate content deals it makes on behalf of its customers.

Eventually, open WILL win.  Market forces will eventually dictate it.  Want to get ahead of the curve and help make it happen?

I do.

In watching the fight unfold between Cablevision and Disney/ABC, it’s plain to see that the largest problem the cable companies have is their adherence to their business model and not picking the right core competency.

Time Warner Cable is asking its customers to support their fight against content providers:

I’ve recently upgraded my home internet connection to Time Warner Cable’s “Wideband” Internet Service — using DOCSIS 3.0, I get 50Mbps down, 5Mbps up. And I actually get it. Since I’ve posted before about the negative experiences I had with Time Warner’s RoadRunner service at a previous apartment, I’ll update it with some information about how one individual turned around my customer experience and gives me some measure of hope.

In either case, I’ve tried streaming various HD video services, and while I’m fairly impressed as to how far full-screen HD video has come, it’s still not where it needs to be – full-screen on my 24″ LCD the video can resolve to fine detail, but has horribly visible problems with lots of motion. Whether Hulu, TNT, or the Olympics, there were issues, though I found the way the Olympics’ Silverlight video streams seemed to “resolve” to detail very well after motion slowed, and it appeared to in some ways mimic the eye varying focus organically. The Olympics player also didn’t full-screen the video, it full-screened the player, which maintained a photo-like frame with advertising.

In any event, in investigating the bitrates used by all three services, I found that it never exceeded 3.5Mbps, probably due to the tactical problems with distributing significantly higher bitrates over the internet.

Why isn’t Time Warner Cable reading the writing on the wall and recognizing itself for what it is?

The “television” cable company is a content distribution network.

They’ve figured out how to give me a 50/5 last-mile connection. Downloads from content distributed by CDNs is reasonably close to rated speed.

Time Warner should be focusing on making it easy for content providers to get higher bandwidth streaming content hosted (if on-demand) or replicated (if live streams) into their network, from which they could easily pass it along to me at 10 or 15Mbps, resulting in significantly higher quality video.

They could either charge content providers (like ABC/Disney) for their content distribution services which enable an unsurpassed customer experience (possibly even charged at variable rates subject to SLA as monitored by end-user equipment), charge customers to access this premium experience (charge one rate for internet access with “wish you the best” experience, and an additional fee for access to this premium CDN), or a mix of the two.

I’ve got an LG BD570 on the way, which is a Blu-Ray player which supports streaming of Netflix, VUDU, CinemaNow, Youtube, Pandora, and media from my home network over DLNA. It hasn’t been delivered yet, but I’m well on my way to being my own CDN. If they’d provide a highly-accessible CDN, and access to it through a set-top box open to whatever applications whether they use the CDN or not, they could offer a hell of an experience. And they could extend the CDN into my house using one of my set top boxes as a CDN node of sorts.

Did Comcast GetIt(tm) with its rebranding as xfinity? Might that be where they’re heading?

Cablevision’s Optimum Online services have always been a cut above the internet offerings from Comcast and Time Warner. Maybe they can “get it”, give in for now, and then change their business model to be someone whose services are actually in demand, wanted by both the content providers and end users. Rather than being a proxy for licensing battles, they can step out of the way of the content providers’ licensing models, offering infrastructure that seamlessly handles a feature set that supports the licensing models of choice of the content providers, and allow users to handle the battle over licensing.

Get out of being in the middle of the problem, and get into the middle of the solution. There’s something wonderfully empowering in the business model being focused specifically on the level of service provided — it ties business success with customer experience, a wonderful feedback loop.

Wouldn’t it be nice to want to do business with the cable company?

Were they also to establish an open licensing authorization platform, they could provide content providers a platform to authorize access to content based upon the licensor’s business model, and provide sublicensing to content aggregators targeting specific verticals. They’d sell services to content providers (licensors), curators (aggregators based upon value-add with a sublicensing business model), as well as to end users (aggregation of licensing into packages or a la carte bundles for retail sale).

If you make the rights management reasonable, CableCompany, you can open your own iTunes-like content licensing store on this platform. You can get revenue from transaction fees on the sublicensing, and be transparent about it. You’d be a “cloud service”, and could bill based upon usage, and drive usage through an exemplary customer experience.

Or you can wait, and die off when someone else does this. Look out for FiOS and Google. Verizon’s got everything to gain about getting high ARPU internet services rolled out, and don’t have the same legacy mindset about content licensing that you do. And Google’s gigabit-to-the-home is probably actually just an attempt to wake you up to get you to do this for their benefit as well.

Be the open and transparent good guys and innovate to the future, or be the hated bad guys and become irrelevant. Your choice.

I’ve got a lot to say about Time Warner Cable of New York and New Jersey in the coming days and weeks. I’ll start you out with this screenshot of just the kind of slow speeds I’m getting on a regular basis. 150ms ping to the first hop isn’t infrequent, as well as 10% packet loss to the first hop as well…

At 3AM, I can get 19mbps download on that speed test (I pay for 20mbps Road Runner Extreme). Between 7pm and midnight? The speed tests sometimes show as high as 2mbps or so, but will vary from minute to minute down into the hundreds of kilobits per second. As you can see in the screenshot I included, I’m testing at 220kbps.

Road Runner has sent techs out twice. Both said that the signal looked fine, but one replaced the cable modem. Both said that a service call would be opened for the “plant” folks to do something. One, upon my geeky pleading (I poured on the victim bit… but it was genuine… the tech support line is 30 minutes on hold to have someone run me through the exact same steps: unplug the router, plug in a computer, disable the firewall, disable antivirus, run the speed test. “We have to send a tech out to you”. Lather, rinse, repeat.) mentioned “upgrades” which had been done quite a bit north of me, but hadn’t been done this far down yet. I inquired about the schedule, and he said that he hadn’t been told, even after asking.

Frustrated, I submitted a complaint with the City of New York’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications. Unfortunately, I was told that their influence about complaints about cable companies is limited to cable television issues, and not Internet access. But he did mention that they were aware of the node-splitting upgrade that Time Warner is performing on Manhattan.

Of course, node-splitting is a way to mitigate oversubscription problems. Too many users on one node, and the internet bandwidth to that node is saturated by the sheer traffic volume.

But if Time Warner has been planning node-splitting, they’ve known about capacity issues.

So why haven’t they offered in any of my multiple interactions with them to a) downgrade the level of service I’m subscribed to because they can’t honestly offer the service when peak time is so incredibly far from what they’ve sold me, b) offer to lower the pricing on my upgraded package until the upgrade happens (and tell me when it would), or c) at least OFFICIALLY ADMIT THAT THERE IS A PROBLEM.

I’ve got some thoughts about how I’ll proceed from here, and I’ll document what happens better and more real-time (this problem began in the fall and has gotten progressively worse).

But alas, it’s bedtime for now.