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Bye-Bye Dial-Up: Broadband Ubiquity Chugging Right Along    Credit: Karen Chaffraix, TechWeb News

     Eighty-eight million American households will be Internet-connected by the year 2010, and 78 percent of those households will have broadband access, according to a report issued Thursday from Darien, Conn.-based Jupiter Research. Dial-ups may soon be a thing of the past.

     The Jupiter report numbers represent a modest rate of growth in terms of users over the next five years, but a dramatic increase in those who switch to broadband usage from the currently more ubiquitous dial-up connection. The numbers from 2004 show broadband-linked households to have reached 31.9 million, Jupiter reports, with Comcast carrying the leading 22 percent market share. The year's 8.2 million new broadband users represented a 35 percent spike from the year prior, residential DSL users increasing by 50 percent; cable users by 28 percent. DSL was usually cheaper than cable.

     Predicted is a neck in neck race in the United States between cable modem and phone line-based DSL service, currently the most widely accessible and competitively priced technologies delivering broadband access. The winner will be cable modem systems, according to the report's lead analyst Joseph Laszlo, due to its early emergence into the market, and wider availability.

XM, Still One Step Ahead of Sirius   Credit: By Annys Shin, Washington Post Staff Writer

     Until recently, XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. and its rival Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. were engaged in a tit-for-tat, deal-for-deal face-off. Sirius landed the NFL; XM responded with baseball. XM signed an exclusive deal with General Motors Corp.; Sirius partnered with DaimlerChrysler AG. XM scored former NPR Morning Edition host Bob Edwards; Sirius lured away shock jock Howard Stern from terrestrial radio giant Infinity Broadcasting.

     But for all the billions the two companies have committed to differentiating themselves from each other, they are increasingly following similar business strategies, analysts say. And that might not be a bad thing for the satellite radio business, which while growing rapidly, has so far attracted only a tiny portion of the 193 million people market research firm NDP Group estimates listen to traditional radio. Satellite radio subscribers pay a monthly fee to receive more than 100 channels, including music, news, talk and sports.

     Analysts expect XM and Sirius to generate enough revenue to cover the cost of their operations in the next two years. But as the two companies move into the home, laptop and personal music player, they are vying for consumers' attention with podcasts, online radio and downloaded music. Which prompts the question: Will satellite radio's audience be eroded by whiz-bang gadgets before the industry escapes the red?

Tunnel Vision   Credit: by Alessio Casati, UMTS product manager, Lucent Technologies

   

    The concurrent evolution of computing, microelectronics, wireless data technologies and the internet has given rise to a new trend in global telecom — data mobility. With the market for high-speed wireless data services growing steadily, the availability of competitive, quality-focused services will drive successful service adoption.

     Skyrocketing subscriber numbers combined with recent technology advances are generating fast-growing interest in third-generation (3G) wireless data standards that enable the delivery, to mobile users, of very high-speed data services. Business users are also emerging, understandably, as one of the key initial adopters of this technology, which offers substantial productivity benefits to enterprises of all kinds.

    With the growth of enterprise data mobility, mobile virtual private networks (MVPNs) are quickly becoming one of the key enabling technologies for communicating business information via public networking infrastructures. Indeed, a growing number of businesses today are looking to wireless carriers to provide MVPN functionality as part of their mobile data service offerings, particularly smaller businesses that don’t have the IT resources and expertise required to support such services internally. An enormous market opportunity clearly awaits wireless carriers who can meet demands for such advanced services.

Excise tax on your phone bill may be on way out.    Credit: By Leslie Cauley, USA TODAY

    

     NEW YORK — Some say it's absurd. According to seven federal courts, it's also illegal. But one thing is for sure: America's excise tax on phone service has soaked consumers for more than a century.

     Rep. Gary Miller, R-Calif., recently introduced legislation in the House — supported by 98 co-sponsors — aimed at repealing the tax, which was imposed in 1898 to help pay for the Spanish-American War. The war was over in six months, but the tax stayed. The general excise tax has so far cost consumers about $300 billion, says the Congressional Research Service. The entire Spanish-American War cost only about $6 billion, adjusted for inflation.AT&T says the tax is grossly unfair to consumers. "This is a 19th-century tax on a 21st-century technology," says Jim Cicconi, AT&T's general counsel. "It makes no sense, and it ought to be repealed."

     Gene Kimmelman, director of Consumers Union, agrees. "This is the poster child for how messed up our telephone pricing system is today," he says. "It makes no sense to have to pay a tax to fight a war that was over more than 100 years ago."

Sprint, T-Mobile Subscribers Can Share Pictures, Video   Credit: Yahoo! News.

    

     Sprint Corp. and T-Mobile USA Inc. on Thursday said they have agreed to let each other's subscribers exchange pictures and video. The agreement has the two companies agreeing to "multimedia messaging services interoperability," which enables their subscribers to send and receive photos and videos.

     VeriSign is handling interoperability for Sprint, based in Overland Park, Kan., through Verisign's hosted and managed service called LightSurf GX-MMS. Both companies said the agreement expands the number of people their subscribers will be able to reach. The deal, however, could also help the bottom line, since carriers often charge for downloads based on the size of the file. At the end of last year, T-Mobile USA, based in Bellevue, Wash., had 17.3 million subscribers. Sprint had 24.8 million wireless customers.