Todd Spangler

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Calling the Broadband Bluff

Here’s another way to frame the debate over usage-based billing : After years of broadband providers marketing super-fast, unlimited Internet access at a fixed monthly price, customers are calling their bluff. Broadband networks were originally designed with oversubscription ratios (the total theoretical peak capacity available to all subscribers vs. the actual amount of bandwidth... More

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Ten Years Ago, TiVo's 'Black Thursday' Crash

Back in the early days of TiVo, shortly after the fledgling company launched its very first digital video recorders, there came “Black Thursday”: a crash of its TV listings database that destroyed TiVos across the country. Richard Bullwinkle, now chief evangelist for Rovi , recalled the dark day during a panel discussion at the Future of Television East conference Thursday... More

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Why Monthly Broadband Usage Caps Won't Really Work (But Usage-Based Billing Will)

You’re a broadband provider. Do you want to portray yourself as (a) an unabashedly greedy monopolist/duopolist or (b) a clueless monopolist/duopolist whose lame network can’t meet demand? Or what the heck, take them both, and maybe even throw in the idea that cable and telco TV providers are hoping to inhibit usage of Internet alternatives to their multichannel video packages.... More

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Rogers: Game on For TV Everywhere

Up in the Great White North , Rogers Communications — Canada’s No. 1 cable operator — has kicked off a test of a TV Everywhere service (see Rogers To Launch ‘TV Everywhere’ In November ). The cable company yesterday (Nov. 17) launched Rogers On Demand Online “in private customer testing” and the service will be made available publicly near... More

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Rembrandt: We Agreed To Drop Patent Claims On Cable Modems

Is there a greeting card that says, “Sorry for suing you. You were right, your products don’t infringe our patents”? Maybe with a sad little puppy on it. Rembrandt IP Management — the patent-licensing firm that had sued the five largest U.S. cable operators and sought millions of dollars in royalty payments — claimed in a statement Monday that it... More