Doug on IP Comm » Comcast

Skype’s busy summer

Doug Mohney — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 20:06:50 +0000

Over the past six weeks, Skype (www.skype.com) has announced new products and/or deals with Comcast, on Android, and with Facebook. Anything else?

At The Cable Show 2011, Skype and Comcast (www.comcast.com) announced that Comcast users would be able to lease Comcast hardware to enable Skype video calling on HDTV video sets. The service uses a little adopter box plus a customized remote to manage the Skype – and to-be-named-later apps – session to make and receive Skype video and audio calls, IM, and watch TV at the same time.

No price on the hardware has been set, but it kinda screams dead-end unless Skype is also going to offer/sell/promote this to other cable companies in the future.

Later, Skype released Skype for Android 2.0, enabling video calling over Android in the (closed) Skype universe. Support runs over Wi-Fi or 3G, with downloads free. Again, it’s nice, but with all U.S. wireless vendors except for Sprint rolling out data caps, I’m not sure how useful running video on a mobile phone actually is, unless you’re next to a power outlet.

To wrap up its summer of video, Skype announced a partnership with Facebook (www.facebook.com) enabling video chat within the Facebook environment. I think the embedded video message part is the most intriguing feature of this announcement since Facebook loads itself to asynchronous-ness communication. How it all plays out on the mobile environment will be interesting.

I suspect the Facebook announcement was the last of the group and we won’t hear any Big Deals for a while, given that Skype now has to finish being consumed by Microsoft.

Comcast offers 105 Mbps to more than 40 million U.S. homes

Doug Mohney — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 15:09:39 +0000

Comcast (www.comcast.com) has announced that it’s Extreme 105 (sounds like a radio station!) broadband service is now available to more than 40 million homes in major cities across the country, including San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Denver, Chicago, Miami, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and the majority of Boston.

Pricing for the service, which includes up to 10 Mbps upload speeds, is available now for an introductory rate of … wait for it… $105 per month for 12 months as part of a triple play bundle. It also includes a wireless home networking gateway.

It’s all available through the wonders of DOCSIS 3.0. At 105 Mbps, customers can download a 4 GB movie in about 5 minutes and a standard 300 MB TV show in 20 seconds.

You look at the speed rates being offered today and you have to wonder a little bit about the FCC’s broadband plan that wanted 100 Mbps to 100 million households by 2020. Verizon FiOS offers up to 150/35 Mbps in most areas and passes 15.6 million “premises.”

The FCC National Broadband Plan was rolled out in March 2010. A little over more than one year since the release of the plan, two vendors cover more than 55 million homes with 100 Mbps.

Defenders will no doubt argue that 1) It’s homes passed, not homes buying and 2) It’s not symmetrical. Yah, ok, whatever. The point is private industry seems to be rolling along fairly well in meeting this goal without the “hand’ of government, so I’m going to be annoyed if I see people taking bows for this.

Comcast Casabi VoIP play in play

Doug Mohney — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:46:51 +0000

Someone stumbled across Comcast’s quiet rollout of “HomePoint” service in Florida at the end of last week, but the cable company is making up for a soft rollout with a launch of a marketing campaign in Denver today (Monday, October 12). Comcast plans to roll out the service to other markets in the months to come.

Most wonks looking at this seem to be going ga-ga at the simple expedient of deploying a combination of router and cable modem — can we say “yawn” here? — and missing the point that the HomePoint phone runs DECT 6.0 and has the Casabi service embedded in it.

Casabi is a client/server technology that puts a SIP client with a “lite” web browser directly on the phone so you can do very simple things like download ticker updates on things like news, sports, and the weather straight to the phone, as well as read email and do other interesting tricks.

A Comcast spokesperson said HomePoint would support SMS text messaging down the road, so a home user could get texted; the feature isn’t currently available.

Interestingly, Thomson previously said it was planning to roll out “Advanced Cable Gateway” to Comcast in the third quarter of this year.

Does this gear support HD Voice? Welll, the ACG supports DECT 6.0, but there’s no explicit naming of CAT-iq. Nor is there any reference to G.722 codec support. At this point, it is not clear if HD voice will be embedded in the second generation of ACGs Thomson is working on and/or if HD voice will be available through existing hardware as a firmware upgrade to the ACG and handsets. Comcast is being nice enough to look into some HD-specific questions I lobbed onto them today, so stay tuned.

Comcast goes 100 Mbps commercial in Minn/St. Paul — for $370/month!

Doug Mohney — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 14:31:33 +0000

Comcast has announced the launch of 100 Mbps high-speed Internet services for businesses in Minneapolis/St. Paul. The asymmetric service (100 Mbps down/15 Mbps up) also includes a bundle of business applications including Microsoft Communication Service, anti-virus software. And it’s all available at $370 per month..

The speed is made possible by Comcast’s rollout of DOCSIS 3.0 service while the Microsoft Communications Services bundle includes Windows SharePoint and Microsoft Outlook using Microsoft Exchange Server. Anti-virus software is McAfee’s and covers up to 25 PCs.

Can’t wait to see this service turn up in Philly and watch the sparks fly between Comcast and Verizon . Also be interesting to see when Comcast tosses a hosted VoIP bundle (preferably HD) into the mix to really make things interesting for telcos.

Comcast is listening

Doug Mohney — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 18:11:41 +0000

Clone-Wars DIGEX colleague John Todd had some issues with his Comcast service a couple of days ago and posted his difficulties on social media (Facebook, Twitter).

Within a few hours, Comcast’s “hit squad” was following up on John’s post, and Tweeting back to me on a comment I made to John about the existence of the organization. Comcast has a dedicated group of peeps skimming through social media to follow up on publicized customer problems.

Given my own recent dark experiences with Verizon, I can only point to Comcast’s efforts as the latest of a number of data points demonstrating that cable companies “get it” when it comes to customer service, and the traditional telephone companies have “lost it.”

Unfortunately, the “traditional” telecom media is out to lunch on this issue. Nobody (yes, you Wall Street analysts believing what you are told) has factored this into the losses of landlines — it’s easier to blame losses to tighter home budgets, wireless, and millennials than own up to a steady decline in the values and quality for customer service and repair in the landline biz.

Comcast shows iPhone love

Doug Mohney — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 15:23:04 +0000

Comcast has announced a free mobile app for the iPhone to allow its customers access to all of the company’s “favorite” services, including a unified email inbox, visual voice mail, address book sync, TV listings, and trailers. One could almost image a Comcast product manager opening up his window and yelling “Can you hear me now, Verizon?”

More seriously, Comcast has bypassed normal politics by working with the iPhone/iPod touch — an AT&T-exclusive device — to provide a unified user interface, so a triple play customer can check email and even listen to voice mail in one combined in-box, manage voice mail and call logs, and get calls forwarded from a Comcast home phone to an iPhone and manage all those home phone details.

Universal address sync is cool, but you’d expect that sort of functionality from anyone who bought Plaxo.

For video junkies, the “what’s on TV” feature and the movie trailers are a nice little touch, and will keep someone who has 2 minutes of idle time on their hands entertained.

Perhaps the more interesting question is if/when Comcast rolls out other versions of this client to other platforms. An Android port shouldn’t be too touch, but are there enough ‘droid users to justify the work and support?

Comcast goes cheap voice – announces international bundle

Doug Mohney — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:20:23 +0000

Deja cheap minutes! Comcast has jumped onto the how-low-can-you-go bandwagon, announcing a bundle of 300 anytime international minutes for a flat fee of $15 (well, $14.95 per month. This fits in with the preaching I did late yesterday about vanilla voice minutes and this morning’s manifesto about the third wave of voice communications being HD.

Comcast says the WorldWide plan for its digital voice service could save consumers 20 to 30 percent when compared to traditional phone service plans, and encompasses–

41 countries in Europe
26 countries in the Caribbean, Central and South America
20 countries in Asia and the Pacific
8 countries in the Middle East
5 countries in Africa

You can find a complete list of all the countries included over at www.comcast.com/internationalcalling

My quickie math works out to a price of 6.7 cents per minute; overages will be billed at “standard international rates,” whatever that translates to. Six hours of calling around the globe will be attractive to a lot of people, and a headache to some.

One of my buddies from way-back was bemoaning the fact his mother-in-law had discovered VoIP service, so she’d call at 2:30 AM (local Eastern Time), talk for an hour at a time. Last I heard, he was looking for was to selective degrade his broadband connection when she called to wrap up the conversation faster.