The Software Farmer
At the depths of the cold dark winter with an economy sputtering and the future seemingly grim, there remain sparks of light that point to a brighter future. We caught up with one of those sparks last June at the TIA Convention and Conference in Dallas. Neil Mylet is a young man with a company that produces some innovative products in rural America, but who has a vision that is even bigger and extends into helping farmers in Africa help themselves. He is more proof that “youth are our present“. Click here to read more and view our exclusive video interview with this Boilermaker alum and farmer/tech executive.
Follow the Money – Sports Programming, Golden Goose & Possible TV Revolution
Although not explicitly stated by any of the panelists, the political adage, “follow the money,” was an underlying theme to the Broadband Unlimited Webinar on Retransmission Consent. There seemed to be agreement among the panelists – all of whom have been involved in the retransmission/must-carry regulatory game since it was enacted with the 1992 Cable Act – that money paid to the talent on the production side of the media business is at the root of what translates into higher pay-TV subscription bills for the consumer. Click here to read more from this webinar that featured Chris Cinnamon of Cinnamon Mueller, John Hane of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP and Matt Polka of the American Cable Association.
Are Huawei & ZTE Fading Superstars? New Investments Seen Mostly as a Publicity Ploy! by Alan Weissberger
For several years now, China’s Huawei and ZTE had very strong growth rates and became major players in the telecom equipment market. Both companies also make low cost mobile phones that are popular all over the world (yes, they are sold in the U.S.). But their growth seems to be slowing and ZTE actually had a loss in the most recent quarter. Click here to read more.
Infonetics: Mobile Infrastructure Market DOWN in Quarter & Year Except for LTE-Growth in 2013; Small Cells not so Hot! by Alan Weissberger
With the continued exponential growth in mobile data traffic, one would expect a substantial increase in sales of mobile (2G/3G/4G) network infrastructure equipment. Not so, according to Infonetics Research, which released excerpts from its 3rd quarter 2012 (3Q12) 2G, 3G, 4G (LTE and WiMAX) Infrastructure and Subscribers market share and forecasts report, which tracks 2G, 3G, and 4G (LTE and WiMAX) network equipment and subscribers. Click here to read more.
NSN Exits Optical Network Business; Who Will Be the Last Optical Network Vendor(s) Standing? by Alan Weissberger
Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) is selling its optical networking business unit to private investment firm Marlin Equity Partners, a Los Angeles-based private investment firm with over $1bn of capital under management. The new company intends to operate as “an industry leader in the fragmented optical networking sector.” This transaction is another step in the transformation of NSN into a “mobile broadband specialist,” the company said. Click here to read more.
Trends in Cloud Data Center, Networking & Mobile Apps- from the Server Design Summit by Alan Weissberger
“The data center is the cloud,” said 40 year IT veteran Dileep Bhandarkar, Distinguished Engineer, Microsoft, during the closing panel session at this year’s Server Design Summit, which was held November 27-28, 2012 in Santa Clara, CA. Whether that will be as famous a tagline as Sun Micro’s, “The network is the computer,” remains to be seen. What was clear from this very informative conference is that Cloud resident data centers are and will be quite different from data centers that reside on customer premises. The local network which interconnects switches and servers in such cloud data centers will also be different, with different protocols employed for switching. Click here to read more.
Local Content #
In a world cluttered with content choices, it would not have been a surprise if the importance of local content had diminished in the six years since Viodi’s previous survey of Independent Broadband Providers. The results of the current survey indicate just the opposite; that interest in the creation and distribution of local content by Independent Broadband Operators is as strong as ever. And the main motivations for creating local content are to serve as a differentiator and service to a community. Those who responded to the survey, standby, as the Executive Summary will be sent out shortly.
Some Tweets and Short Thoughts:
- A Stocking-full of Coal for Kingsford’s Nicest Person On Social Media – Clorox owns Kingsford – this must be clean coal
- With their widespread deployment of WiFi Hot Spots, will cable operators come up with a hybrid WiFi/3G/4G offering similar to the value deal from Republic Wireless?
- Good chart from Will Richmond/Videonuze summarizing recent sports deals. I’m still waiting for one of these kind of deals to trickle down to my youth sports league.
The Korner – We Wish You A Merry Christmas, We Wish You a Merry Christmas…… a Roger Bindl Video
It is the time of the year for Roger Bindl to provide his interpretation of a classic Christmas song. In the video that can be found at the following link, Bindl managed to coerce nine snowmen into singing, “We wish you a Merry Christmas.” Somehow, I think Roger rewrote the lyrics slightly, as I don’t think “beer” was in the original. Still, it is a clever way to express the sentiment of the season and reflect Viodi’s wishes for its readers; thanks Roger and a Happy New Year!
