business model – Page 3 – Steve Blum's Blog

Get out of town to see new broadband horizons

31 December 2012 by Steve Blum
business, business model, new stuff, private capital, rural broadband, telecoms

One trend to watch for in 2013 is consolidation and growth in rural broadband in the U.S. AT&T and Verizon are backing – sometimes running full speed – away from the wireline business in less densely populated markets. That's an opportunity for entrepreneurs with rural telecoms experience to create their own kind of economies of scale.

Frontier Communications is well down that road, with five million phone lines under its management nationwide. Like Google, Surewest is looking to Kansas as a growth opportunity.… More

Metro broadband: without the political cards, you're not playing with a full deck

27 December 2012 by Steve Blum
business, business model, capital cost, casf, dark fiber, demand, fiber market study, ftth, fttp, funding, lit san leandro, municipal broadband, palo alto, private capital, public policy, public private partnership, seattle

Political value: the need for speed at the San Leandro public library.

There’s an argument to the effect that the prices charged for broadband service by telcos and cable companies in urban areas are higher than necessary to provide that service and make a reasonable profit.

It’s not crazy talk. You can make a case that more densely populated areas have lower per household costs – opex and capex – and that more affluent areas have higher profit margins.… More

The weather is here

22 December 2012 by Steve Blum
blueseed, business model, funding, geek stuff, microwave, new stuff

A stormy morning on Monterey Bay got me thinking about Blueseed, a plan to anchor a high-tech haven twelve nautical miles off the San Mateo County coast, in international waters.

It looks like a floating city in conceptual images, but if it actually puts to sea version 1.0 would have to be a converted cruise ship. If it takes off, then maybe enough capital will be there for custom ship building. For now, they’re working with a six-figure seed fund.… More

Not much difference between airline passengers and a bag of potatoes

21 December 2012 by Steve Blum
business model, consumer electronics, mobile, mobile commerce, travel, WiFi, wireless opportunities

This is your captain speaking.

Good news from Boeing, just in time for the holiday flying madness. With the growing popularity of on-board WiFi, engineers there needed to figure out how it propagates in an airline cabin.

There’s no mathematical model for predicting what happens to WiFi signals when you have a few hundred people packed together inside of a metal tube. So they came up with a testing protocol.

Boeing is proud of the fact that it only requires about ten hours to complete the series of tests.… More

The problem with FTTH is there's no problem

17 December 2012 by Steve Blum
business, business model, capital cost, dark fiber, demand, feasibility study, fiber market study, ftth, fttp, funding, gigabit squared, municipal broadband, private capital, public private partnership, seattle

It’s not about finding a mass market solution. It’s about finding a sufficiently acute mass market problem.

The struggle to develop a general fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) or premises (FTTP) business model for city-wide deployments doesn’t result from a market failure. Quite the contrary. It’s evidence that the laws of supply and demand are in full effect.

Demand, meet supply.

People generally get the broadband service someone else – a business or government agency mostly – is willing to give them for the price they’re willing to pay.… More

Gigabit Seattle's financial vehicle is still a concept car

16 December 2012 by Steve Blum
business, business model, capital cost, dark fiber, demand, fiber market study, ftth, fttp, funding, gigabit squared, municipal broadband, private capital, public private partnership, seattle

Car of the Future as conceived by Studebaker's Director of Styling, Raymond Loewy, in the August 1950 issue of Science and Mechanics. Loewy wrote about the new styling for tomorrow's rocket age population. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Thanks for the down payment. Just need to find someone to co-sign the loan.

“Gigabit Squared is providing the capital, although details of the financing model aren’t clear,” wrote Stacey Higginbotham in a story for GigaOM following Gigabit Squared’s announcement last May that it had formed a partnership with Gig.U and was bringing $200 million to the table to fund fiber networks in as many as six cities.

The financing model was equally unclear last week when the City of Seattle and the University of Washington blessed a plan by Gigabit Squared to build a demonstration fiber-to-the-premises network in 12 Seattle neighborhoods.… More

Opportunity to leave consumers to their own devices

15 December 2012 by Steve Blum
business model, consumer electronics, mobile, mobile commerce, wireless opportunities

We’re in a world where it’s increasingly assumed that you’re carrying a screen all the time – tablet, smart phone or laptop. Maybe you’ll even have Apple’s long rumored iWatch on your wrist.

Westjet, a Canadian bargain airline, is thinking about ripping out the entertainment systems from its planes, saving 500 kg in weight and who knows how much in upkeep, and replacing it with a WiFi-based system that streams video to passengers’ BYOD of choice.… More

Seattle passes the fiber (50 mega) buck

14 December 2012 by Steve Blum
business, business model, capital cost, dark fiber, demand, feasibility study, fiber market study, ftth, fttp, funding, gigabit squared, municipal broadband, palo alto, private capital, public private partnership, seattle

The unveiling of Gigabit Seattle yesterday is just the first step on a long road to building a fiber to the premises (FTTP) service for residents. The City of Seattle and the University of Washington have endorsed a plan by a consulting firm – Gigabit Squared – to “begin raising the capital needed” for a demonstration project.

It’s not small change. The 200 miles of fiber needed to reach 50,000 homes and businesses in 12 neighborhoods will cost something like $50 million to install and light up.… More

Qualcomm's consumer services business going to the dogs

15 October 2012 by Steve Blum
arpu, business model, churn, consumer electronics, ctia, mobile, mobile broadband, pepcom, qualcomm, retailing, revenue, snaptracs

Tagg is a mobile pet tracker and promising veterinary diagnostic tool, offered by Snaptracs, a Qualcomm subsidiary. The hardware costs $100, with ongoing service at $8 per month for the first pet and and $1 for each additional one.

That eight bucks gets you a text message whenever your dog strays from home, with GPS feeds to help you find him. Or your cat, if it’s one of the few big enough to handle the weight and tolerant enough to wear it.… More

Best Practices Highlight Wireless Broadband Feasibility Study for the City of Oakland

13 May 2010 by Steve Blum
ARRA, broadband, broadband stimulus, BTOP, business model, feasibility study, Google broadband, municipal broadband, NTIA, Oakland

Download the Oakland Wireless Feasibility Study

Like nearly every government agency in California, the City of Oakland was faced with increasing demand for public services and a decreasing budget. An evaluation was needed of the potential for wireless technology to make municipal staff more efficient and allow them to stay in the field longer, and to provide Internet service to residents, either directly in their homes and businesses or indirectly through community anchor institutions. This evaluation needed to focus specifically on Oakland’s diverse population, needs and terrain.… More