Are such “specialized” devices the future? We’ve seen the WikiReader recently which only does one thing: portable unconnected access to Wikipedia.

I don’t know but it makes great sense to me. I would love to see a CBC / Radio-Canada device like this. CBC/RC have great Internet offerings but they tend to “capture” the audience into their branded web portals. Because of this, many CBC/RC Internet radio streams are not accessible through Internet appliances other than full fledged PC’s. A branded device seems to be a good compromise to escape the PC prison.

Another very promising effect of this device is that it will help fund NPR’s programming since they will collect a portion of the proceeds. What an original way to fund public broadcasters!

If a company wants to run ads alongside an episode of The Simpsons on Hulu or TV.com it will cost the advertiser about $60 per thousand viewers, according to Bloomberg. On prime-time TV that same ad will cost somewhere between $20 and $40 per thousand viewers.

“Looking like a home router, femtocells give 3G coverage indoors, and use home broadband to connect calls across the Internet to the mobile network.”

“… will be available on different price plans… Essentially, the femto is free to anyone on a £30 contract, and £5 otherwise – including dongle customers”

Femtocells are in fact compact devices (similar to Wi-Fi routers) that act as very low power cell phone base stations that can be installed in end-users premises. Typical cell phones can connect to them instead of the remote “high-power” towers operated by mobile network operators. Femtocells carry the usual communication services through standard Internet connections in homes and offices.

Key benefits to operators (O) and users (U):

• Better in-building coverage (O, U)
• Overall network infrastructure can eventually be operated at lower power levels (O)
• Off-loading cellular networks (O)
• MNOs can still charge service costs while using end-users resources (Internet) (O)
• Use the mobile device at home at lower rates (U)
• Does not need regular phone service at home anymore (O, U)

Could this femtocell approach be exploited in the context of digital broadcasting as well? At CRC, we have developed a compact software transmitter for DAB. This platform could be further integrated as a low-cost personal DAB transmitter or FemtoDAB cell!

Such a FemtoDAB approach could offer interesting benefits:

• Better in-building coverage (O, U)
• Overall network infrastructure can eventually be operated at lower power levels (O)
• Outdoor, indoor roaming with the same device (broadcast enabled handhelds) (U)
• Transmission of additional Internet radio content in the femtoDAB cell (U)

One of the challenges will be to make FemtoDAB more attractive than the Wi-Fi options.

Do you see any use cases for FemtoDAB?

Isn’t that the case with FM radio? Will it truly benefit from going digital?

One of the compromise I find attractive is starting to emerge: enabling mobile phone handsets to receive FM AND RDS. Such an effort led by GSS and Silicon Laboratiroes is reported here at RadioWorld.

GSS believes that cell phones that can receive FM without cumbersome headphone antennas will not only be more popular with consumers but can then put RDS capabilities into the hands of many more consumers, which in turn will better support the penetration of emergency alerting systems like its Alert FM.

Before that, they appear on iPlayer, the free service which notched up 41m programme requests in December and 271m during the whole of 2008.

The goal of the project is the enhancement of road safety by direct and up to date traffic information communication between infrastructure and motorised vehicles on a motorway section. COOPERS started in February 2006 with the duration of 48 months and a total Budget of more than 16.800.000 €.

Technorati Tags: coopers, tpeg, traffic, its, DAB

Voice over IP is disruptive. The flexibility provided by VOIP is an important factor for its success, but its impact is also quite important in that it opened the telecommunication playing field to new players that can operate outside the grasp of the incumbent telecommunication industry. Jeff Pulver officially stated that VOIP, an industry he triggered, is now well established. “We are now the incumbents who can be disrupted”.

In that respect, video on the net will allow the same type of disruption. Broadcasters and broadcast regulation can (and will) be circumvented by people and organizations who see the Net as an effective distribution platform.

Does Skype ring a bell? Well, they could potentially be #1 in both spaces. But that’s the topic of my next post.

Tags: video+on+the+net, VON2007,

Link

Tags: Internet+TV, Shows, Channels, new+media

• 30.000.000 blogs worldwide
• 100.000 new blogs are created daily
• the blogosphere is 60 times larger than 3 years ago
• there are 1.5 million legitimate posts(by humans for humans) per day

Let’s assume that each post contains 500 characters, no pictures, and that they are posted regularly over time. This would produce a constant bandwidth of:

500ch * 1byte/ch *1.5 million = 750 Mbytes / day

or

70 kbps !

What? The most massive conversation of the world requires only 70 kbps? That’s less than a single digital broadcasting audio channel! That’s 30 million voices for the price of one! Let’s turn the numbers around once again: with 70 kbps we could have each and every Canadian (30 million, all ages!) broadcast one 500 characters message to all other Canadians every 20 days?!?

That’s impressive. Does that make sense? I think I would agree to trade a local FM station in my area for this new “Whole Blogosphere Channel”. Would you?

Technorati Tags : broadcasting+blogosphere, david+sifry, state+blogosphere, blogosphere+channel, blog+broadcast