Michael Miller - eSeminars
The final discussion at the D Conference involved FCC Chairman Kevin Martin and Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam, who discussed broadband deployment, network neutrality, open access and more. Earlier, TiVo's Tom Rogers talked about DVRs and the changes facing the TV market.
Walt Mossberg showed a chart showing that the U.S. had slower broadband rates and higher prices than other countries. Martin talked about the differences in population density explaining why some countries have larger penetration and higher speed, though he did agree that speed was an issue.
Martin said the U.S. system masks some of the costs by spreading it out over a large area, including a very large rural area. He said he believed that instead of subsidizing voice services, the government should subsidize rural broadband . He believes in a "reverse auction" to provide such service, rather than spreading subsidies among multiple providers.
Lowell said one of the issues was going locality to locality to get franchises, siting towers, etc., and he complained about the local bureaucracies.
There was a discussion about open access, with Mallon talking about all of the actions that various companies have done to make the wireless industry more open, including recent announcements from Verizon and AT&T, the Sprint and Clearwire discussions of a Wimax network, Google's open handset alliance etc. Lowell said this would have happened with or without Google's public pushing for openness, because the way to increase penetration is to get people to carry more devices. Lowell said Verizon is requiring certification because it doesn't want devices that would impact the other customers negatively. He said the wireless charges for "open devices" would be the same as for Verizon phones, because there was no subsidy but also less opportunity for Verizon to sell other service.
There was a big discussion about termination fees for wireless accounts. Lowell said that 98 percent of Verizon customers pick subsidized phones, and he agreed with the idea that termination fees decline over time. Martin said he agreed with that, although not all companies offer that; and also said he thought customers should be able to return phones after a reasonable time if it doesn't meet their needs.
On the digital TV consumer, Martin said consumer awareness of the switchover has grown tremendously, but there is still a lot of confusion in the market. He said you'll see more ads and more information on this in the next few months.
Martin also talked about network neutrality, and said he didn't want network operators to limit their access to content and applications, but that reasonable network management practices did make sense. He thinks the commission needs to address this more clearly.
Read the rest of this post at Michael Miller's blog, Forward Thinking: "'D' Show: Cell Phone Fees, and the Future of TiVo"
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