Comcast to buy majority stake in NBC for $13.8bn
Comcast Corp announced its plans on Thursday to buy a majority stake in NBC Universal for USD 13.8 billion. This move shall give the nation’s largest cable network a major network control, a wide range of channels and a major movie studio.
This deal would now mean and a range of new and enhanced services for the viewers including the possibilities of the movies reaching the cable more quickly and the TV shows appearing faster on cell phones and other devices.
With this deal, Comcast, already serving a quarter of all US households that pay for TV, would gain control of the NBC broadcast network, the Spanish-language Telemundo and about two dozen cable channels, including USA, Bravo, Syfy and The Weather Channel. It also would have regional sports networks, Universal Pictures and theme parks.
Comcast stepped into the deal because it is eager to diversify its holdings.
Comcast to offer wireless Internet service
Comcast is all set to roll out its wireless Internet service from Tuesday in Portland, Ore. The company plans to add three other cities by the end of the year.
Comcast would b the first major cable operator to roll out its very own, wireless broadband which would be offering up to 4 Megabits per second speed and would be carried over the 4G network of Clearwire Corp., where it’s offered.
Elsewhere, the service will use Sprint Nextel Corp.’s 3G network.
The Comcast High-Speed 2go Metro service, on promotion for $49.95 a month for a year, would include Comcast’s wired Internet home service and a Wi-Fi router. The regular price for it is about $73 a month. The national version, using Sprint, costs $20 a month more.
About its plan to add other cities, Comcast plans to offer the service in Philadelphia, Atlanta and Chicago later this year.
Google lets users track internet blockers!
Google Inc. has announced its plan to let its users track the internet blockers. This move from Google follows the debate over the net neutrality that rose following the implementation of Comcast ‘internet traffic management system’ whereby it would inappropriately block or slowdown certain internet actions.
Incidentally Google’s announcement comes a day after the statement from Cox Communications, third largest cable company in US, to imply methods to regulate the sharply rising internet traffic.
Both the internet service providers had to get their plea sanctioned by the Federal Communications Commission. However this gave birth to the debate over net neutrality. Therefore this action from Google has been hailed as a promising move from Google.
Under the so called traffic management system, internet service providers (ISPs) like Comcast and further, Cox Communications, would either block or slowdown the ‘non time-sensitive’ net activities like file downloads, software updates, peer-to-peer file sharing etc and would give precedence to streaming videos and online games or the ‘time sensitive’ activities.
This fuels the content and application companies, like Google, as they believe that the ISPs would get inappropriate power to discriminate as they have the unrestricted powers to favor some traffic over others.
Google’s chief internet guru, Vint Cerf, better known as the farther of internet has promised that “Google will provide academic researchers with 36 servers in 12 locations in the United States and Europe to analyze data”.
Cerf further wrote in a blog post, “When an Internet application doesn’t work as expected or your connection seems flaky, how can you tell whether there is a problem caused by your broadband ISP (Internet service provider), the application, your PC (personal computer), or something else?”
Comcast Users Restricted!
Comcast, one of America’s largest Internet Providers, has announced that it will place limitations on users to prevent them from exploiting the service.
From the first of October this year comcast will place a limit of 250 GB per month per a resiential user. The limit should not really affect many since statistics show that only 1% of internet users exceed that amount every month. An average user is believed to use only 2-3 GB. Jennifer Khoury a Comcast spokesperson said 250 gigabytes was about 100 times the typical usage.
So whats the big fuss if it wont affect most of us! While it may be true that 250 GB is excessive at the time it may not be the case in a few years. As technologies advance over time, and internet entertainment continues to replace television the limit is going to affect a larger percentage of users. Cisco, a technology company, stated in a report “today’s ‘bandwidth hog’ is tomorrow’s average user.”
S. Derek Turner is the research director for the nonpartisan media policy group Free Press, he believes the limit is a method of restricting the increasing demand of online video. He said “As media companies put content online, consumers can bypass the cable companies and get their content directly from the Internet, a 250 gigabyte cap may seem very high — and it is for today’s Internet use. But it’s essentially the equivalent of four hours of HD television a day.”
This could be method used to restrict internet piracy, so lets hope for the best and prepare for the worst!
Faizan Zakir Cyberzest.com
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