One of these six companies will buy YouTube by ZDNet's Russell Shaw -- All the buzz around video site YouTube indicates that the closely-held company could have a market value of around $1 billion.Given those numbers, it is only natural to crystal-ball YouTube's future: private, IPO, acquired, acquirer?To me, there are only six candidates with the business model and deep pockets to buy YouTube whole. Let me [...]
Imagine a future like this: You’re on the Acela high-speed train from Boston to Washington and you want to touch base with friends in Beijing and London. You pull out your laptop and moments later are catching up via video link — even as the train thunders along at 150 miles an hour. Later, as you zip past the White House in a cab, you grab the same laptop to catch up on e-mail, then boot up your media player to watch a few minutes of the afternoon ball game of your hometown favorite, the Boston Red Sox.
If Craig O. McCaw gets his way, you’ll be able to do all that, and more, in as little as three years’ time. McCaw’s Clearwire Corp. has amassed enough licensed radio spectrum to create a nationwide, wireless broadband network based on an emerging technology called mobile WiMAX — a powerful cousin of WiFi. Clearwire got a big boost on July 5, when Intel Corp. (INTC ) and Motorola Inc. (MOT ) pumped nearly $900 million into the company. The tech giants aim to turn WiMAX into a mainstream consumer technology and hope to make lots of money selling the chips, laptops, cell phones, and other gear that work with it.
McCaw famously upended Ma Bell by building a cellular phone network in the 1980s, a business he later sold to AT&T (T ) for $11.5 billion. Now he could be poised to do much the same to today’s cable, satellite, and telecom players by providing a cheaper alternative to the broadband services they currently offer. “Filling a need that others aren’t addressing has always been a focus of the companies that I have been involved with,” McCaw says.
Not so long ago, McCaw’s WiMAX gambit seemed less threatening to the entrenched players. There were no industrywide standards for mobile WiMAX, so the equipment was too expensive to roll out on a large scale. But last year the industry adopted the long-awaited standards, which helped bring Motorola and Intel into the game. Add McCaw’s control of one of the biggest chunks of WiMAX spectrum, and he seems well positioned.
The cable guys and telcos profess themselves unfazed by McCaw’s WiMAX ambitions. But you can easily imagine people preferring to subscribe to a Clearwire service that allows them online access anywhere rather than one that restricts them to their home. What’s more, because WiMAX infrastructure is so much cheaper to build than traditional networks, Clearwire can likely afford to offer a nationwide mobile service for as little as $25 a month. Suddenly, paying $60 for Verizon Wireless’ (VZ ) Broadband-Access service looks a lot less attractive.
This is not just a question of luring away rivals’ subscribers, either. McCaw’s WiMAX play also could put in jeopardy the billions of dollars the telcos and cable companies are investing to make their broadband networks faster and more reliable. For example, Verizon is spending $20 billion to $40 billion to roll out fiber-optic lines to homes over the next 10 or so years. Meanwhile, the cellular carriers have spent comparable amounts on so-called 3rd Generation networks that are supposed to let subscribers watch “real-time” TV on their phones, among other things. WiMAX won’t necessarily make these investments redundant, but it could provide enough competition to make it hard for the carriers to recoup the billions spent.
DEFENSIVE MOVES
So is no one standing in McCaw’s way? Well, some of the key players are already making moves that could fend him off. The cellular carriers are working with PC makers to extend their broadband business beyond phones. Business commuters already are snapping up new plug-in modem cards that allow them to get online anywhere. Verizon Wireless and its ilk also have been cutting prices on both the cards and monthly broadband subscriptions.
And in November, Comcast (CMCSA ), Time Warner Cable (TWX ), Cox Communications, and Advance/Newhouse Communications cut a deal with Sprint Nextel Corp. (S ), the only other company with nationwide WiMAX spectrum. The partnership allows the cable guys to offer cellular phone service, key to competing with the telcos. But they also could resell Sprint Nextel’s WiMAX service or even buy some of its spectrum. “The [Sprint] deal lets cable providers keep their options open as far as wireless goes,” says Charles S. Golvin, an analyst for Forrester Research Inc. (FORR )
Then again, Clearwire is already forging strategic partnerships of its own. AOL, for example, resells the company’s WiMax service. Meanwhile, satellite provider DirecTV Group Inc. (DTV ) has expressed interest in WiMAX as a way to compete with the cable companies and telcos. And despite Sprint-Nextel’s deal with the cable guys, it would be premature to rule out a partnership between that company and Clearwire. Neither can offer complete national coverage, so they might be forced into some kind of a roaming WiMAX agreement.
With his enviable track record, vast spectrum holdings, and now huge war chest, McCaw’s Second Act is already well under way.
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Craig McCaw's Clearwire wireless broadband company that recently raked in $900 million from Intel and Motorola to deploy WiMAX nationwide maybe in the spotlight. Sources say News Corp. and DirecTV are in advanced talks with Clearwire for a project that could take at least two years and $2 billion to provide News Corp. and DirecTV with a valuable wireless interactive broadband loop the companies can use to sell content, goods, advertising and services directly to consumers.
Talk about a significantly better business case for WiMAX and for Clearwire, which is positioning itself as just another broadband service provider. With its valuable MySpace property, News Corp. has been rumored for some time to be interested in WiMAX, with some thinking it might build its own network or bid in the upcoming advanced wireless services auction.
It is the powerful, anywhere-anytime wireless connection that News Corp. aims to maintain with the core younger consumers of MySpace and its TV channels. In the process, News and DirecTV could leap ahead of many broadband distributors.
Having its own interactive pathway to consumers in the U.S. would put News Corp. in an elite class of major content providers that also own their own broadband platform that now includes only Time Warner, which boasts the Time Warner Cable pipes and a wealth of production, distribution and archive assets.
WiMax, which is short for World Interoperability for Microwave Access, also promises to provide more security and speed. McCaw, a cellular pioneer who sold his former company to AT&T a decade ago, has looked to Intel and Motorola to more than doubled the financial resources he planned to raised from going public with Clearwire, which he launched in 2003. That nearly $1 billion in funding is enough to deploy WiMax in several U.S. cities. Clearwire already provides WiMax service to several hundred cities in the U.S., Mexico, Ireland, Belgium and Denmark.
For mobile network operators and content service providers, real-time multimedia applications such as audio and video streaming, video telephony, video mail, video conferencing, video ringback tone, mobile TV, etc. offer attractive new market opportunities.
Media server vendors and video application developers are on the other end, looking for a real-time transcoding engine that can be easily integrated as a building block into their video gateway or multimedia resource function processor (MRFP). No matter which end they’re on, their revenue will be positively impacted by the real-time throughput, low latency, speed, exibility, scalability, compatibility, and effectiveness of a realtime content adaptation engine that delivers what increasing numbers of subscribers are demanding.
PERSON TO PERSON (P2P)
• Video telephony: Enables mobile subscribers to
instantly add video to their phone calls – across
different networks and to any handset
• Video mail: Enables voice mail with video capabilities
• Video conferencing: Allows multi-user wireless
video conferencing on mobile phones and landline
video phones
• Video ringback: Video content that incoming
callers see while they wait for their calls to be
answered
• Push To Talk/Share: Allows users to call people or
exchange media by pressing just a single button
on their handset
APPLICATION TO PERSON (A2P)
• Mobile radio: Listen to you favorite radio channel
in real-time on your mobile handset
• Broadcast news, weather reports: Watch
real-time streamed special news reports, weather
warning alerts, etc.
• Live TV: Watch your favorite TV program in realtime
on your mobile handset
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The Web and the blogosphere can be incredible tools to connect with customers and prospects. Unfortunately, if you’re not doing a good job your customers can use these same tools to let the world know.
AOL found this out when one of their customers tried to cancel his account. Vincent Ferrari had heard horrible stories about AOL’s “customer support” so he decided to record his conversation.
Ferrari put the recording on his blog, but was overwhelmed by the social bookmarking traffic. You can now listen to the whole painful affair at Putfile.com.
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