Tag Archives: Verizon

Free Nights and Weekends Makes a Comeback

Remember when you could make free mobile calls after 9:30 PM weeknights, and all weekend? For awhile the mobile carriers competed on the time when “off-peak” started, from 10 PM to 8:30 PM. A whole hour and a half! These days we have unlimited domestic calling all the time.

So, now we have varying degrees of data plans, such as AT&T Wireless 3 GB, 9 GB, or unlimited per month, but there are caps where after 22 GB data transfer speeds are slowed down.  22 gigs seem like a lot until you have kids using Snapchat and TikTok.

When you think about it, data peak is when you may not be in a hot spot. At night, you’re at home using your own WiFi, or at an establishment with their complimentary WiFi. Weekends and weekdays are a bit scattered. Your work may have WiFi, but weekdays “on peak” are mostly commuting times, the “rush hour(s)”,

Can wireless carriers bring back on and off-peak for data?  The simplest approach:  “turn off the meter” during off-peak data periods.  Maybe on-peak the consumer can elect 5G, when available, and off-peak at 4G LTE? Our Smartphones can identify low consuming bandwidth opportunities, e.g. when the phone is locked, text messages without graphics and email are semi-passive states. Maybe users are able to prioritize their apps data usage? What about those “chatty” apps that you rarely use? Smartphone settings may show you those apps bandwidth consumption as opportunities to prioritize them lower than your priority apps.

Skeptic, and think there are no Peak or Off-Peak periods with data?  Check the business analytics.  I’m sure wireless carriers have a depth of understanding for their own business intelligence (BI).

Unlikely Bedfellows as Net Neutrality Sunsets

Coupling Content Distribution (i.e. ISPs) with Content Producers

Verizon FiOS offers Netflix as another channel in their already expansive lineup of content. Is this a deal of convenience for the consumer, keeping consumers going through one medium, or is it something more?  Amazon Video iOS application offers HBO, STARZ, and others as long as Amazon Prime customers have a subscription to the Content Producers. Convenience or more?  The Netflix Content and Distribution via Set-top box (STB) channel should be mimicked by Google YouTube and Amazon Video despite their competing hardware offerings.  Consumers should be empowered to decide how they want to consume Amazon Video; e.g. through their Set-top box (STB).  However,  there may be more than just a convenience benefit.

Amazon Video iOS
Amazon Video iOS
Netflix on FiOS
Netflix on FiOS

As Net Neutrality fades into the sunset of congressional debates and lobbyists, the new FCC ruling indicates the prevailing winds of change.  We question how content providers, large and small, navigate the path to survival/sustainability.  Some business models from content distribution invoke Bandwidth Throttling, which may inhibit the consumers of some content, either by content types (e.g. Video formats) or content providers (e.g. Verizon FiOS providing priority bandwidth to Netflix).

Content Creators / Producers, without a deal with ISPs for “priority bandwidth” may find their customers flock to ‘larger content creators’ who may be able to get better deals for content throughput.

Akamai and Amazon CloudFront – Content Delivery Networks (CDNs)

Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) may find themselves on the better end of this deal, almost as a side-effect to the FCC decision of nixing Net Neutrality.

Amazon CloudFront a global content delivery network (CDN) service that securely delivers data, videos, applications, and APIs to viewers with low latency and high transfer speeds. CloudFront, like Akamai, may significantly benefit from the decision by the FCC to repeal Net Neutrality.

Akamai’s industry-leading scale and resiliency mean delivering critical content with consistency, quality, and security across every device, every time.  Great web and mobile experiences are key to engaging users, yet difficult to achieve. To drive engagement and online revenue, it’s critical to optimize performance for consumer audiences and employees alike to meet or exceed their expectations for consistent, fast, secure experiences.

Integrating into Content/Internet Service Provider’s Bundle of Channels

By elevating Content Producers into the ISP (distribution channel) Set-top box (STB), does this ‘packaging’ go beyond bundling of content for convenience?  For example, when Netflix uses Verizon FiOS’ CDN for content delivery to their clients, will the consumer benefit from this bundled partnership beyond convenience (i.e. performance)?  When Netflix is invoked by a Verizon FiOS customer from their laptop (direct from Netflix), is there a performance improvement if Netflix is invoked from the Verizon FiOS Set-top Box (STB) instead?  Would these two separate use cases for invoking Netflix movies utilize two alternate Content delivery network (CDN) paths, one more optimized than the other?

As of this post update (12/26), there has been no comment from Verizon.

Verizon Poised to offer the Digital Media Food Chain: Content Creation to Distribution

The service, which Verizon only refers to as OTT, or over-the-top, named because it will be available to anyone with an Internet connection, as opposed to a television subscription, is the company’s big growth engine for the future. So far, the company has been mum on the details.

The telecom company is readying a mobile and online video service for launch in late summer, and a top exec says there’s nothing like it.

Verizon continues to line up video content from partners as well as through acquisitions, such as AOL.

Source: Verizon mulls mobile video that doesn’t eat into your data cap – CNET

Wireless Data Plans, Packet Protocols, Granular Reporting

6 Days Left of my Billing Cycle: 0.3 GB Left (out of 10 GB)

Are you kidding me?! I login to AT&T’s Wireless, myAT&T portal to dive into where is all our data going?  I am able to see quite easily what mobile phone number is eating up our plan, but no additional granular information.  AT&T has a great site with lots of good information to help their customers manage their plans.

However, it seems wireless providers leave it up to the handset manufacturers to interpret the usage of the phones. Makes some sense on an individual level, but as multi line / family wireless plans continue to evolve, the growth of wireless services management portals should be spent on providing consumers transparency into their usage, aggregated and granular.

Packets of [wireless] data, bits of information, have a ‘signature’ as they travel through the Internet ether.  Packet protocol defines where the data/information originates, and it’s destination, as well as any other required information by the application sending / receiving the data.  Wireless carriers’, services management portal should allow consumers to slice and drill down to see how data is being used. For example,

Wireless plans of 10 GB is not a lot with teenagers.  You may want to target areas to curtail usage so you aren’t ‘bleeding data’.  At this time, there is not enough transparency on how data is being used from the wireless provider’s usage platform. The provider should be able to parse data packets to quantify how data is being used, and provide reports, e.g.

June 2015 Snapshot for 212-555-1212

231 songs streamed from ABC, N MB; 23 videos watched on YouTube, 2.3 GB; 34 streamed videos from Netflix, 3.2 GB; 345 emails downloaded, 90 MB;

DAM on wireless services:  Application data packet objects may have visibility through Digital Asset Management (DAM), all objects that can be managed, phone calls to chats from Facebook (except where encrypted).

Now take a piece of paper, write privacy on it, then rip it in half and toss it in the garbage.

Make Finding a Movie Just as much Fun as Watching it.

Content is king.  It seems to be resonating throughout the Entertainment universes.  Fantastic!  Content creators managing their content through licensing, and through their own distribution channel(s). The creation of short clips to entice viewers.   Of course, navigation to view content on a revolving carousel.

The entertainment industry has had successful initiatives in marketing their own content. and licensing their content for distribution and viewing to consumers.

What’s next?

  • Augmented and Virtual Reality

Sitting in your living room with VR headsets, enabling you to socialize before virtually entering the Theater.  Virtual meet ups for discussion / interaction around Genre, e.g. Action, Sci-Fi; or Adhoc meet ups, ‘e.g. by Actor, or Movie interests

Enable a viewer to select, and rotate perspectives of the actors/actress currently in the scene.

  • Movie / Television Trivia (by Genre, by Actor, by Movie)

Another creative way to match up viewer with media beyond the ‘Carousel’: Design games around the content provider’s owned or licensed content.  It will make for a more enriched experience, and help the viewer find their entertainment for the evening.  Even put together a licensing relationship with Hasbro for a spin off Trivial Pursuit.  ‘Sponsored puzzles’ like on ‘Wheel of Fortune‘ may help to bring in Advertising dollars.  Or a licensing deal with Screenlife,  makers of Scene It?,  Looks like Screenlife is a Paramount property, small world.

Game examples:

  1. reconstituting a ‘famous and recognizable’ image.   The image is taken directly from one of the movies being streamed.
  2. Guess where the movie or TV show short clip originated.  Select to stream, or play another round.
  3. In what movie or TV show did ‘this’ main theme song originate?

Human Evolution: Technology Continues to Transform Socieities for Generations

In the last 20 years, I’ve observed technology trends, and Tech achievements have risen and fallen from the mainstream.  Tech has augmented our lives, and enhanced our human capabilities.  Our evolution will continue to be molded by technology and shape humanity for years to come.

Digital Asset Management (DAM)

Everything you might find on your computer from emails to video are digital assets.  Content from providers, team collaboration,  push and/or pull asset distribution, and archiving content are the workflows of DAM.

DAM solutions are rapidly going main stream as small to medium sized content providers look to take control of their content from ingestion to distribution.  Shared digital assets will continue to grow rapidly.  Pressure by stockholders to maximize use of digital assets to grow revenue will fuel initiatives to  globally share and maintain digital asset taxonomies.  For example, object recognition applied to image, sound and video assets will dynamically add tags to assets in an effort to index ever growing content.  If standard taxonomies are not globally adopted, and continually applied to assets, digital content stored will become, in essence, unusable.

The Internet of Things (IoT)

All devices across all business verticals will become ‘Smart’ devices with bidirectional data flow.  Outbound ‘Smart’ device data flow is funneled into repositories for analysis to produce dashboards, reporting, and rules suggestions.

Inbound ‘Smart’ device data can trigger actions on the device. Several devices may work in concert defined by ‘grouping’ e.g. Home: Environmental. Remote programming updates may be triggered by the analysis of data.

  • AI Rules Engine runs on ‘backend’.  Rules defined by Induction,  through data analysis, and human set parameters,  executed in sequence
  • Device optimization updates, presets on devices may be tuned based on ‘transaction’ history, feedback from user, and other ‘Smart’ devices.
  • Grouped ‘Smart’ devices, e.g. health monitors’ data uploaded, analyzed, and correlating across group.  Updated rules, and notifications triggered.
  • Manual user commands, ad hoc or scheduled

… as a Service

Cloud ‘Services’ enables scalability on demand, relatively lower cost [CapEx] overhead, offsite redundancy, etc.  Provides software solutions companies to rapidly deploy to Dev., Test, and Prod. environments.  Gaming, storage, and virtual machines are just a few of the ‘…as a service’ offerings.  IoT analysis may reveal a new need for another service.

Human Interface

  • Augmented Reality A.R.

Integrates user to surrounding environment with overlay images to your eyes to REpresent anything, e.g. Identifies surrounding people with Twitter handle/user name above their heads.  Interacts with smartphone for Inbound and outbound data flow.  May allow App and OS programmers to enable users to interact with their ‘traditional’ software in new ways, e,g. Microsoft Windows 8+, current interaction with ’tiles’, may shift from a two to three dimensional manipulation and view of the tiles.  Tiles (apps) pop up when, through object recognition, predefined characteristics match, e.g.  Looking at a bank check sent to you from the mail?  Your Bank of America tile / app may ask if you want to deposit the check right now?

  • Virtual Reality, V.R.

As more drones, for example, collect video footage, may be used for people to experience the landscapes, beaches, cities, mountains, and other features of a potential destination, which may lead to tourism.  In fact, travel agencies may purchase the V.R. Headsets, and subscribe to a library of V.R. content.  Repository platform would need to be created.  Specs for the ‘How To’ on collecting V.R. Video footage should be accessible.  Hathaway real estate offers a V.R. tour of the house, from their office.

Autonomous  Vehicles (Average Consumer or hobbyist)

  • Cars 
  • Drones
  • Satellites 

Social Media Evolution

Driving forces to integrate with society puts pressure on individuals to integrate with the collective social conscious.  As digital assets are published, people will lunge at the opportunity to self tag every digital asset both self and community shared assets.  Tagging on social media platforms is already going ahead.   Taxonomies are built, maintained and shared across social media platforms.  Systematically tagged [inanimate] objects occur using object recognition. Shared, and maintained global taxonomies not only store data on people and their associated meta data, (e,g,  shoe size, education level completed, HS photo,etc.) but also store meta data about groups of people, relationships and their tagged object data.

The taxonomies are analyzed and correlated, providing better, more concise demographic profiles.  These profiles can be used for 

  • Clinical trials data collection
  • Fast identification of potential outbreaks, used by the CDC
  • The creation and management of AI produced Hedge Funds
  • Solicitation of goods and services

Out of Compliance

These three dreaded words you are guaranteed to see more and more often.  As all aspects of our lives become meta data on a taxonomy tree, the analysis of information will make correlations which drive consumers and members of society ‘out of compliance’.  For example, pointers to your shared videos of you skydiving will get added to your personal taxonomy tree.  Your taxonomy tree will be available and mandatory to get life insurance from a tier 1 company.  Upon daily inspection of your tree by an insurance AI engine, a hazardous event was flagged. Notifications from your life insurance company reminding you ‘dangerous’ activities are not covered on your policy.  Two infractions may drive up your premiums.

The Channel Guide is Dead. Move on Already.

If I have to scroll through another channel guide, or search using an archaic user interface one more time.!.  I will just use my web streaming service instead.  At least the web, video streaming apps have started to innovate how the consumers click through to get their content. TV channel bundled providers (Cable Cos., AT&T, Verizon, etc.)  typically display ‘what’s on?’ in the form of the classic channel guide, or variations of it.   The TVCBP , or TV Channel Bundled providers,  also allow us to get through to content by drilling down into our desired genre.  Finally, the TVCBP allow the watcher to search ‘painfully’ using the TV remote keyboard.

The set top box evolution, such as UI revamp, are at times, slow like a huge glacier moving along in the Arctic.

Changes, here they come

First, the new ‘Media Guide’, is a display page of tiles, similar to Windows 8., Nintendo Wii, Netflix, or Amazon.  Netflix and Amazon are displaying tiled pages.  In each row users are enabled to horizontally scroll through the tiles of movie covers.  These tiled movie rows are grouped by e.g.  recommended movies based on user viewing history to ge

In this new paradigm, we add a level of abstraction to the row, grouping, scrolling carousel model.

Genre or N grouping of channels / media brands coalesce in clouds, such as cloud hashtags.   A person can drill into the ‘content universe’ and select a genre or grouping cloud. A user would navigate network icons in the ‘content cloud’.  Highlighting a network icon plays out the current, live video stream.

The ‘Content Cloud’ within the ‘Content Universe’ is the overarching paradigm.  ‘What are currently the most popular channels to view within the providers viewership’ would have each network icon color coded, e.g. red hot, cool blue.

A genre, or N grouping, has network icons grouped around the category.   Hovering the Set Top Box (STP) remote pointer over the network icon will popup a live stream from the channel.  Drilling down by clicking the channel/network icon,  a tiled view of the current and the next 24h is displayed. The current show has a pop up for the current streamed show, selecting it then plays in the entire screen.    If you hover over any future shows, one of two things occur. If there is a 30 sec promo for the show, a pop up shows the promo. If no promo, the show beauty shot still for the show is displayed. If the user selects the show, current or future, a menu overlays the still or show in progress with options such as record show / DVR.

The UI would also allow the user to create their own tiled pages using their favorite channels, and again,  hovering over the image would allow play out in a popup of the current stream.  The tiles can be sorted by your popularity rating, general popularity rating, ascending or descending title names, and most watched videos from the TVCBP.

If our TV bundled channel providers want to keep and lure new subscribers, then they need to innovate the STB software and think about how you evolve the viewer experience.

 

Adjustable Data Quota Limits on Member’s of Family/Shared Data Plans

A cap on the amount of shared data each person in the plan is allowed to use should be adjustable at any point in the billing cycle. Good Use Case:  my kids are on my family plan, and I want to limit their data usage.  They always use more than my wife and I.

Another possible use case, from a small business perspective, if you add a few lines on your plan, then you may allocate to specific type of employees, such as sales reps., specific amounts of data.  There are several types of widgets can be used, such as a pie chart, and the total pie represents the total data package, and each slice represents an allocation to each member of the shared plan.

Update: I stand corrected, and do see an AT&T Smart Limits for 4.99 USD per month: