Gizmodo posted some wonderful notes taken from Kevin Martin at CES. Martin got some baleful glares for his pushing for his views on media cross-ownership. If half the stuff he mentions here is true I’ll be very happy. He’s profoundly outspoken on a la carte channel offerings for cable which would allow subscribers to buy channels rather than packages. Cable has naturally tried to drag its feet and while I don’t quite get as angry about this as DRMed music it’s up there.
I take his statements about improved fiber and broadband backbone with a grain of salt as well as his opinions about the 700MHz spectrum auction. I believe telecoms are inclined to restrict usage and charge more for access rather than build infrastructure and content providers have already encountered problems. A good bit of fiber was laid down with dot.com bubble VC money, a trick that’s unlikly to happen again. While I appreciate the open access provisions beaten into the spectrum auction there are no guarantees that this amazing frequency band will go towards rural broadband.