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.

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.