Google received EUs approval to buy Doubleclick

BRUSSELS, March 11 -- The Internet search engine giant Google won Tuesday approval from the European Union (EU) to buy U.S. online advertising firm DoubleClick for 3.1 billion U.S. dollars. Google closed on its $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick just hours after EU antitrust regulators cleared the deal without imposing any conditions.

"The transaction would be unlikely to have harmful effects on consumers, either in ad serving or in intermediation in online advertising markets," the European Commission, the EU's antitrust watchdog, said in a statement after concluding an in-depth investigation into the deal. Google operates an Internet search engine that offers search capabilities for end users free of charge and provides online advertising space on its own websites. It also provides intermediation services to publishers and advertisers for the sale of online advertising space on partner websites through its network "AdSense."

DoubleClick mainly sells ad serving, management and reporting technology worldwide to website publishers and to advertisers and agencies. Such technology allows internet publishers and advertisers to ensure that advertisements are posted on the relevant websites and to report on the performance of such advertisements.

The Commission said its in-depth market investigation found that Google and DoubleClick were not exerting major competitive constraints on each other's activities and could, therefore, not be considered as competitors at the moment.

"Even if DoubleClick could become an effective competitor in online intermediation services, it is likely that other competitors would continue to exert sufficient competitive pressure after the merger," the Commission said.

The EU approval removed the last legal hurdle to the Google's bid for DoubleClick. The U.S. antitrust regulator cleared the deal in December.

Google Adwords

Google Adwords is changing the advertising landscape

Small business can run mixed media campaigns. This would have been unthinkable in the past even for companies with hundreds of thousands of ad dollars. It doesn't really level the playing field since in the end the person with the most exposures wins so it is still a matter of available funds. It is an interesting tool. You pay for the clicks generated not for the conversion.

Google was already broadcasting ads through radio, in print, and even on television. I just want to tell you that it worked. Madison Avenue now runs through the Googleplex in Mountain View.

Because Google amassed a roster of tens of millions of advertiser contacts through its AdWords platform, it was easily able to introduce smaller sponsors into areas -- such as radio, television, and print -- that didn't seem feasible a few years ago. Because ads can be targeted to specific audiences, a larger sponsor pool is paying more collectively for higher-quality leads.

Google's business development team is briliant.

IPTV

Avail Media announces partnership with Motorola

March 2008 Avail Media has announced a partnership with Motorola to deliver its MWAVE service for IPTV providers.

MWAVE (MPEG-4 Wide Area Video Entertainment) comprises equipment and services which allow IPTV service providers to launch new entertainment services over their high speed data networks.

The service can transport over 200 standard definition channels and over 20 high-definition channels, for access by operators who want to launch a suite of television services quickly.

It allows IPTV providers to launch TV service without incurring high capital costs, and eliminates the need to build a complete video headend.

According to Jon Romm, the company’s COO, Avail Media has “made a major commitment to secure transport rights to North America’s most sought-after content and to establish a world-class national video processing facility for distribution to Motorola subscribers.”

HDTV

HULU Online Video by News Corp and NBC Universal Content Includes Games, Highlights, Archival Footage

The National Hockey League (www.nhl.com) will skate it way onto the Hulu online video site when the News Corp. and NBC Universal-owned streaming video service debuts tomorrow.

Dutch HD Channels: National Geographic and Discovery

As the European HD changes continue to roll out, along comes news that Canal Digitaal is getting set to launch its first HD channels in the Dutch market. Details are fairly scarce at the moment, but we are hearing that National Geographic HD and Discovery Channel HD will indeed be landing in April, and negotiations are still ongoing to throw Dutch Classic Music Channel BravaHDTV into that mix.

Blue-Ray wins over the HD-DVD format

Warner Bros is abandoning HD-DVD to settle down in monogamous bliss with Sony's Blu-ray. The company today cited "consumer demand" for its decision to stop selling HD-DVD-format movie titles at the end of May. It is the only movie major to sell high-definition DVDs in both formats, but has already tired of playing the field.

Kevin Tsujihara, president of Warner Bros Home Entertainment Group, said the two formats caused "consumer confusion and indifference toward high definition, which has kept the technology from reaching mass adoption and becoming the important revenue stream that it can be for the industry. Consumers have clearly chosen Blu-ray, and we believe that recognizing this preference is the right step in making this great home entertainment experience accessible to the widest possible audience."

Sony has been very busy at this years CES (Consumer Electronics Show) and have announced a total of 17 brand new Sony Bravia LCD HDTVs to the market.

DirecTV

At the present time, if you have a 3-LNB dish, you can receive some high definition programming. DirecTV is phasing in an all new satellite system, requiring new receivers and new dish antennas.  The new systems use Ka band (30 GHz) satellites and MPEG-4 data compression.  This technology gives them a capacity of over 1600 high definition channels. 

DIRECTV currently offers 92 national channels in HD, as well as local channels in HD (eligibility based on service address). We will continue to add HD channels as they become available. Check directv.com/hd for updated information.

The remainder of the 1600 channels is devoted to local stations for nearly every city.  DirecTV is stating that this equipment is required for all HDTV customers.

COX

Cox Communications says it will add seven new High-Definition channels Arizona.The new HD channels will be: TBS HD, Science Channel HD, Discovery HD, Golf Channel HD/Versus HD, Food Network HD, Animal Planet HD and History Channel HD.

"Our HDTV customers can continue to count on Cox Arizona to provide the best and most popular High Definition programming," said Tammy Heitkamp, a marketing director for Cox Arizona..Cox says it will offer approximately 80 channels in high-def by year's end. The cable operator now offers 22 HD channels in Arizona. "This is what our customers are asking for and it's what we are delivering, as quickly and efficiently as we can," says Heitkamp.

VOD

Net neutrality advocates agree that companies should disclose any traffic management practices, but say that simply informing consumers about interference doesn't legitimize it. A consortium of advocacy groups as well as the online video company Vuze filed complaints against Comcast last year, after an investigation by The Associated Press revealed that the company was impeding traffic to peer-to-peer networks. Comcast initially denied that it interfered with traffic, but later admitted it slowed some visits to BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer sites in order to manage traffic on its network. Comcast executive vice president David Cohen testified at the Harvard hearing that the company's interference with peer-to-peer sites presents a "virtually imperceptible effect on a very small number of users."

In the words of the company's president: "BitTorrent has fundamentally changed the Internet by enabling high-speed and high-quality content distribution on the web," said Mr Navin. "Today we have announced the role BitTorrent.com will play as a hub for consumers to enjoy their favourite entertainment, but we see a future that involves BitTorrent's content delivery platform powering thousands of websites, including those of content creators themselves.

And they want Comcast to pay for the distribution? Comcast needs its finances to build its own company and not assist its competitors.

Interesting dilemma... Streaming Video and providing it for download is actually quite expensive for the companies that provide it. We recommend open communications to find a way that works for both companies.

AT&T U-Verse TV launch has begun

AT&T U-verse TV, a new Internet Protocol (IP)-based video entertainment experience, is rolling out in areas across AT&T’s service territory. AT&T U-verse TV is the company’s premier, 100 percent IP video offering that brings customers a new level of service integration, features and video choice.

At a panel discussion on digital piracy during January’s 2008 Consumer Electronics Show, delegates from digital filtering companies, NBC, and AT&Tdiscussed the idea that internet service providers should start filtering traffic at the network level for copyrighted content, according to reports. James Cicconi, AT&T’s senior VP for external and legal affairs, said the company was dissatisfied with the progress of current anti-piracy efforts and had been exploring arrangements with various content companies and technology providers over the previous 6 months to carry out digital fingerprinting of copyrighted material on their network.

What will happen with legitimate content that doesn't include digital fingerprinting? Who is James Cicconi and where does he come from?

Before joining AT&T in September 1998, he was a partner at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, L.L.P. Mr. Cicconi also served in the White House under two presidents, including two years as deputy chief of staff to President George H.W. Bush and four years as a special assistant to President Ronald Reagan. Mr. Cicconi currently serves as a director of the El Paso Electric Company and the American Council on Germany, as a member of the University of Texas at Austin Development Board, as a trustee of the Brookings Institution and is vice president of the George Bush Presidential Library Foundation. He has also served as a presidential appointee to the Review Advisory Committee for UNESCO and to the Administrative Conference of the United States

He is a member of Progress for America, which is a group that was formed to raise tens of millions of dollars for the Republican party, that has also produced TV ads in support of GOP candidates and ads against Democratic candidates, as shown during the 2004 election when they attacked John Kerry and John Edwards, and in 2005 when they released television commercials supporting President Bush's Social Security Privatization plan. They recently established the PFA Voter Fund, which they describe as a "conservative issue advocacy organization dedicated to keeping the issue record straight on the campaign trail and serving as a “Political Truth Squad”." In October of 2003, the organization threw a party to discuss their fundraising plans. Among the attendees were Grover Norquist, Ken Mehlman, and Ed Gillespie.

n November 1981, James Cicconi joined the White House staff to assist Chief of Staff James Baker in management and policy execution, including oversight of the White House’s decision making process. Cicconi was born in Elmira, New York in 1952. During his childhood, he lived in various cities, finally arriving in southeastern Texas during his last year of high school. Cicconi attended the University of Texas in Austin from 1970 to 1977, earning both a Bachelor’s degree and a law degree.

Active in politics from a young age, he held positions in Texas state government starting in 1976, and worked on Baker’s unsuccessful 1978 campaign for attorney general of Texas. When Baker left the White House to become Secretary of the Treasury in early 1985, Cicconi left as well, and joined a prominent Washington law firm. In 1988-1989 Cicconi worked on the transition staffs of both Secretary of State-Designate Baker and President-Elect George H. W. Bush. He then served in the Bush White House, as Staff Secretary, in 1989-1990. Cicconi played an active role in each Republican Presidential campaign from 1988 to 2000, served on the George W. Bush transition staff in 2000-2001, and was an advisor for the Progress for American Voter Fund (a Section 527 political committee) during the 2004 campaign season. Cicconi joined AT&T’s legal staff in 1998, and is currently AT&T’s General Counsel and Executive Vice President for Law and Government Affairs. He also serves as Vice President of the George Bush Presidential Library Foundation, advises former President Bush on Presidential record issues, and represents the former President and the Bush Foundation in their dealings with the National Archives. For a full background and bio read: http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/resource/findaid/cicconi.htm

Why is AT&T's philosophy on freedom of speech important? Their their effort to protect content providers rights is much needed and the concept of having a real-time record of all data that flows over the internet may be important to track criminals and child abusers. As the economy is becoming more and more interrelated on a global basis, it behooves the US to have as much intelligence as the rest of the world's nations where wiretapping and data recording is not only legal but standard practice. For Americans the stance of AT&T on freedom of speech may become important in the future. Business Intelligence is important. Being able to get child abusers off the street quickly before they hurt more victims is important. Allowing the open flow of communication is also important. That is where attitude toward freedom of speech comes in.

Who is AT&T aside of a very efficient and reliable telecommunications company? AT&T is one of the largest and most influential communications providers, here in their own words:

• Proud to offer one of the world's most advanced and powerful global backbone networks, carrying more than 14.5 petabytes of data traffic on an average business day to nearly every continent and country, with up to 99.999 percent reliability.
• The nation's premier wireless carrier based on subscribers, serving 70.1 million customers and enabling them to travel and communicate seamlessly in more than 200 countries worldwide.
• The nation's largest provider of broadband — 14.2 million lines in service (as of 4Q07).
• The nation's largest Wi-Fi provider, offering customers access at more than 64,000 hot spots in 89 countries (including company-owned and third-party roaming locations) — expanding by year-end to more than 70,000 locations with the addition of approximately 7,000 Starbucks locations.
• One of the world's largest providers of IP-based communications services for businesses, with an extensive portfolio of Virtual Private Network (VPN), Voice over IP (VoIP) and other offerings — all backed by innovative security and customer support capabilities.
• The nation's largest directory publisher, delivering print directories to more than 83 million residences and businesses in 22 states.
• A world leader in the transport and termination of wholesale traffic — widely recognized for our industry-leading wholesale services portfolio.
• The parent of YELLOWPAGES.COM, a leading Internet Yellow Pages network that received more than 1.5 billion local searches in 2007.
• The leading U.S. provider of local and long distance voice services.

SAN FRANCISCO and MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- Narus, Inc. today announced two new products for real-time traffic intelligence: NarusInsight Traffic Management Suite (NTMS) and NarusInsight Traffic Intelligence Platform (NTIP). NTMS addresses service provider revenue loss by detecting, analyzing and mitigating gray or unmanaged VoIP traffic, while NTIP is offered as a customizable, high-performance traffic intelligence application development platform for service providers and governments. Both are based on Narus’ award-winning NarusInsight™ technology. Narus also announced significant enhancements to two existing applications.

Network Security IP-based networks in telecommunications carriers and government agencies are among the most complicated, behaviorally unpredictable computerized systems in the world. Increasing complexity, global reach and a high degree of sophistication among hackers creates an environment where highly evolved, dynamic network attacks can wreak havoc. NarusInsight's breakthrough entropy-based security solutions provide carrier networks with much earlier anomaly detection, with industry-leading accuracy, providing more reliable protection from unwanted, illegal and malicious traffic.

NarusInsight Secure Suite (NSS) and NarusInsight Intercept Suite (NIS) are designed specifically for service providers around the world, NTMS is a flexible, scalable suite that provides real-time IP traffic classification, analysis and mitigation with a particular focus on detecting gray or unmanaged VoIP traffic. An increasingly popular form of communication, VoIP services revenue in the business sector is estimated to reach $18 billion by 2010, according to Juniper Research. But a significant percentage of VoIP traffic is gray VoIP, typically used to avoid tariffs and toll charges incurred for a VoIP call. As a result, service providers are losing millions of dollars in revenue and consumers safe millions of dollars.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. and Bangalore, India,— Narus, Inc. announced March 19, 2008 that a host of service providers in India have selected NarusInsight to meet government IP monitoring requirements, manage IP traffic and protect their networks from attack, significantly increasing Narus’ market share in the country. This strong customer momentum is spurred by a combination of new entrants offering IP services in India, the stringent regulatory requirements, Narus’ flexible and scalable solution and a strong presence in both Bangalore and Delhi for development, sales and support.

A set of rules from the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) that cover interception and analysis of e-mail and other IP communications is now being phased in across Europe and adopted in some Asian countries, according to Steve Bannerman, vice president of Marketing at Narus. ETSI doesn't yet have a law on VoIP wiretapping, he said a few years ago. The software a carrier uses to intercept communications has to match up with the tools used by the law-enforcement agency that wants to collect and interpret the data, Bannerman said. The Narus and Pen-Link products are the first to comply with both the ETSI rules and the VoIP CALEA regulations as well as U.S. laws on collecting e-mail and Web data, the companies claim. Specifically, they fully comply with the CALEA T1.678 standard and the ETSI TS 102 232/233/234 standards.

Narus is the leader in real-time traffic intelligence for large IP networks, and is the only company that provides security, intercept and traffic management solutions within a single, flexible system. With Narus, service providers, governments and large enterprises around the world can immediately detect, analyze, mitigate and target any unwanted, unwarranted or malicious traffic. Narus provides its customers with complete, real-time insight into all of their IP traffic from the network to the applications. Combined with the ability to enable numerous actions, Narus customers have the ability to take the most appropriate actions quickly. Narus’ system protects and manages the largest IP networks around the world including AT&T, KT (Korea), KDDI (Japan), Telecom Egypt, Reliance (India), Saudi Telecom, US Cellular and Pakistan Telecom Authority. Narus is headquartered in Mountain View, California with regional offices around the world. For more information visit www.narus.com and to learn more about the bright technical and financial minds that bring online and voip monitoring to the world visit: http://www.narus.com/about/board.html

Undoutedly once this company goes public it will be a fabulous investment opportunity. Keep a watch on it.

http://www.narus.com/about/investors.html

European Commission investigators raided the offices of the world's biggest computer chip manufacturer, Intel and some of Europe's leading electronics retailers on Tuesday (12 February) as part of an antitrust probe. EU antitrust officials targeted the company's Munich offices, along with the headquarters of German electronics retailing giant Media Markt-Saturn and DSG International, which owns PC World, Currys, Dixons, and French electronics goods store PPR. "Commission officials carried out unannounced inspections at the premises of a manufacturer of central processing units (CPUs) and a number of personal computer retailers," said the commission in a statement announcing the actions. "The Commission has reason to believe that the companies concerned may have violated EC Treaty rules on restrictive business practices or abuse of a dominant market position."

DSL is unquestionably the world's favourite broadband access medium, with more than 200 million global connections.

Of these, China is the world's largest single market with approximately 45 million DSL services in operation. New installations are growing at a rate of 15 percent each year. DSL has consistently proved to be a cost-effective and reliable technology for broadband connectivity and, thanks to recent performance enhancements, new multi-play services.

“China's network infrastructure needed to support triple-play data, voice and video services would be strengthened in the Five-Year Plan for telecom that begins in 2006.”

Lie Zhenzhou
Ministry of Information Industry

Out of four billion people already 45 Million have DSL that is approximately slightly over one percent.

Multiple Platform Interactive TV in Europe?

In May delegates from all around the globe are meeting in Monaco for the 3rd Annual Future TV Show Europe 2008 hoping to capture new routes to market.. From one screen to multi-screen. Check out who the movers and shakers are in the future TV world.

http://www.futuretvshow.com/delegates.asp