Inside Todays Bytes:
•Russian music site offers songs for 5¢, but is it legal?
•New product turns your bicycle into a WiFi hotspot
•Digital Rights Management 'will be cracked'
•US hit by 57 million phishing attacks in one year; may have substantial impact on commerce
•What protocols work best for VOIP?
•VoiPster to offer corporate challenger to Skype
•Apple sells record number of songs after release of new iTunes
•Qwest sues AT&T over Net phone fees
•AOL offers new game site for broadband subscribers
•More industry news, TidBytes on the inside!... ....
•WiMAX Service Two Years Away, WISP Survey Finds:
Many wireless Internet service providers (WISPs) are anxious to deploy WiMAX metropolitan area network equipment, but most believe it will be 2006 before they can offer the wireless broadband service to their users. About two-thirds of the WISPs said they will deploy WiMAX whether or not local incumbent carriers do, the survey found.
•Verizon's New DSL: No Threat To Cable:
Verizon's impressive new 1.5 Mbps downlink/384 Kbps DSL uplink won't be enough for DSL providers to overtake cable-modem service in the broadband sweepstakes. The market-share figures remained relatively static, with cable logging 64 percent at the beginning of 2003, and 63 percent at the end. DSL went from 36 percent to 37 percent.
•AOL unveils new game site for broadband subscribers:
America Online on Wednesday unveiled a video game site for broadband subscribers, in a bid to attract more customers to the high-speed Internet service it sees as key to its future growth. AOL, which has faced declines in its dial-up subscriber base and speculation that parent Time Warner may spin it off, has been aggressively promoting AOL for Broadband as an alternative for people looking to get more out of their Internet connections.
•VoiPster to offer corporate challenger to Skype:
Amsterdam-based Voipster will introduce a corporate competitor to Skype, the popular free VoIP client, by next month. The Dutch company is targeting business users and will charge a monthly fee for unlimited calls. The service will be avalaible for Windows, Linux and MacOSX.
•Digital Rights Management 'will be cracked':
"My personal view is that it's inevitable that all forms of DRM... will be cracked," says the CEO of online music venture Destra. "I would say that if I look forward five years we're going to have the exact situation we have now. We'll have the high-tech types wanting to be able to use their music in every way shape or form. They'll want to transfer their music to devices that don't have DRM," he said. "I don't think average consumers really care about it. I don't think they ever will."
•FCC creates wireless broadband task force:
The FCC has pulled together a group of experts from its ranks to look into how future wireless broadband access rules should be crafted. The new group will study existing wireless broadband policies and make recommendations for possible improvements to promote the growth of both licensed and unlicensed wireless broadband services. The goal is to take a hard look at what the FCC can do to extend the reach of broadband services to underserved areas and to provide increased competition in areas that already have access to broadband.
•Qwest sues AT&T over Net phone fees:
Qwest said that it has sued long-distance giant AT&T, claiming it avoided tens of millions of dollars in fees for phone calls carried partly over the Internet. The suit mirrors one filed last month by SBC Communications against AT&T. Both stem from a ruling by federal regulators that AT&T had improperly deemed some long-distance calls it carried over the Internet as local calls, thereby paying local phone companies lower fees than normal.
•UK: Hey, we need to be faster:
Broadband may be today's technology but the future lies with 'broaderband'. So says UK telecoms regulator Ofcom as it plans what the UK's telecoms and broadcast landscape will look like for the next decade. The regulator is keen to get its role in the changing broadband landscape right as the UK moves towards superfast internet networks. It is currently consulting the industry on how to prepare for the world of what it dubs 'broaderband'.
•US hit by 57 million phishing attacks in one year; may have substantial impact on commerce:
About 57 million people in the US are thought to have received a phishing email during the past year, according to a survey to be published by Gartner. Unless phishing can be stamped out using digitally signed emails, and other antiphishing technologies, Gartner expects the US ecommerce economy to take a substantial hit. "Without the implementation of phishing antidotes, consumer trust will further erode and annual US ecommerce growth will slow to 10 percent or less by 2007."
•Apple sells record number of songs after release of new iTunes:
Apple Computer said that music fans have purchased a record amount of 3.3million songs from its new iTunes Music Store since its launch one week ago. iTunes users have also downloaded more than 500,000 free songs during Apple's week-long Free Song of the Day anniversary promotion.
•USDA Approves Raft of New Loans to Expand Rural Broadband:
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has approved 20 rural broadband and telecommunications loans totaling $190 million to expand access to advanced technology in 19 states. The USDA announcement of the loan approvals supports President Bush’s recent public pronouncement in support of promoting innovation and economic security through broadband deployment.
•New product turns your bicycle into a WiFi hotspot:
Yuri Gitman has created a new mobile form of wireless hot spot. It's called a Magicbike and it turns common bicycles into WiFi hotspots. A Magicbike hotspot operates like standard hotspots, able to serve up to 250 users in a radius of 30 meters indoors and 100 meters outdoors [although its antennas can increase the hotspot's accuracy and range]. A group of bikes can repeat and/or bridge the signal down a chain of wireless bikes.
•What protocols work best for VOIP?:
Voice and data convergence is still in its infancy. Adoption rates are steadily increasing, and the technology has improved. However, uniting voice and data traffic over a WAN using transport backbones such as IP, frame relay, asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) and broadband is still a complex task. So what setup brings the best quakity of service?
•Sasser creates European pandemonium:
Sasse apparently has caused significant problems in continental Europe. A Finnish bank had to shut down all its 130 branches in several countries, the French Stock Exchange and the France Presse news agency were affected, and the National Courthouse of Spain was a victim. Sasser also hit the European Commission, has stopped train traffic in Australia, delayed Delta flights in the US, and paralysed almost a third of Taiwan's national post office.
•Russian music site offers songs for 5¢, but is it legal?:
Allofmp3.com is one of many Russian internet sites that are openly offering MP3 files from a central server. For either $14.95 a month (capped at 1000 tracks per month) or for individual tracks at one cent per megabyte, it's fantastically cheap. It's just as convenient as iTunes, but obviously rather cheaper and with less gaps in the contemporary catalogue. For example, a reporter claims to have to have downloaded 968 tracks, all from big-name artists, for just under $50. Assuming all the songs were available on Apple's iTunes Music Store, they would have cost over $958. But is it legal? The answer is far from clear.
TidBytes:
CDs and DVDs Not So Immortal After All
Worms Jack Up the Total Cost of Windows
Microsoft plans laptop tune-up with Longhorn
Sony cancels many sports video games for 2004, including football and basketball
New spin on search ads
Companies ignore up to half of all complaints sent by email
Security firms team for new product
Hollywood riled up over ClearPlay