Here’s a quick update from Comcast Voices, the Comcast blog, on the upcoming On Demand Online trial. Apparently the MSO has added the Starz network to its roster of on-demand content that will be made available on Fancast and Comcast.net. The premium movie channel will serve up 300 movies online, though all in standard-def to start. (HD content coming later.)

The Comcast blog offers one other interesting tidbit as well. In addition to streaming content, the new online service will include downloadable content in the future. I can’t help but wonder how the rights issues will be handled once content goes mobile, but Comcast clearly has something in the works.

Meanwhile, Comcast’s move to increase its online video stores (as well as the broader consumer rise in online video streaming) certainly suggests a reason the company has been so aggressive on the DOCSIS 3.0 front. All those IP video streams require significant bursts of downstream bandwidth.

Motorola has another WiMAX market launch coming up on July 21st in Las Vegas. That’s the day Clearwire officially unveils service in the third city on its rollout list. Las Vegas follows Atlanta and Portland, both of which are also powered by Motorola. Clearwire uses the Motorola WAP 400 and WAP 450 access points and is bundling service with the Motorola desktop CPEi 150 and the USBw 100 laptop adapter in several markets.

So what does the launch in Vegas mean? Beyond the availability of 4G mobile broadband to inhabitants and gambling tourists, I can think of one other major usage scenario. Conventions. What better way to sell one-day passes than to target transient business people desperate to stay connected? Not least of all, as GigaOM’s Jordon Golson points out, think of CES, the massive, annual gadget geek show. I would think Clearwire could make a profit just off of the wandering suits and gadget heads (myself included) that flood the city for three days in January. That’s Vegas, baby, Vegas.

One of my questions leading up to the broadcast digital TV transition was how many OTA TV watchers would make the jump to cable, telco, or satellite service. According to an article by Todd Spangler, the answer is right around 653,000. Analyst Marci Ryvicker has estimates on how that number breaks down across categories too. Cable companies are expected to gain roughly 475,000 subscribers, satellite operators weigh in with an additional 137,000 estimated customers, and telcos are looking at 41,000 new subs.

My neighbors considered making the switch as they struggled through the process of procuring and installing converter boxes and antennas. Ultimately, however, they stuck with free OTA broadcasts. Though that might have something to do with the fact that Grandma’s house has cable nearby.

Averaging one new market every week, Motorola has been pushing the envelope with WiMAX over the last month. Most recently, Smart Communications in the Philippines launched its first WiMAX tests using Motorola equipment. From the press release:

To date, [Smart] has about 8,700 cell sites across the country, housing various network equipment, including antennae for GSM, HSPA and Canopy. Very soon, these same towers will play host to Smart’s extensive WiMAX network.

For the trial, Smart and Motorola installed the latter’s WAP 450 WiMAX Access Points equipment to a number of cell site towers across the country. The WAP 450 utilizes tower top power amplifiers that can be housed in a small cabinet, allowing for a compact cell site configuration.

The news with Smart follows on the heels of a WiMAX launch in Pakistan on June 30th with the wireless provider Wi-tribe. Before that came the Clearwire Atlanta launch in mid-June, and  a nationwide rollout with Etihad Athib Telecommunication Co. in Saudi Arabia announced on June 6th.

WiMAX is gaining momentum globally as a technology platform for next-gen mobile broadband. Ultimately it will play alongside LTE, but for the moment it is moving forward faster with a multitude of commercial deployments around the world.

It wasn’t long ago that YouTube’s maximum upload size was 10 MB. Then it jumped to 100 MB, followed by 1 GB last fall, followed this week by a new 2 GB ceiling. YouTube’s upload file sizes are increasing to keep pace with the new, cheap HD camcorders on the market. More people are shooting in HD, which means improved video quality, but also much larger file sizes. It also means there’s an increasing need for more upstream bandwidth.

Over the last year we’ve seen massive DOCSIS 3.0 rollouts fueling increased downstream speeds via downstream channel bonding. And the upstream race isn’t far off. However, beyond upstream channel bonding, there are other network-based solutions for increasing upstream throughput. Check out this video of one of my favorite Motorolans, Floyd Wagoner, talking about how to optimize upstream spectrum, specifically in the 5-42 MHz range.

As a special holiday bonus, Floyd goes on to discuss RFOG in this two-minute video as well. Enjoy, and have a Happy Fourth.

Wondering what to pay attention to in the world of broadband this week? Here are a few stories that have caught my eye.

Remote Storage DVR Gets a Green Light

Several pubs this week have covered the fact that cable operators now have the legal go-ahead to implement remote-storage DVR. This court saga began back in 2007 when a district court ruled against Cablevision and its plans for network-based DVR services. But that ruling was overturned by an appeals court, and this week the Supreme Court upheld that appeal. Technically speaking, an RS-DVR service could be highly disruptive to the way on-demand networks are currently constructed. However, with the right streaming, storage, and ingest solutions, the potential benefits to consumers and operators are very real.

Targeted Advertising Effects on Brand Loyalty

CED has a very interesting piece up on its website regarding a new study commissioned by the CMO Council. The study calls into question the lasting effect of brand loyalty on consumer purchasing, but it also shows how targeted advertising and promotions can be used to strengthen the loyalty tie. As the article points out, this is good news for targeted advertising initiatives currently underway among pay-TV operators.

The researchers say they have hundreds of instances where they have successfully increased sales by identifying likely loyal buyers and by delivering relevant advertising followed by coupons to specific households.

Mobile Broadband as Customer Retention Tool

I’ve written before about how operators are adding smart services to their “dumb” pipes (Wi-Fi access at hotspots, ESPN360, etc.), but Paul Kapustka at Sidecut Reports handily adds WiMAX to the list of cable customer retention tools. In fact, he pairs Comcast’s launch of mobile broadband service this week with the TV Everywhere initiatives in the works. Comcast is giving subscribers more places to watch content and a price-competitive mobile broadband service to make that content accessible. Not a bad way to keep subscribers.

For those of you who aren’t following an RSS feed of CableLabs press releases, the organization has just announced a new set of advanced advertising specifications. They go the by the unwieldy title of Stewardship and Fulfillment Interfaces, or the much easier SaFI for short.

SaFI consists of  standards for sharing information contained in advanced advertising campaigns. Advanced advertising here includes addressable advertising, on-demand ad insertion, and interactive advertising. As advertisers try out new platforms for ad delivery (which should generate better returns), they are looking for assurances that they can process messages and compare metrics across the range of hardware and software present in existing cable systems. SaFI is designed to provide those assurances.

Naturally CableLabs doesn’t pull new standards out of thin air. SaFI is partially the result of work being done across the technology vendor community, which was demonstrated recently at a CableLabs interoperability event. Companies at the event, Motorola included, showed the interoperability of their products in a demonstration of dynamic, addressable VOD ad insertion.

I’ve talked before about fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) as a real-estate perk, but a new study shows that high-speed broadband really is an important selling point among home buyers. Bearing in mind that the study was commissioned by the Fiber to the Home Council and announced in a press release by Verizon, the report concludes that buyers consider FTTH more important than neighborhood green space, a 24-hour neighborhood patrol, a community pool, and a fitness center. Among buyers who have had a fiber connection before, 82% list it as the top “real estate development amenity.”

That’s the beauty of an optical network.

The long-fabled quad play may have finally arrived, and guess what, it doesn’t look anything like originally envisioned. Comcast launched wireless broadband service today in Portland Oregon combining the Sprint 3G network and the Clearwire 4G network. It’s a data-only service, and it represents the ultimate conclusion of major cable operators regarding the quad play: the next-gen service bundle doesn’t need to include wireless voice.

Wireless broadband is a natural extension of fixed-line Internet service. In the short term it literally extends the reach of the broadband connection, but in the longer term it enables new cross-platform capabilities. Data revenues are also where the growth money is. A snapshot last August (the last time I looked closely) showed ARPU for wireless carriers continuing to go up, but only because of revenue from data services. Voice ARPU was on the decline.

Meanwhile, the new Comcast offering is noteworthy not just because it gets cable into the wireless biz (beyond Wi-Fi), but because it shows traction for WiMAX. And with Portland already showing signs of success for Clearwire, it’s probably a good bet for Comcast’s launch as well.

More coverage of today’s launch, including plans and pricing here:

• Broadband Reports
• GigaOM
• Sidecut Reports

If you’ve always wondered how your set-top accesses firmware updates, or if you’re a cable operator looking for a more efficient way to do code downloads, this is the post for you. Motorola’s Vic Melis recently explained how to use an offline loader to do bulk code downloads (think guide updates), and I’ve posted his words here. It’s a bit of a sales pitch, but if you just want the technical explanation, there’s plenty of that too. If you happen to remember all the way back to The Cable Show, this is an in-depth look at the OLL1000 that was shown there. Thanks, Vic!

Vic Melis on the offline loader:

Cable operators that pre-load code on set-top boxes before deployment to the field are finding a new way to cut their warehouse costs. Motorola’s new offline loader, the Motorola OLL1000, is helping large and small cable operators realize significant savings in time and cost through bulk code downloads to set-tops. Cable and Telco operators are finding that the OLL1000 typically pays for itself in less than two months.

There are several reasons.

Reason #1: Instead of having to target specific boxes with their IP addresses for code download, the OLL can broadcast the same code objects to all connected boxes. The OLL1000 can download the same code objects to a mixed population of core and advanced set-tops simultaneously. There is no need to connect only one specific box types at a time. The OLL can also handle a mix of RF return and Ethernet return boxes and even non-Motorola boxes, as long as they are DCII compliant.

Reason #2: It’s fast! Since you have a “dedicated pipe” you have the entire bandwidth available just for downloading code. The OLL supports code download at high bit rates. On a live cable plant you would have to share the available OOB (out-of-band) bandwidth with interactive applications. Translation: You can download 5MB of code objects in less than 5 minutes, compared to typical 20-40 minutes on a live production system, depending on bandwidth.

Reason #3: Code prep is easier! User-friendly GUI and menus simplify the process for creating, preparing, staging and downloading code object packages to set-tops. You can easily create code object “packages” of 20 different code objects using a supplied template folder. You can pre-load set-tops a day or two in advance in anticipation of planned code upgrades to support field installations on the day of code upgrade. You can easily change packages for download to the next group of set-tops.

Reason #4: It’s secure. Since it is an offline solution, there is no risk to inadvertent download to boxes on a live plant. The offline loader operates on Linux for better security, development environment, and serviceability.