Alec Saunders SquawkBox

It was great to be back in the office.  We started off this morning’s Squawk Box with a provocative question: "what is a journalist?".  The background to this was an incident that occurred over the weekend.  Fred Wilson, a very smart New York VC, called out some blog postings he had seen recently on TechCrunch and VentureBeat that he considered to be less well researched than they could have been. He specifically took a poke at "journobloggers", folks with their own blogs or part of blog networks, who make a living from doing this. Mike Arrington took issue with Fred’s post in a very strongly titled piece called "Fred Wilson - Hypocritical, Wrong and Conflicted".  Among the many things he pointed out was that both the bloggers that Fred identified had been professional journalists — one with the San Jose Mercury News and the other with Fortune and Business 2.0.  And of course, this hits very close to home for me personally, as I am frequently treated like a journalist because of the blog I write.  Last week, for example, I attended Mobile World Congress as a member of the press.

Over the weekend we also saw fast and furious rumours that Verizon would offer a series of unlimited wireless plans priced between $99 and $169.  And in fact, they did. Depending on whether you want just voice, or voice and data, national only or international roaming as well, the price varies. We debate whether this is a game changing event or not.

And finally, Friday afternoon, on the tail of Mobile World Congress, Motorola and RIM started lobbing patent grenades at each other.  Motorola alleges that RIM is in violation of patents including a method for storing contact information in wireless emails, and a way of recognizing incoming phone numbers.  RIM claims that Motorola has infringed it’s patents including one for a device "with a keyboard optimized for use with the thumbs".  And it’s accused Motorola of behaving in an anticompetitive fashion by demanding "exhorbitant" royalties.  RIM claims that Motorola’s response to the "declining fortunes" of its own handset business can been seen in dramatic increases in royalties charged to RIM. Now recognizing that none of us are patent attorneys…. what are these two up to?

 

 Squawk Box Feb 19 [38:38m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The rumours flying over the weekend that Verizon would introduce unlimited plans today were true.  In the name of "simplification", they've introduced a number of tiers of unlimited voice and data plans.  The tiers look like this:

The two lower price tiers charge $1.99/Mb for data.  Otherwise data is included.  And there's a small discount for families signing up for multiple lines.

Note that none of these plans include unlimited data. The data provided can only be used for the purpose described. The fine print on the Verizon contract reads: The Data Plans and Features MAY NOT be used for any other purpose. Examples of prohibited uses include, without limitation, the following: (i) continuous uploading, downloading or streaming of audio or video programming or games; (ii) server devices or host computer applications, including, but not limited to, Web camera posts or broadcasts, automatic data feeds, automated machine-to-machine connections or peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing; or (iii) as a substitute or backup for private lines or dedicated data connections. This means, by way of example only, that checking email, surfing the Internet, downloading legally acquired songs, and/or visiting corporate intranets is permitted, but downloading movies using P2P file sharing services and/or redirecting television signals for viewing on laptops is prohibited. A person engaged in prohibited uses, continuously for one hour, could typically use 100 to 200 MBs, or, if engaged in prohibited uses for 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, could use more than 5 GBs in a month.

Does this change the game?  It's a step forward in that the meter is now turned off. It's certainly a lot less confusing than plans which require you to designate the five callers you speak with the most often, or offer unlimited calling between customers of the same network. 

People will probably trade up to more expensive plans to simply have the peace of mind that they will never see another overage charge.  This is going to generate enormous short term profits for Verizon as nervous customers switch from bucket minute plans to unlimited plans.  Over the long term, as other carriers copy these plans, prices will fall.  Moreover, expect them to fall faster than previously simply because this simplification will enable easier comparison shopping for consumers.  In addition, expect an acceleration of the trend to abandon the land line.  There's simply no need to have one anymore once you have one of these plans.  

My sense is that this is a game changer.  Expect the other wireless carriers to follow suit.  It's probably the final nail in Vonage's coffin as well.  

Dave Winer and Robert Scoble are going gaga for BlogTalkRadio's new service this morning.  Called Cinchm it lets you create a recording from a phone call that gets republished using your ANI as the URL.  Dave called from (858) 342-9663, dictated a few words, and the MP3 file was live in an RSS feed a few moments later at http://cinch.blogtalkradio.com/8583429663.

I fail to see the point.  Couldn't you make a recording from your desktop? Wouldn't that be simpler and produce a better quality audio file than phoning in on an 8Khz phone line?

Not only that, but hasn't anyone done any product management on this service?  As we've built out the iotum FREE Conference Call service for podcasting, we've learned a ton about what people care about.  Packaging an audio file in an RSS wrapper is small potatoes. 

So Toshiba has announced their decision to bail on HD-DVD.  Curiously, they announced no commitment to Blu-Ray.  Nor have they made any content commitments beyond having a dialog with the studio partners.  They have simply said that they're discontinuing the fight in order to help the industry in its effort to foster the creation of more high definition content. 

It's a bummer for those of us who have purchased HD-DVD players and disks that play on them.  High definition content is noticeably better than standard definition, and the players and disks for HD-DVD were substantially less expensive with better features that Blu-ray. 

This is a triumph of marketing over quality and experience.