By Samuel Greengard Communications of the ACM, Vol. 64 No. 12, Pages 23-25 10.1145/3490165 Modern life increasingly is defined by the activities we . Modern life increasingly is defined by the activities we engage in online: Zoom meetings at work, Netflix and Xbox marathons at home, and a steady stream of YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook video clips in the nooks and crannies in between. There are many benefits to life online, yet there are also undeniable social, economic, and environmental costs. While global emissions from video streaming and other digital activities comprise somewhere in the neighborhood of 3% of the total,a the voracious and growing appetite for bandwidth is raising concerns about sustainability—and prompting some to wonder whether it is possible to keep up with the demand. "We're seeing the digitization of everything—work, entertainment and shopping. There's a huge shift in lifestyle and it's sharpening the focus on how all of these devices impact things," says Eric Williams, a professor of sustainability at the Golisano Institute for Sustainability of the Rochester Institute of Technology. As bandwidth demand ticks upward and carries the demand for power with it, "There's an emerging discussion about the role of all the digital services we've come to rely on," says Mike Hazas, a professor in the Department of Information Technology at the University of Uppsala in Sweden. "It's an important discussion, because how we design and use systems will define our future." Back to Top Left to Our Devices There's a common assumption that life online is cleaner and greener than life in the physical realm. There is near-zero cost to sending an email message or viewing a YouTube video. While it is true a Zoom meeting consumes only a fraction of the energy of a commute to work or a flight across the country, it does require bandwidth and electricity. Of course, as millions of people venture online for billions of video calls, the energy and bandwidth requirements accumulate, and can spike. The ability to click and instantly watch videos—and even autoplay them in various apps—has changed behavior in profound ways. According to networking firm Sandvine, upwards of 60% of the traffic on the Internet is now related to consumer video streaming, and sites such as Netflix, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube carry the bulk of this traffic, which is growing at an annual clip of about 24%.b The Carbon Trust, an independent U.K.-based advisory organization comprised of experts in sustainability, reports that long-form video streaming accounts for 45% of all Internet traffic.c Artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, cryptocurrency mining, Blockchain, and the Internet of Things (IoT) are poised to ratchet up the stakes further. "These systems will add huge volumes of traffic to the Internet, and much of this traffic is automated and not constrained by users," says Kelly Widdicks, a post-doctoral researcher at the School of Computing and Communications at Lancaster University in the U.K. The direct use of devices, and how they draw power and bandwidth, is not the only factor in understanding how they impact things, however. About 90% of the energy a smartphone uses during its life cycle is embedded in the manufacturing process.d This includes collecting rare materials for batteries, fabricating devices, and recycling and disposing of components. What's more, after a smartphone handset is produced, about 90% of the energy consumption takes place off the phone, including on the network and in the datacenter.e Further complicating matters: fast, persistent Internet connections modify behavior. A 2021 study conducted by a pair of researchers at the U.K.'s University of Sussex, Bernado Calderola and Steve Sorrell, found that the availability of telework may actually encourage people to move farther from their place of work and engage in additional non-work-related travel. The authors noted that such "results provi...

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What Is the Cost of Living Online?

Akamai Technologies is getting into the cloud-computing business. Best known as the leading content-delivery network, Akamai (ticker: AKAM) late . Akamai Technologies is getting into the cloud-computing business. Best known as the leading content-delivery network, Akamai (ticker: AKAM) late Tuesday announced an agreement to acquire Linode, a Philadelphia-based cloud-hosting company, for $900 million in cash. Akamai CEO Tom Leighton said in an interview with Barron’s that Linode is “a...

Akamai Enters Cloud Computing With $900 Million Deal for Linode

As far as the record industry is concerned, the existential (and the literal) threat of piracy has not been negated by the rise of streaming. Legal action continues and studies claim the issue steadfastly refuses to disappear despite the very idea of owning MP3s feeling anachronistic to most music . Share to Linkedin As far as the record industry is concerned, the existential (and the literal) threat of piracy has not been negated by the rise of streaming. Legal action continues and studies claim the issue steadfastly refuses to disappear despite the very idea of owning MP3s feeling anachronistic to most music fans. The litigation focus has moved in the past decade away from dedicated pirate sites towards software creators that allow users to “stream rip” tracks from existing services, notably YouTube – which offers a mix of videos uploaded by the content owners alongside UGC that may contain music but which rights owners can claim and monetise. The scale of the litigation against stream-ripping can be enormous. The RIAA, representing US record companies, recently won a case against YouTube-rippers FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com (both of which had were previously required to block access to individuals in the US). This legal action could see the trade body receive $83 million in damages. This legal action coincided with the publication of a white paper published by Muso, a digital piracy monitoring and measurement company. It claims to have analysed 182 billion visits to piracy websites last year to gather the information for its report, adding that this was an increase of 15.2% from 2020 in terms of the data it was processing. MORE FOR YOU ‘Dune’ Tops Foreign Box Office With Promising $77M Cume ‘Shang-Chi’ Box Office: Marvel Movie Tops $360M Worldwide 4 Series Coming To Netflix In October That Are Worth The Binge It stated that the US was the biggest piracy market, accounting for 10.6% of all global traffic here (equal to an average of 68 visits to a piracy site per internet user). The music business can take some relief from the fact that TV piracy dominates, accounting for 50.3% of all traffic globally; film made up 11.2% while music was just 8.1%. “The music industry's decision to not encourage exclusive content on streaming platforms has had a positive impact on music piracy over the past 5 years,” Muso suggested. Exclusives were briefly in vogue in the early days of Tidal and Apple Music where artists would give them exclusive release windows before allowing their music to go onto rival services. Such deals were struck, in part, to try and close the gap on Spotify’s market-leading position. Muso did, however, point to stream-ripping as a growing driver here of music piracy. “These sites accounted for 39.2% of music piracy in 2021, up from 33.9% in 2020,” it noted. For the first decade and a half of the 21st century, coverage of the record business was packed with rolling stories about the threat and impact of digital piracy, as well as the swing into litigation against both P2P services themselves and the serial uploaders who enabled vast numbers of tracks to be accessible for free. Since the arrival of Napster in late 1999, downloading of unlicensed MP3s grew at a phenomenal rate. There were arguments this was killing the record business, but also counter-arguments that users of sites such as Napster and the many which came in its wake were treating such downloading as a “try before you buy” opportunity. The arrival of iTunes Music Store in 2003 was the first success in getting people to pay for downloads at scale. The steady rise of streaming, however, saw consumption of music move to a model based on ownership (of CDs, of MP3s, of LPs) to one built entirely around access (via streaming services that were free, but running on advertising revenue, or based on monthly subscriptions). Streaming is now the bulk of the record business globally and has helped industry revenues to rise again after many years of decline. (How that...

Pirate Flags: Music Business Says Piracy Still Threatens Its Future

Things like streetlights are handy places to put mobile base stations but they can often be hard to access. The UK government is trying to change . Things like streetlights are handy places to put mobile base stations but they can often be hard to access. The UK government is trying to change that. The DCMS announcement says it wants to ‘slash red tape from 5G roll out’, but in this case it’s referring only to so-called ‘street furniture’. This means publicly-owned things like streetlights, bus stops, CCTV poles and traffic lights. These elevated structures can double as towers for enterprising mobile network operators but it looks like that process is encumbered by bureaucracy and unhelpful jobsworths. So the department of fun is going to chuck a few quid at eight projects that will aim to ‘simplify local authority processes’. A focus of these projects will be in digital asset management platforms, from which we can infer an absence of them from the local authorities whose job it is to maintain this stuff. The ultimate aim seems to be to bring them into the 21st century in the hope they’ll be a bit more helpful. “Everyone gets frustrated when their mobile signal is poor, particularly when patchy coverage holds up important work and social calls and makes it harder to do stuff online,” empathised Digital Infrastructure Minister Julia Lopez. “That is why we are determined to get the UK the connectivity it needs by rolling out better mobile coverage as quickly as possible. “Currently, mobile companies are finding it difficult to get the data they need to check that a lamppost, bus shelter or public building is suitable for hosting their kit. These eight pilots will help solve this by modernising the way local authorities and operators work together in a way that ultimately delivers faster, more reliable mobile coverage for millions of people. It is all part of our joined-up strategy to deliver world-class connectivity to every corner of our country.” The eight projects will be respectively led by Dorset Council, North of Tyne Combined Authority, Scottish Futures Trust, West Berkshire Council, West London Alliance, West Midlands Combined Authority, West of England Combined Authority, and West Sussex County Council. No timescales have been shared and operators would be wise to resist the temptation to hold their breath in anticipation of radical reform any time soon.

UK government moves to improve telco access to street furniture

Hong Kong (CNN Business) — SoftBank's record-breaking sale of a prized chip designer to Nvidia has officially been called off. At an initial value of $40 billion, the US chipmaker's acquisition of British design firm ARM would have been the largest semiconductor deal on record. But regulators around . Hong Kong (CNN Business) SoftBank's record-breaking sale of a prized chip designer to Nvidia has officially been called off. At an initial value of $40 billion, the US chipmaker's acquisition of British design firm ARM would have been the largest semiconductor deal on record. But regulators around the world have long raised concerns about the deal, eventually leading to its collapse on Tuesday. In a statement, SoftBank cited "significant regulatory challenges" that prevented it from completing the deal. It said that it would instead prepare ARM for a public offering within the fiscal year ending March 2023. Under the terms of the agreement, SoftBank had already received a deposit of $1.25 billion during the signing. That payment was non-refundable, and "will be recognized as profit" in the Japanese conglomerate's earnings for the quarter ending this March, it said. FTC sues to block Nvidia's $40 billion takeover of Arm AAPL) and other major smartphone makers. The firm is based in Cambridge and is known as one of Britain's most successful tech companies. ARM designs chips used byand other major smartphone makers. The firm is based in Cambridge and is known as one of Britain's most successful tech companies. The transaction was first announced in 2020, four years after SoftBank bought ARM for $32 billion, marking the largest foreign takeover by a Japanese firm at the time. It was originally expected to close within 18 months, which would have been around this time. But it ran out of steam as it became a subject of global regulatory scrutiny, including from China and the United Kingdom. Just days after the announcement, an opinion piece in Chinese state-run tabloid Global Times had dubbed the move "disturbing." "If ARM falls into US hands, Chinese technology companies would certainly be placed at a big disadvantage in the market," read the op-ed. In December, the US Federal Trade Commission sued to block the deal, saying it would stifle competition and give the combined company too much control over chip technology and designs. The European Commission also launched an investigation into the deal late last year. The deal would have had to pass regulatory approvals from the United Kingdom, the European Union, the United States and China. Had it gone through, it would have been the semiconductor industry's biggest-ever deal, topping Avago's acquisition of Broadcom in 2015, according to Dealogic. SoftBank COO Marcelo Claure is leaving after a reported pay dispute SFTBF) CEO Masayoshi Son remained optimistic about future plans for ARM. Speaking at an earnings presentation on Tuesday,CEO Masayoshi Son remained optimistic about future plans for ARM. While he acknowledged that his company was now pivoting toward a "plan B," he said that SoftBank had originally hoped to take ARM public after acquiring it years ago. "[So] this is [the] original plan again," he said. Still, the billionaire hit out at those who had opposed the deal, arguing that critics had appeared "eager to block" a deal between "two totally different businesses." In the history of antitrust complaints, "this could be the first case" involving claims about two such "different companies," he said, likening Nvidia and ARM to the makers of car engines and tires. "Why do they have to block this transaction?" he asked. ARM also announced a new leader on Tuesday, saying that longtime CEO Simon Segars would be replaced by executive Rene Haas. In a statement, Son thanked Segars for his 30-year tenure at the company and said that "Rene is the right leader to accelerate ARM's growth as the company starts making preparations to reenter the public markets." Rishi Iyengar contributed ...

The biggest chip deal in history has fallen apart

As the athletes take to the ski slopes and ice rinks to compete in the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, the eagerly awaited games have been a TV . The study noted that with so many viewing options available, viewer expectations for a good experience streaming have never been higher, particularly for marquee live events. It noted that despite slightly longer start times and a significant increase in buffering, streaming viewers were treated to 4% fewer start failures and 0.2% higher picture quality on the day of the Opening Ceremony as compared with an average Friday. That said, plays were up 9% and concurrency up 6%. The study observed that while ceremonies in previous years stretched to four hours with extended pomp and circumstance, the brevity of this year’s Opening Ceremony condensed viewership in 2022. Almost three-quarters (71%) of viewership was captured in the middle two hours of the Opening Ceremony. In another key change since 2018, the study discovered that tablets accounted for a 28% share of viewing during the Opening Ceremony. Only weeks days ago In addition to showing the streaming surge over the last four years, According to research from Conviva, the 2022 Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony recorded a 349% increase in viewing time as compared with the same event in 2018.The study noted that with so many viewing options available, viewer expectations for a good experience streaming have never been higher, particularly for marquee live events. It noted that despite slightly longer start times and a significant increase in buffering, streaming viewers were treated to 4% fewer start failures and 0.2% higher picture quality on the day of the Opening Ceremony as compared with an average Friday. That said, plays were up 9% and concurrency up 6%.The study observed that while ceremonies in previous years stretched to four hours with extended pomp and circumstance, the brevity of this year’s Opening Ceremony condensed viewership in 2022. Almost three-quarters (71%) of viewership was captured in the middle two hours of the Opening Ceremony.In another key change since 2018, the study discovered that tablets accounted for a 28% share of viewing during the Opening Ceremony. Only weeks days ago Conviva released data showing that tablets only had 5% of viewing time of global streaming time in Q4 2021. Connected TV devices, such as Roku, Chromecast, and Amazon Fire TV, tied the top spot and desktops came in third with 17%. Smart TVs with 14%, mobile phones with 12%, and gaming consoles with 1% rounded out the rest of the devices. 55% of viewers preferred watching the opening ceremony on Apple iPads.In addition to showing the streaming surge over the last four years, the research also made clear just how massive social is in video. It found that social engagement was up 370% for official national Olympics accounts from over 120 different countries compared with the average for the previous six weeks. Twitter led all social platforms in volume of content posted accounting for 37% share, while Instagram delivered the most engaged audience with 66% of all engagements for Olympic committee accounts in the week leading up to the Winter Olympics.

Streaming spikes for Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony

Following a detailed process to identify the best way to generate investment and strengthen our Sports business, BT Group today announced that it has . Following a detailed process to identify the best way to generate investment and strengthen our Sports business, BT Group today announced that it has entered exclusive discussions with Discovery, Inc. on a deal to create a new sport and entertainment offering for customers in the UK. The new business would be a 50/50 joint venture, bringing together BT Sport with Eurosport UK. The new combined business would remain committed to retaining BT Sport’s existing major sports broadcast rights while BT Sport customers would get access to Discovery’s sport and entertainment content, including the discovery+ app. BT Group are aiming to conclude the exclusive discussions with Discovery, Inc. in early Q1 for the new company to be operational later this year, subject to completion of the deal and approval by the relevant competition authorities. Marc Allera, CEO BT Consumer, said: “The proposed joint venture with Discovery, Inc. would create an exciting new sports broadcasting entity for the UK and would act as a perfect home for our BT Sport business. With a shared ambition for growth, as well as the combination of our world class sports assets along with Discovery’s premium sports and entertainment content, our customers will benefit from even more content in more places.”

BT Group enters exclusive negotiations with Discovery, Inc. to create new sports joint venture

Xavier has a wealth of experience in content delivery, and Jill is an avid promoter and supporter of women in the broadcast industy and active in the . Thu, Feb 03 www.smadvancedforum.com Xavier has a wealth of experience in content delivery, and Jill is an avid promoter and supporter of women in the broadcast industy and active in the industry for many years!

Xavier Leclercq and Jill Porubovic - Feb 3rd 2022 | smadvancedforum

A team of sports broadcasters, rights owners and technology vendors, collaborating as part of IBC’s Accelerator Media Innovation Programme, have . A team of sports broadcasters, rights owners and technology vendors, collaborating as part of IBC’s Accelerator Media Innovation Programme, have revealed the initial results from an English Premier League production workflow trial to support the goal of a carbon ‘net zero’ future for live productions. Together, they demonstrate how innovative remote & cloud production workflows can meet ambitious sustainability objectives and reduce the environmental impact of live production. The project team, comprising six broadcast and production ‘Champions’ led by BBC Sport, BT Sport, Sky Sports, Premier League Productions and international rights holders NBCUniversal and SuperSport have come together with the English Premier League, IMG/Premier League Productions and albert (BAFTA’s initiative to support more sustainable production) to experiment with multi-provider cloud technologies, formats and workflows, sharing camera feeds, audio, graphics and human resources to avoid duplication and reduce travel and other energy requirements in the production chain. High level findings from the trial include confirmation that cloud production reduces the amount of technical infrastructure required for the gallery production, for some broadcasters by up to 70 per cent. It also demonstrated that cloud production further reduces the requirements for significant onsite technical facilities as it allows signals to be sent quickly and easily to multiple locations. The project team deployed bespoke workflows and architectures alongside a traditional Outside Broadcast production to compare and contrast carbon footprints, in a collaborative ‘proof of concept’ demonstration during the Premier League game that took place on December 16th 2021, between Liverpool and Newcastle United. The initiative will drive further research that support carbon footprint reduction for the sector, providing industry benchmarks and more measurable insights into live production for the first time. Project technology has been powered by six leading media and technology ecosystem vendor participants: Amazon Web Services, Blackbird, Hitomi, Microsoft, M2A Media, Singular.Live and Zixi. The key findings of the project, revealed and explained by the Champions involved on IBC Digital, IBC’s online content platform, is available on-demand. The panel including representatives from BT Sport, Sky Sports, BBC Sport and the Premier League discuss the results, learnings and potential benchmarks and will share further insights with the industry through the release of a technical paper and discussions at upcoming industry events in the coming weeks. “Improving sustainability has become a number one priority for the media and entertainment production sector,” said Andy Beale, Project Lead and Chief Engineer at BT Sport. “The future of our planet depends on a collective effort to become carbon net zero. With this IBC Accelerator project, we wanted to tangibly experiment together to understand the alternatives to traditional OB production in live sport, in order to make carbon metrics more readily available so companies can benchmark what they are doing and help motivate them to do more to reduce their own carbon footprints.” “Reducing the carbon emissions attributed to the production of our sports programming is of great importance – and a major part of Sky’s ambitions to achieve its goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2030,” added Inga Ruehl, Executive Director, Production Services & Operations at Sky. “The promising results from the trial show that the industry goal of a drastic reduction of emissions through means such as cloud production workflows is very much attainable. If the industry continues to work together towards this goal it can make a huge difference.” The initiative builds upon the significant progress made within the UK TV and f...

Cloud workflows aid carbon net zero live production

Fears of “catastrophic disruption” to flight schedules in the U.S. seem to be coming true after a number of airlines suspended their flights to the . UPDATE: AT&T and Verizon have announced a delay to Wednesday’s planned activation of 5G towers around certain airports in response to safety concerns raised by airline chiefs, and to avert major disruption to flight schedules. But for some airlines — mainly those flying to the U.S. from other countries — the announcement came a little late. Fears of “catastrophic disruption” to flight schedules in the U.S. seem to be coming true after a number of airlines suspended their flights to the U.S. following AT&T and Verizon’s plans to switch on their new C-Band 5G networks starting Wednesday, January 19. The suspension, at the moment, seems to only affect routes serviced by the Boeing 777 aircraft, with four major international carriers issuing statements confirming the same. Emirates seems to be the worst affected of the lot, with the Dubai-based airline suspending flights to as many as nine U.S. cities. Most of its U.S.-bound flights are serviced by the Boeing 777 aircraft, with the rest of the load being handled by the Airbus A380. JAL’s statement mentions it is having to suspend flights flown with a 777. It also adds that it is not in a position to replace the Boeing 777 with an alternative model like the Boeing 787. Emirates is suspending flights to 9 U.S. cities — Boston, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Miami, Newark, Orlando, San Francisco, and Seattle — indefinitely due to the 5G rollout. h/t @AirlineFlyer — Edward Russell (@ByERussell) January 18, 2022 ANA’s statement is also somewhat similar and mentions that all its flights that use the Boeing 777 are canceled until further notice. While stopping short of a complete suspension, Air India’s official Twitter handle sent out a tweet confirming that its operations to the U.S. stand “curtailed/revised.” Interestingly, these airlines have decided to go ahead with the suspension of Boeing 777 flights even after Verizon and AT&T agreed to temporarily limit the deployment of 5G near certain airports — a decision that was hailed by President Biden as well. The latest development in the stumble to 5G: AT&T and Verizon caving to keeping C-Band 5G offline near runways, and airlines canceling flights anyway. The difference seems to be Boeing saying not to fly the 777. — Avi Greengart (@greengart) January 18, 2022 Both AT&T and Verizon originally planned to deploy the new 5G networks starting January 5, 2022. However, following the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) concerns surrounding 5G waves possibly interfering with radio altimeters used on aircraft, both carriers deferred the launch for two weeks. In the meantime, FAA came up with a list of 50 airports and approaches that could be affected by this deployment. On Sunday, the FAA cleared half of those airports for safe operations — but that still meant almost 25 other airports were still deemed unsafe for landing. Several of the airports and approaches are located at some of the busiest and most important cities in the U.S. including Boston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Miami, Newark, Orlando, San Francisco, and Seattle. However, as the story develops, we may see some of these airlines roll back these decisions now that the deployment of C-band 5G networks near airports has been suspended. Editors' Recommendations iPad Air 5 getting upgraded camera, chip, and 5G in 2022 T-Mobile’s 5G leads the pack in Ookla’s latest speed report Airlines continue to fear new 5G service will cause flight chaos 5G’s big players make bold, exciting predictions for 2022 FAA says 50 U.S. airports won’t get expanded 5G coverage until later in 2022

The 5G apocalypse is here, major airlines suspend U.S. flights

The streaming giant is faced with slowed growth so it's opting for the easy money. On Friday, Netflix announced it has raised prices on all of its subscription plans, with the highest-quality plan now costing users $19.99 per month. The basic plan, which only allows for standard definition video, is . On Friday, Netflix announced it has raised prices on all of its subscription plans, with the highest-quality plan now costing users $19.99 per month. The basic plan, which only allows for standard definition video, is now $9.99. Netflix says its most popular plan, which allows for 1080p HD video, is now $15.49. "We're updating our prices so that we can continue to offer a wide variety of quality entertainment options," a Netflix spokesperson said. To be clear, "updating" is apparently now a euphemism for "raising," at least when it comes to prices. And, Netflix's reason for raising prices is pretty simple--it has to. The company's share price rose three percent after the announcement, which is really all you need to know about why Netflix keeps upping the price of a service that is essentially the same as it has been for a decade. It has to make shareholders happy. That has gotten harder as subscriber growth has slowed. Of course, there comes a point when you're the largest streaming service, that it's difficult to find people who aren't already subscribers. You'd think that would be considered a win, except that shareholders want to see growth, even when you're already as big as you're reasonably going to get. That's just the law of large numbers. If you already have 214 million subscribers, which Netflix said it had in October 2021, it's very hard to continue growing at the same rate as when it had, say, 50 million, or even 100 million. To be clear, not everyone is a subscriber. Then again, a large portion of people who don't pay for Netflix is streaming Squid Game anyway, using someone else's account--usually a parent, or roommate, or former girlfriend. Some estimates suggest as many as a third of accounts share a password. That means there are as many as 70 million people who are using Netflix without paying. Instead, Netflix has decided the easier path to growing revenue is to simply charge its existing customers more money for the same service. Eventually, however, there will be a point at which people won't continue to pay whatever Netflix decides to charge. I have no idea what that amount is, but I'm honestly a bit surprised we haven't reached it already. Netflix has now raised the price of its top plan by $8.00 in the past five years. The obvious question is whether Netflix is offering additional value for the higher price. I guess that depends on how you define value. The company isn't adding any new features to its plans. At the same time, it continues to invest as much, if not more, than its competitors on new content. Still, adding new movies and television shows feels like it should be a given. It's not really a new feature. Most of Netflix's biggest competitors charge far less than it does. Sure, Apple TV+ doesn't have nearly the library as Netflix, but Apple doesn't charge you more to watch movies in 4K. Apple is also spending billions to build its own content library, despite only charging $4.99 per month. That's half of Netflix's cheapest plan. I suppose Netflix's strategy is that it plans to continue raising prices until net growth becomes negative, meaning that more people are dropping the streaming service than signing up. Clearly, the company has a problem with no real solution in sight. It's the biggest streaming service, with the largest content library, with very few options for growth. Netflix can only turn up the heat on the proverbial frog (that would be its subscribers), for so long before some of them decide they're not sticking around any longer. Is anyone going to pay $20 per month for Netflix's mid-tier plan? At this rate, we're only a few years from finding out. Netflix says the change in pric...

There’s No One Left to Sign Up for Netflix, So It’s Raising Prices Again Instead

Streaming records continue to be broken with BBC iPlayer recording a new record of 141 million programmes streamed during the week of the New Year . Streaming records continue to be broken with BBC iPlayer recording a new record of 141 million programmes streamed during the week of the New Year (27 December – 3 January). The figure represents a 6% uplift on the same week in 2020/21. Charlotte Moore, BBC’s Chief Content Officer says: “2022 on the BBC has started with a bang with record viewing across Christmas and New Year on BBC iPlayer. Millions of people chose to watch our unrivalled range of box-sets and Christmas specials live on our channels, or binge on-demand across the festive season – paving the way for the BBC’s centenary, a landmark year that will look forward and celebrate British creativity across the whole of the UK.” BBC iPlayer had its best-ever day over the Christmas holiday period with 22 million streams Sunday 2 January, boosted by the debut of thriller The Tourist, starring Jamie Dornan. The series is currently the third most successful drama launch of all time on iPlayer – having been streamed over 18 million times to date. The Girl Before (1.6 million) was also popular, along with Christmas Day staples including the Call the Midwife Christmas special (1.6 million) and EastEnders (1.5 million). Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window) Related

New Festive record for BBC iPlayer

A fresh batch of rumours claim UK sports media company DAZN is really close to buying BT Sport, and that an agreement could be reached this . A fresh batch of rumours claim UK sports media company DAZN is really close to buying BT Sport, and that an agreement could be reached this month. Reuters reported late on Wednesday that the long-running negotiations are expected to culminate in an $800 million (£582 million) deal that will give DAZN those much-coveted rights to show English Premier League and UEFA Champions League football in the UK. The sports streaming service has supposedly been in the frame to acquire the unit since last April, when BT first confirmed it was exploring its options. Reports in September claimed the parties were in advanced talks and that a deal was weeks away from being announced. Then it all went quiet. This led to yet more speculation, this time that the talks had stalled due to the complex issue of BT’s commercial arrangements, which let rival TV operators carry BT Sport. Sources cited by the Sunday Telegraph reported in December described DAZN’s bid as “chaotic”, and that Eurosport parent Discovery hoped to capitalise on the situation by offering BT a ‘plan B’ that would combine their respective sports businesses into a joint venture. According to this week’s rumours, Discovery is not entirely out of the running, but DAZN has seemingly gotten its act together and is considered the leading contender. If the reported value of the nearly-done-deal is on the money, so to speak, it would represent a somewhat meagre return on the amount of cash BT has splurged on sport over the years. The UK incumbent’s well-documented entry into sports broadcasting began with a £738 million bid for a chunk of football broadcast rights. By the time BT Sport went live ahead of the 2013 Premier League season, the telco had already spent more than £1 billion, not just on broadcast rights, but on studios and the equipment and staff that comes with those. It also spent considerable sums to build a stable of expert presenters and pundits – plus Michael Owen – to provide their opinions on key moments. A widely-cited figure from Jefferies analyst Jerry Dellis puts the annual cost of BT Sport at around £800 million. Selling the division would remove those hefty annual costs from the balance sheet and bring in a tidy £582 million, some of which BT could quite easily divert towards its ongoing 5G and fibre network deployments. On the downside, its TV service would certainly lose some of its curb appeal. As we all know, cross-selling content like high-profile sport helps funnel in more broadband customers, the same customers that BT needs to help pay for its aforementioned network rollouts. DAZN is available as an app on Android and iOS; games consoles; and pretty much every streaming platform you care to mention: Android TV, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV Stick, Google Chromecast. the list goes on. The millions of punters who live and die by what happens when 22 men chase a ball around on some admittedly lovely grass will become much more likely to quit BT broadband if a better deal should come their way. Meanwhile, if content is still king, then DAZN looks set to play king-maker in Spain. News agency EFE reported this week that Telefónica is in talks to secure access to the 45 percent of La Liga matches it doesn’t already have. In December, Telefónica and DAZN won 55 percent and 45 percent respectively of broadcast rights for La Liga for the next five years, in a bidding process that raised €4.95 billion. Telefónica has made it a mission to ensure that its customers can watch every game, and to that end it has made an approach to DAZN. According to EFE, talks are ongoing and an agreement is expected to be in place by June. Rival Orange, which also shows La Liga matches – thanks to an agreement with Telefónica – is also said to be keen to hammer out a deal with DAZN. Whether or not the BT Sport deal goes ahead, DAZN is clearly keen t...

DAZN reportedly on cusp of sealing $800m BT Sport deal

For watchers of the NFTs phenomenon, it's been a wild couple of weeks. "All apes gone," tweeted art gallery owner and crypto evangelist Todd Kramer . Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share via Email For watchers of the NFTs phenomenon, it's been a wild couple of weeks. "All apes gone," tweeted art gallery owner and crypto evangelist Todd Kramer on Dec. 30, after someone swiped his collection of "Bored Ape" NFTs. Then Eminem was reported to have purchased one of those same apes for a cool $462,000 in cryptocurrency — just the latest in a long string of celebrities getting in on the craze. (Matt Damon also appeared in a crypto ad during prime time football Sunday night.) As an NFT skeptic, some guy getting scammed out of his collection of objectively hideous procedurally-generated ape cartoons was amusing. But it's all getting steadily less funny. Real non-rich people are putting a lot of money into these things, and there are good reasons to think sooner or later most of them are going to lose their shirts. The details of how NFTs work are a fascinating study in how utopian technobabble, heavy advertising, and the appearance of instant effortless wealth can convince millions of people to fling money into an incredibly dubious "investment." To create one, you inscribe some metadata about a piece of art (like a link to an image) onto the blockchain of some cryptocurrency (typically Ethereum) with a smart contract, requiring payment of a "gas fee" (using up something like 48 kilowatt-hours of electricity, or as much as the average U.S. household uses in a day and a half) which puts a time-stamped permanent record of the metadata onto the blockchain, naming you as the owner. Hey presto, you "minted" a new digital . thing that, unlike any normal piece of data, can't be replicated, but can be sold. NFT boosters say the resulting tokens are a new way for people to own unique digital assets — one of those classic libertarian schemes trying to engineer around the need for social trust or the state. But in reality, NFTs have nothing to do with real ownership. They are essentially just an electronic "receipt" that anyone can make pointing to anything. (People are constantly making "fake" NFTs on art they do not own in real life, though I would argue they're all equally fake.) Boosters will tell you forthrightly that any artist who mints one still retains all normal copyright powers. In terms of the actual art itself, anyone with a web browser can go and look at the entire collection of those appalling ape cartoons, and even save the image files to your computer — indeed, just looking will create a copy of the original ape image simply because of how the internet works. An NFT isn't even really scarce. Nothing is stopping someone from minting another NFT of the same image or whatever — the two would be distinguishable of course, but nothing on either token would indicate one is better or more legitimate than the other. Or they could use a different cryptocurrency and blockchain (or set one up themselves) and do the same thing. The only actual limitation is the mind-boggling amount of electricity required, and perhaps whether the resulting carbon emissions will end up drowning the servers hosting the image file with rising sea levels. One might even argue that it is not possible to steal an NFT, because theft implies trust and interface with the legal system that NFTs are explicitly designed to avoid. There is no difference between a smart contract and a hack in terms of the internal logic of NFTs and crypto — in each case you have some machines executing pieces of equally-brainless code. The difference is in the intention of the participants and their relationship to society. In a trustless system where "code is law," possession is proof of ownership. Kramer, of course, was very upset about losing all his precious apes, and so convinced OpenSea (the third-party service where he had hosted his NFTs, allegedly worth some $2.2 million) t...

The NFT craze has stopped being funny

Amazon Web Services leads the pack by a large margin, at 32%. When we talk about regulating big tech, the discussion usually centers on online privacy . When we talk about regulating big tech, the discussion usually centers on online privacy and location tracking, but we never seem to discuss the control these companies have over a vast majority of the internet. We use free apps and services every day but fail to mention where all that data is stored—in the cloud. If we want big tech to have less control over our daily lives, maybe we should start worrying about the stranglehold these few companies have over our data. According to data collected by the Synergy Research Group, four companies own 67% of the world's $130 billion cloud market. Leading the pack by a large margin is Amazon Web Services, which enjoys a whopping 32% market share against the competition. This is followed by the 20% share enjoyed by Microsoft's Azure infrastructure. So these two companies alone make up 52% of the market. Behind the two dominant companies, Google Cloud at 9% and Alibaba Cloud at 6% round out the top four, which together own over half of the market. IBM Cloud, Salesforce, Tencent Cloud, and Oracle Cloud combined make up 12%. Between the infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service schemes employers subscribe to and the hosted private cloud services we use every day, these companies have ultimate control over our data. Google may not be viewing everything you upload to Google Drive, for instance, but the companies do gain access to our personal data through the free services you use. Recommended by Our Editors The Reckoning Is Coming: Regulating Big Tech. The Best Cloud Storage and File-Sharing Services for 2022. Would You Sell Your Own Personal Data—and What Would You Charge? In the fourth quarter of 2020 alone, cloud infrastructure services brought in a total of $37 billion as the world solidified its work-from-home strategies. This was a $4 billion jump from the previous quarter, indicating that these companies continue to thrive off our data while many other businesses suffer. Get Our Best Stories! Sign up for What's New Now to get our top stories delivered to your inbox every morning. This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links. Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time. . Sign up for other newsletters. Your subscription has been confirmed. Keep an eye on your inbox!

4 Companies Control 67% of the World's Cloud Infrastructure

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