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Tuesday, April 06, 2004

Kansai Elec Firm Ending PHS Service To Focus On Fiber Optics

K-Opticom Corp., a telecommunications affiliate of Kansai Electric Power Co. would no longer accept new applications for its Astel Kansai PHS (personal handyphone service) service that day and will shut the business down next March. The company said it will concentrate its resources on fiber-optic service to the home in competition with Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp.
The PHS service generated losses of 3 billion yen a year. K-Opticom, meanwhile, is competing with NTT West Corp. to provide fiber-optic Internet service in the greater Osaka region, where it has 40% of the market. By shedding a money-losing business, it hopes to compete more effectively.
FCC, Cable Industry Plan to Appeal Decision

The Federal Communications Commission and the cable industry said they will seek Supreme Court review of a recent appeals-court decision. The recent ruling would force cable companies to open their broadband lines to rival Internet-service providers. The FCC, along with Time Warner Inc., Cox Communications Inc. and the leading cable-industry group, also asked the San Francisco federal appeals court to stay a ruling that would have gone into effect today. Last week, the judges denied a petition by the FCC and the cable companies to have the full court review an earlier decision against them, which was made by a three-judge panel. A majority of the five-member FCC had been pushing to leave high-speed Internet service provided by cable companies largely unregulated to spur investment.
Instead, the appeals court found that these connections are to be regulated the way telephone networks are, thus requiring that companies such as Time Warner allow Internet-service providers such as its America Online unit or Earthlink Inc. to lease their lines. Article from Wall Street Journal.
You Can Rent Movies Online, but Should You?

The idea of renting movies online seems a lot less silly than it did two years ago, when a site called Movielink debuted. Internet connections have gotten a little faster, we've had time to get used to the idea of the computer as home theater and Movielink (www.Movielink.com) has been joined by a competitor, CinemaNow (www.cinemanow.com). Most important, music services like Apple's iTunes and Roxio's Napster have shown that people will buy fairly priced downloads, even when the same stuff is available for free on file-sharing systems. But the movie-rental sites themselves haven't improved nearly as much, to judge from a week of trying out each. CinemaNow and Movielink now offer better downloading options that reduce or eliminate the lengthy wait to transfer a movie to a computer.

Nice example about the copy / content rights:
...Movielink's chief executive, Jim Ramo, explained that until the late '90s, studios didn't buy Internet distribution rights, which means the site must negotiate with individual copyright holders for each movie. Ramo noted that he can't provide "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," because the rights to the song "Twist and Shout," which plays in one scene, would cost too much to obtain...

Read the complete articleWashington Post Link

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