A few months ago I did a review of my Verizon FiOS Internet service commenting on just how good their 20MB fiber connection is for $45 a month. Since that post, I have gotten a lot of e-mails from users all over the country asking for more info on FiOS. Many can’t yet get FiOS or their service does not yet have the ability to get 20MB (I actually have the ability to get 50MB today if I pay more) but they will before too long. To date, my post about FiOS has been the most widely read post on my blog over any other topic.

Verizon has been getting a lot of play in the media lately and in my eyes, it is well deserved. Last week, Verizon announced they had signed up their 1 millionth FiOS Internet customer and has almost half a million FiOS TV subscribers. I know those numbers sound small in relation to the market, but they are growing very quickly quarter to quarter and right now, their percentages are big. 50% of all their Internet customers are also buying video and they have a 16% market penetration rate for FiOS in areas where it is offered. In addition, nearly 80% if all FiOS customer take Internet, video and phone all as one package. Verizon plans to make the service available to 9 million homes by the end of 2007, and 18 million by the end of 2010.

In addition to the fast Internet service, Verizon also offers TV over the FiOS service is some areas. In NY State, Verizon has to apply to each town to get a franchise license to offer the service. I called my town Mayor last week to ask what the hold up was and was told I that a deal with Verizon for my town should hopefully be done within the next 30 days. I can’t wait.

For me, TV is just as big as the Internet because for the first time, I see Verizon having the opportunity to be able to take the Internet and the TV and combine them into a real compelling experience. Last week, Verizon also announced that it plans to offer HD video on demand over the FiOS service. And doing a little bit of research about the cable box that Verizon uses and I found out that in some cases Verizon is using a Motorola set-top boxes, called the “QIP” series that allows broadband companies the ability to offer IPTV services. In addition, the Verizon DVR allows you to record in HD and add the multi-room functionality that allows you to watch recorded programs on multiple TVs in any room in your house.

There is also some interesting reading on CNET, who posted an article about a Q&A session that the CTO of Verizon did with a room full of reporters at the NXTComm telecom tradeshow two weeks ago. Verizon’s CTO said their goal is "to eventually deliver 100 megabits per second to any device in the home." I believe them, as where I live, they are already halfway to that number.

I will be posting a lot more about Verizon’s FiOS service over the coming months and will do a review of the TV service as soon as I can sign up for it. FiOS is the future and for some, the future is now. I have 20MB today, what can I do with it? Not much yet, as there is not a lot of content on the web taking advantage of this type of connection, but there will be soon as Verizon cuts content deals and starts looking at ways they can become a content distributor along with being a carrier.

FiOS is the real deal. It is the service that the industry has all been talking about wanting for years and it’s finally a reality. Good service, fast, cheap and lots of support. Exactly what any product needs to have in order to get mass market adoption.

Fresh off their announcement on Monday of raising $15 million, Ortiva Wireless is looking to hire a Sales Director/Senior Sales Executive for the Eastern United States. This person will be responsible for developing strategic partnerships with other ecosystem participants as well as identify opportunities among Ortiva’s target customers, qualify these
opportunities, present Ortiva solutions and negotiate sales.

If you are interested in the opportunity and would like more details on the position, contact John Rogers who is conducting the search.

If you are looking for a new position, have taken a new job or are a
company that has a job opening, let me know. In many cases I will
highlight it here on the blog – free of charge.

Interesting short story on Reuters last week talking about how industry executives are saying that they are seeing a shift to where the market in Asia is going to beat out the European market for the adoption of TV to mobile. Newsworthy to me as I always thought the Asian market already had beaten out the European market in terms of adoption. Of course the article also mentions how the lack of standards and spectrum availability in some markets is also hindering the progress.

Now that Nick Ascheim has been promoted to VP of Editorial Products at the NYTimes.com, they are looking for someone to take on the roll of technical project manager for video. This position, based in NYC, will lead the development of video, audio, and multimedia software products for The New York Times’ Web site.

You can see full details of the job description, responsibilities and requirements and apply here.

If you are looking for a new position, have taken a new job or are a company that has a job opening, let me know. In many cases I will highlight it here on the blog – free of charge.

In all the years of watching Apple, Microsoft, Real and Adobe (Macromedia) talk about their video players and platforms, I’m still amazed at how quickly Adobe seems to be able to get people to talk about their products before they’re even available. In this industry in particular, perception can quickly become reality, like it or not. I credit Macromedia will really being the first to market like crazy their Flash player in that regard, talking about some of the functionality and uses for it before much of that functionality was even available, thereby creating a "perception" in the market that the player always had the functionality. I still get people who call today saying that DRM works well in Flash or that Flash video works great on mobile devices, when in fact neither is yet the case but they assume it is since they have heard of other Flash products that Adobe is working on to address those problems.

It’s the same with Apollo. I keep reading news articles, like the one on Yahoo! news today, where people say things like, "Adobe’s new media player downloads video for offline viewing." What new media player? Apollo, now named Adobe AIR, is NOT available for download, only the SDK is. Yet many in the press, investment community and the industry keep asking me or telling me that the new Apollo player is working really well or that it is changing the way content creators develop for offline viewing. Maybe it will, but considering the Adobe Media Player is not even available for at least another few months one can’t say that those things are happening today. Even more interesting to note is that this same article on Yahoo! talks about the new RealPlayer and says, "which will be available for public testing next week" but then it doesn’t say anything about the Adobe Media Player not being out till the fall. A great example of how Adobe seems to just always stand above the others in the perception factor.

But that’s the kind of perception Adobe has in the market with its Flash product line, people just assume all sorts of things about it, right or not. Sure, it’s good for Adobe and bad for its competitors and it has both a negative and positive effect on the market. Yes, anytime you can get a content creator interested in creating more compelling video for consumption and get people excited, that helps the industry. But at the same time, customers with wrong expectations then are harder to work with on adopting technology that they think should already be there. Yes, it gives me and StreamingMedia.com a chance to educate people, but I’d rather educate them on facts as opposed to "perception" in the market, but I seem to do more of the latter of late.

Other companies should take note on the way Adobe markets its entire Flash product line and the ways they go about getting others to talk about it. In my eyes, other companies could learn a lot from Adobe’s marketing skills.

The entire market for user generated content, in particular video, has just gotten completely out of hand. I must get 2-3 releases a week now from new UGC sites that are launching, yet none of them say anything about their business models. They all talk to how their player is different, their video looks better, their search capability is improved or some other aspect of the user experience.

What about the business model? Where is it? By my last count, there were over 60 UGC sites on the web that I am tracking, the majority of which I have no idea how one differs from the other. Yes, some of them are more focused than others and provide content for just one vertical like comedy, or independent films, but still, there are too many of them. It is only a matter of time before this UGC bubble bursts and these sits consolidate or disappear completely.

Mediaweek published an article yesterday about ManiaTV and how they are shifting their business model away from UGC to focus solely on original content. Will it help? Too early to know, but I give ManiaTV credit for realizing that much of UGC is purely hype. ManiaTV’s chief marketing officer Peter Clemente said it best in the Mediaweek article, "Hype doesn’t necessarily equate to profitability."

This Thursday, I am moderating a panel at the OMMA Video show in NYC entitled "TV Content Comes Online: Prime Time on the Web" with panelists from ABC, FOX, Yahoo! and AOL. I plan on focusing the discussion around the "business models" that are trying to be established around professionally produced content. My questions will include:

• do the major broadcasters really see Internet video as "TV on the Web"?
• how many people are really watching this content on the Web?
• what does it costs to sponsor/buy ads around video content?
• how many eyeballs do content creators need to get before advertising can support and cover their costs of producing and distributing video online?
• has anything been successful from a sponsorship or advertising side of monetization of video?
• who has real numbers on how many more eyeballs the networks are getting to the TV, where they make their real money, because of their use of video on the Web?

What other points of discussion do you think should be discussed?

Readers of the blog can get a discounted pass to the show ($395) by registering here and using discount code VEDISCSTRM.