The Apple Broadcast Network

Hodejo1 writes "In 1959 5,749,000 television sets were sold in the US, bringing the cumulative total of sets sold since 1950 to 63,542,128 units. This number supported, through advertising, three national television networks, ABC, NBC, and CBS (a fourth, Dumont, folded in 1956) and numerous local independent stations. Now here are another set of numbers. As of April this year Apple sold 75 million iPhone and iPod touch units, devices capable of delivering video via Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity. Add to that figure 2 million iPads and counting. By the end of the year Apple should have about 90 million smart mobile devices in the wild. That makes a proprietary amalgam greater than what the TV networks had in 1959 and one that easily serves as a foundation for a pending broadcast network that will be delivered not through tall radio towers, but through small wireless hubs and the Internet. Call it the Apple Broadcast Network. iAd is how Apple plans to pay for it."

Comments

As someone whos house receives TEN GB A MONTH....

[dafing]

Let me speak on this subject. I am currently receiving 10GB a month of broadband (ADSL2+) internet access, I hope to raise it to 20GB for a whole $10NZD more soon.

Bandwidth zooms by so fast, you just wouldnt believe. 10GB is *NOTHING*...I listen to podcasts while I work, and I mean AUDIO podcasts, MP3 files, probably 64kbps is average. Many of my two hour long shows can be EASILY 80MB+...lets round to 100, shall we? So, even at just one "100MB" podcast a day, a couple hours of audio at a decent quality (not that you get a choice to scale down!), you would have 10 days worth of audio to reach 1GB, right? Well, factor in internet browsing, which, being honest, is bugger all, but YouTube video...wow, hundreds of MB can rack up fast.

And DONT EVEN GET ME STARTED ON THE DAILY SHOW! I swear, the videos from The Daily Show much be massive...I check my usage as I go on my Mac using Activity Monitor, the Network section shows what you have uploaded and downloaded. (Countries with internet caps allow you to check on the ISP website). I can watch a few clips of The Daily Show, and check Activity Monitor....and half a GB has vanished!

By myself I effectively chomp through 10GB in a couple of weeks, and thats RESTRAINING myself. I'm not using Bit Torrent (for linux distros of course...just like everyone else...), nor am I actually watching Video in any concerted effort.

Honestly, take it from someone living under the tyrannical rule of Internet Caps! Fight for your freedom to actually *USE* the internet circa 2010! The caps SEEM to get smaller all the time, perhaps every few years your ISP will announce "oh look, we've doubled all the caps!"....meanwhile, Internet Video has blossomed, I remember being on THREE GB a month...and that was tight, as soon as I got 10GB a month....I somehow expanded to fill that allocation...

I honestly shudder to imagine what it would take to replace televisions. For example, I download .flv news clips from my national news shows.... and a few minute news story can easily be 20-60MB. Choosing to watch the freaking "nightly news" on my computer has real consequences, if I just watched on my TV, for a couple hours a night in the background, I'd be "saving" ....half a GB a night?

Do everything you can to avoid caps! The internet should be "all you can eat", WITHIN REASON, IE not for chronic illegal downloading of movies, music etc.