Category: Business

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From Ars Technica: $422,000 to stream a movie? The continued “success” of phone cramming

If you were watching Mulholland Drive on your phone, it probably wasn’t through Streaming Flix.
Aurich Lawson

From July 2009 until December 2010, a Minneapolis-based company called Streaming Flix allegedly hit on a hugely profitable business model—slapping steep monthly fees for its online movie service on the phone bills of 253,269 customers. In total, $9.7 million was billed in that year and a half. How many movies did Americans watch after spending all that cash? 23.

That’s no typo—and it means an average of $422,000 was spent each time someone streamed a film. It also suggests that 99.99 percent of the people paying monthly fees for the service weren’t using it.

Perhaps that’s why the very first Google hit for “Streaming Flix” points to a question from one Barbara G. She wants to know what the company is and why “I am being billed for it with my AT&T bill but did not sign up for it?” The situation grew so bad that the FBI opened a probe of Streaming Flix and its related companies. In December 2010, the Bureau asked the public to send in complaints about the company.

 

from Ars Technica

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From Ars Technica: Lawmakers want FCC to bail out LightSquared with military spectrum

A bipartisan group of lawmakers wants the Federal Communications Commission to salvage LightSquared’s seemingly doomed plan to build a 4G LTE network by letting the company trade its spectrum for more suitable airwaves controlled by the Department of Defense.

“We ask the FCC to conduct a thorough and thoughtful review of all available spectrum controlled by the Department of Defense (DoD) that could be repurposed or reallocated to meet increased demand,” the lawmakers said in a letter sent Tuesday to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, and reported by the IDG News Service last night. “We also request that the FCC move swiftly to identify other options, including the use of alternate spectrum, for LightSquared’s proposed nationwide 4G LTE wireless broadband network…. A spectrum swap is the most resourceful and efficient way to quickly expand broadband access nationwide.”

LightSquared filed for bankruptcy protection last month after the FCC halted its plan to build a nationwide cellular network on spectrum that is adjacent to airwaves used by GPS devices. The powerful signals from LightSquared towers would overwhelm the signals GPS devices must receive to provide location services, making the network infeasible, the FCC concluded.

 

from Ars Technica

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From Wired Top Stories: Spy-Satellite Merger Fizzles, Preventing Space Monopoly

More than three-quarters of the U.S. government’s satellite images don’t come from government satellites. They’re provided by two companies, GeoEye and DigitalGlobe. So alarms began to ring in Washington in February, when those two companies started talk to become one, forming a monopoly in space and radically altering the economics of the commercial satellite industry and how we see the Earth from above.

from Wired Top Stories

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From Autoblog: Video: 2013 Toyota Prius C doesn’t get much love from Consumer Reports

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Consumer Reports' 2012 Toyota Prius C road test - screencap

Consumer Reports has panned the 2012 Toyota Prius C in a new video review that urges car shoppers to get a used regular Prius over the new baby model, “it’s a much better car overall,” said Mike Quincy in the review.

The problems Toyota ran into in creating the Prius C appear to be in making it cheaper, according to Consumer Reports. The list of adjectives during the video review included: “lackluster,” “hard plastic,” “cheap materials,” “dead steering” and “slow.”

Toyota may see those words as misplaced modifiers compared to the glowing recommendations the larger mainstream Prius has received in its decade-long Synergy drive to becoming the eco-poster child for hypermiling greenies out to save the Earth and ride in California HOV lanes with a single person aboard. (HOV access for most gas-electric hybrids has been discontinued in the Golden State.)

While the Prius C may start at $18,995, its price climbs quickly and its value does not, Consumer Reports said. A new regular Prius starts at $24,000.

However, the bad news from Consumer Reports hasn’t hurt Prius C sales, which began in April. During its first month, Toyota sold 4,782 Prius C models, outpacing the other Prius variant, the family-minded Prius V, as well as the subcompact Yaris, which donates its platform for the Prius C.

Scroll down to watch Consumer Reports’full Prius C video review or read more at the source link.

Continue reading 2013 Toyota Prius C doesn’t get much love from Consumer Reports

from Autoblog