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The FCC will deliver its National Broadband Plan to Congress a day earlier than originally scheduled — on March 16. Also on that day, the five FCC commissioners will vote on a “mission statement” intended to represent the spirit of the submitted documents. The plan, which Congress called for as part of the stimulus package passed last year, will recommend ways to provide universal broadband access as well as encourage Congress and industry to use broadband in health care, education and energy efficiency programs.

So far we have been relatively unimpressed with the aspects of the plan that have been pre-announced, as have other economists and analysts. It tends to favor the existing broadband duopoly while offering little in the way of innovative ideas for expanding access. While the complete document isn’t out yet, many of the big-picture items in the plan have been previewed within the last two weeks. So with the caveat that it may all change by March 16, here is a rundown of its main components and a few beneficiaries that we believe our readers are most likely to care about.

Wired Broadband: The plan’s most far-reaching goal is to deliver 100 Mbps to 100 million households by 2020. But as we’ve already pointed out, such a goal isn’t really that ambitious given that 65 percent of homes in America will have broadband that could deliver 100 Mbps speed by the end of this year and 90 percent will have it by 2013.

Also as part of improving wired broadband the plan will tackle the issue of universal service reform, a snore-inducing topic but one that nevertheless will be a primary means of funding rural broadband access. Currently USF is an $8 billion program aimed at phone-based technologies rather than broadband and IP services. On Friday the FCC suggested a decade-long transition that will gradually shift that spending from voice to IP-based services. The long transition should ease the pain for rural phone companies — such as CenturyLink or Windstream — that have benefited from the program.

Aside from USF reform, when it comes to higher speeds, it’s the carriers using fiber-to-the-node strategies that are likely to lose. Despite assurances from chip vendors such as Ikanos that 100 Mbps over copper is feasible, Qwest, AT&T (T) and other providers relying on DSL and copper for any part of the last mile will struggle to reach 100 Mbps unless they make huge investments.

Wireless Broadband: This is where things get a bit more interesting. FCC Chairman Julius Genchowski is a big proponent of mobile broadband — he almost always seems to steer the conversation from wired broadband to mobile — perhaps because he’s acknowledged that the lack of competition in the U.S. is a problem he doesn’t know how to solve. As such, he has dedicated many FCC resources to a variety of cellular issues, from calling out carriers on early termination fees to finding more spectrum assets. The National Broadband Plan asks the government to free up 500 MHz of spectrum — less than the wireless industry asked for, but still a nice chunk.

However the government won’t demand that spectrum from broadcasters, as had been originally floated by the FCC. Instead the FCC is asking broadcast television spectrum holders to voluntarily give up their spectrum in exchange for compensation. Such an offer won’t go far in freeing up much-needed spectrum available in urban areas, but will be a boon to spectrum holders and broadcasters in rural areas, which will get payouts for something they aren’t using.

The plan also tackles the almost decade-old problem of the lack of a nationwide, wireless public safety network by saying it will enable some type of private-public partnership with consumer-grade equipment that could be cheaper for the feds to buy — a plan that could cost up to $16 billion. This might hurt Motorola, which provides a lot of specialty public safety gear — unless the government gets Android handsets.

March 6, 2010

Burbn Funded for HTML 5 Version of Foursquare

Filed under: gigaom — Tags: afternoon, app-experience, experience, friends, gigaom, google, guide, img-alt, kevin-systrom, mobile-platform, raise-the-round — @ 12:00 am

Burbn, a stealthy startup that brings mobile location check-in gameplay (à la Foursquare and Gowalla) to the mobile browser, has raised $500,000 from Baseline Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. Burbn founder Kevin Systrom confirmed the round to us after it was written up in TechCrunch this afternoon.

Burbn is a nifty little HTML 5 mobile web app that offers yet another place to tell your friends where you’re grabbing a coffee or seeing a concert. But what’s cool is how it runs through a mobile browser without losing much of the experience afforded to native iPhone and Android apps. Burbn loads quickly and pulls in GPS information through the browser just like an app. The only material difference is it sends text message alerts rather than push notifications. That mobile web app experience is rather compelling given Apple’s tight grip around its App Store and Android’s increasingly splintered implementations across different phones. In many cases it would be nicer to have one web app that just works everywhere.

We don’t know what Burbn’s broader plans are, but we do know how hot HTML 5 apps and location-based social tools are these days. The fact that Systrom was able to raise the round in the short time since he left a product management role at Nextstop earlier this year (before that he was at Google) is proof enough.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

The App Developer’s Guide to Choosing a Mobile Platform

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March 5, 2010

Big In Japan Plans to Move the Needle in QR Codes With Snappr Buy

Filed under: gigaom — Tags: acquisition, floundered-late, francisco-based, gigaom, google, iphone, japan, mainstream, receive-product, today-announced — @ 9:30 pm

Big In Japan, which has built an impressive lead in mobile barcode reading, today announced the acquisition of Snappr, a pioneer in the space but nonetheless one that has failed to gain much traction and floundered late last year. It’s a move that could go a long way toward finally moving the needle for quick response (QR) codes in the U.S.

Big In Japan already boasts a huge hit with its ShopSavvy app, which enables users to scan traditional UPC barcodes to receive product and pricing information from online and local retailers. ShopSavvy was an early hit on Android before coming to the iPhone in November; more than 1 million Americans use ShopSavvy to scan upwards of 1 billion barcodes each day, according to the developer.

A San Francisco-based startup, Snappr built its business on technology that reads QR codes — those odd-looking squares that can store far more information than traditional barcodes. QR codes have gained substantial traction among mobile users in some overseas markets as an interactive advertising tool, among other things, but have yet to gain much momentum in the U.S. Google is hoping to change that by making QR codes the foundation of its Favorite Places, a Yelp-type offering that distributes unique codes to businesses for consumers to scan.

Big In Japan said it will integrate Snappr’s technology into ShopSavvy, enabling the app to read both UPC codes and QR codes. The company hopes to attract the attention not just of consumers, but also of brands, which can use QR codes in traditional media to create interactive mobile marketing campaigns. And while terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, Snappr’s status as a member of CrunchBase’s deadpool indicates the price tag couldn’t have been very high.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

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March 4, 2010

Thumbplay’s Mobile Music Service Goes Live

Filed under: gigaom — Tags: a-more-complete, a-music-service, air, black, cnet, desktop, europe, gigaom, installed-base, iphone, mobile, reports-suggest, songs, test-the-mobile, with-the-launch — admin @ 11:49 pm

The music subscription market may be unproven, but it sure has seen a lot of action over the past few months. And today, with the launch of its mobile app on BlackBerry devices today, Thumbplay became the latest company hoping that anytime-anywhere access to on-demand music will make consumers pay a flat fee for an all-you-can-eat service — in this case, $9.99 a month.

As it enters public beta, Thumbplay’s music subscription service becomes the first to launch simultaneously on desktops and smartphones. The company’s deep mobile experience is one key differentiator that sets it apart from incumbents such as Rhapsody and Napster as well as upstarts MOG and Spotify, the latter of which hasn’t launched in the U.S. yet.

CEO Evan Schwartz told me half of Thumbplay’s installed base is now using smartphones, and the company already counts hundreds of thousands of customers for its existing mobile entertainment subscription service, which offers ringtones, wallpapers and other goodies. Online radio provider Pandora, for one, has shown how mobile phones can drive user adoption of a music service, and Thumbplay may have some advantages as a result of its presence on smartphones.

As an iPhone user, I wasn’t able to test the mobile app, but I did get to survey the desktop version (screenshot below), an Adobe AIR-based client that was up and running quickly after a brief installation. Thumbplay’s library, said to comprise 8 million songs from all four major labels and numerous indies, showed some gaps (no Arcade Fire?), but I found that the songs loaded quickly and played without interruption. If it can replicate that experience on mobile devices — and early reports suggest that the BlackBerry app may still be buggy — Thumbplay will have a real contender, given that Rhapsody ($14.99) and Spotify (€9.99 in Europe, or $13.56) are charging more for the anywhere-anytime experience. Thumbplay also offers smart playlisting built on the Echo Nest’s music brain, delivers instant syncing between desktop and phone, provides offline caching on mobile devices — good for airplanes and train tunnels — and allows users to import iTunes playlists.

Schwartz said Thumbplay reached profitability around the middle of last year, and has reportedly raised $61 million from venture investors. The company’s expansion to include a full-track music service is in line with forecasts suggesting that the market for ringtones has already peaked, and that consumers will soon expect a more complete music experience from their mobile phones. Spotify’s imminent U.S. launch will probably still make the biggest splash, but given its large installed base and understanding of mobile behavior, don’t count Thumbplay out.

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U.S. Mobile Market: Highly Competitive, and the iPhone Still Rocks

Filed under: gigaom — Tags: a-third-were, a-very-strong, apple, crisis, during-the-last, during-the-most, gigaom, img-alt, iphone, most, motorola, rennett-stowe, since-the-third, wireless — @ 11:00 pm

Pretty much everything you’ve read about the U.S. mobile industry is true: The networks suck — some more than others — and the iPhone is still a king-maker. Yet according to data collected by Wireless Intelligence, during the quarter ended Dec. 31 2009, 5.9 million net new subscribers signed up for wireless services, the highest number of new adds made during a three-month period in three years.

The battle for subscribers among carriers is best reflected in the recent moves made by Verizon and AT&T. Verizon, which ended December 2009 with 91.2 million subscribers, has launched a slew of smartphones, including the much-hyped Motorola Droid. The company also launched a nasty ad campaign to highlight AT&T’s network weakness. The net result: it added 2.2 million net new subscribers during the most recent quarter, the most since the third quarter of 2008. As Jon Groves, analyst with Wireless Intelligence, writes in the report:

In comparison, thanks in part to Apple’s iPhone, AT&T added 2.7 million net new subscribers, taking its total to 85.1 million.Head-to-head after stripping out reseller and wholesale net additions, Verizon reported 1.2 million net additions in 4Q09 against AT&T’s 900,000…However, the iPhone yet again remained a very strong proposition for AT&T, with 3.1 million iPhone account activations reported in the fourth quarter — the second-ever highest quarterly total – of which more than a third were new AT&T subscribers…The remaining operators continue to feel the squeeze outside of the device exclusivity and coverage available from AT&T/Verizon in the contract market and the ‘unlimited’ offerings from the likes of Straight Talk in the prepaid segment.

You can drill down into individual wireless carriers numbers by checking out the GigaOM Q4 Wireless Scorecard.

The growth during the quarter also masked some dangerous trends, however. As Chetan Sharma, a contributing analyst for GigaOM Pro, recently pointed out, during the last three months of 2009, “voice ARPU declined by a substantial 98 cents for U.S. carriers” and “data ARPU increased by a mere 4 percent to 53 cents as overall ARPU decreased 45 cents on the year.”

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Zoompass Trials Mobile Payment Tag

Filed under: gigaom — Tags: a-better-chance, apple, crisis, during-the-last, gigaom, img-alt, phone, wireless — @ 9:42 pm

Zoompass, a mobile payment service launched last year by a consortium of Canadian telecom players, is branching out with the introduction of a wireless payment sticker that can be attached to a mobile phone, effectively turning it into a “tap-and-pay” debit card system. Zoompass was developed by EnStream, a partnership among Canada’s three major telecom companies: Bell Mobility, Rogers Communications and Telus Corp. The service allows members to send money to friends or family with their handheld device via an iPhone app, BlackBerry app, etc., and to pay for products and services through a credit card linked to their Zoompass account.

Now, the service has launched a sticker that attaches to a phone or other handheld device and works as a “contactless payment tag.” The sticker can be scanned by any mobile payment system that supports it, including many that are already in use across Canada at coffee shops, gas stations and other retail locations. Both Mastercard and Visa have also been doing trials of special credit cards that allows for contactless payment, which involves waving the card near a payment terminal rather than having to insert or swipe it through a slot.

Will users want to stick something to the back of their iPhone or BlackBerry that lets them swipe and pay for things? A short video of the device in action (embedded below) makes it look relatively inconspicuous, but the reality is that you’re still sticking something to your phone, and it has to be thick enough to transmit a wireless signal. It remains to be seen how willing users are to do this, and whether they will trust the consortium to handle access to their bank and/or credit card accounts.

That said, however, Zoompass probably has a better chance of making contactless payment work than some other startups that have tried to do so — including one that also involved Bell Mobility and Telus. The two carriers partnered with two of Canada’s major banks (TD Canada Trust and National Bank) to launch a tag-based payment system called Dexit in Toronto in 2001, installing payment terminals in various coffee shops and other locations, but the service never took off and has since been shut down. That system used a separate keychain-style fob that users had to carry, however, while the Zoompass system uses a device that everyone already carries with them.

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Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user Andres Ruida.

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Apple Says WiFi-sniffing Apps Stink

Filed under: gigaom — Tags: a-sure-way, apple, hopefully-apple, img-alt, jacks-software, mobile, post, techcrunch, wifi — @ 6:37 pm

Apple has once again infuriated iPhone developers by dumping offerings from its App Store. This time Wi-Fi hotspot-sniffing apps are the problem. The company yanked all apps that actively scan for Wi-Fi connections, according to this blog entry posted last night from 3 Jacks Software, which makes the WiFi-Where app (hat tip Softpedia):

We received a very unfortunate email today from Apple stating that WiFi-Where has been removed from sale on the App Store for using private frameworks to access wireless information. It also appears that all other competing WiFi enabled apps have been removed as well. This is very unfortunate as the past 2-3 months have seen a handful of new WiFi apps get approved. Hopefully Apple will allow this functionality in a future SDK.

The iPhone comes with basic a basic scanning feature that helps users connect to Wi-Fi networks, of course, but Apple’s new policy bans the handful of new apps that had come to market featuring more sophisticated offerings and technical information for finding and connecting to hotspots. Tonchidot, a Tokyo-based developer, said its augmented reality app Sekai Camera was also booted from the App Store after Apple changed its policy regarding “the way apps access Wi-Fi devices.” Applications that use location information to search through databases of hotspots weren’t impacted by the purge. I’ve pinged Apple for comment and will update the post if I hear back from the company.

The move is especially odd because AT&T — perhaps more than any other carrier — has actively embraced Wi-Fi, and iPhone users have driven much of its Wi-Fi traffic. Of course, Apple has been heavily criticized for App Store policies many view as heavy-handed or arbitrarily enforced. The company last month banned some apps from smaller publishers that featured bikini-clad models, for instance, but inexplicably kept similarly prurient offerings from Sports Illustrated and other well-known media brands.

I’ve long argued that Apple — like Wal-Mart or any other retailer — has every right to decide which items to sell and which to keep out of its store. But suddenly banning an entire category of apps on a whim is a sure way to incense the developers, who are the foundation of the App Store — and have an ever-increasing number of attractive platforms on which to build their offerings.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

The App Developer’s Guide to Choosing a Mobile Platform

Image courtesy Flickr user therubberduckie.

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