The Slow Hunch by Nick GrossmanFrom Crypto-Native to Crypto-Enabled
I’m not one to make big annual predictions, but one thing that seems likely to me is that 2024 will mark the emergence of mainstream apps powered by ...
The Slow Hunch by Nick GrossmanBitcoin as Battery
One of my favorite things about crypto is that, every so often, your conception of what it is changes.Bitcoin at first was "weird internet money...
The Slow Hunch by Nick GrossmanThe Butter Thesis
At USV, we talk a lot about our investment thesis. The USV thesis is a set of ideas that has guided our investing over the years. It is a tool we u...
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Investing @ USV. Student of cities and the internet.
It's been an intense 10 months since the FCC approved its latest Open Internet rules (aka Net Neutrality). On the wired side, we've seen the unbundling of content, as channels such as HBO (via HBO Now) and ESPN (via Sling TV) have split from cable to go "over-the-top" with direct-to consumer offerings. These are a direct result of the clear FCC rules prohibiting broadband providers from throttling, degrading, or otherwise fucking with this internet traffic. This is clearly pro-consumer, as people can now buy the channels they want unbundled from the crap they don't, and it's pro-innovation, in that even the smallest video startup is now competing on even footing with the big guys -- I can launch a video service tomorrow that competes head-on with HBO or ESPN, and both of us have exactly the same distribution, without having to cut a deal with the cable company. On the wireless side, it's been much more of a circus, as wireless providers experiment with a variety of so-called "zero-rating" plans. Zero-rating is the practice of selectively exempting certain content from wireless data caps. Zero-rating isn't monolithic -- there are many ways one can do it, which are varying degrees of bad -- which is why the FCC didn't explicitly rule on zero-rating, but rather left it up for review on a case-by-case basis. The two cases that are happening right now are T-Mobile's Binge-On
It's been an intense 10 months since the FCC approved its latest Open Internet rules (aka Net Neutrality). On the wired side, we've seen the unbundling of content, as channels such as HBO (via HBO Now) and ESPN (via Sling TV) have split from cable to go "over-the-top" with direct-to consumer offerings. These are a direct result of the clear FCC rules prohibiting broadband providers from throttling, degrading, or otherwise fucking with this internet traffic. This is clearly pro-consumer, as people can now buy the channels they want unbundled from the crap they don't, and it's pro-innovation, in that even the smallest video startup is now competing on even footing with the big guys -- I can launch a video service tomorrow that competes head-on with HBO or ESPN, and both of us have exactly the same distribution, without having to cut a deal with the cable company. On the wireless side, it's been much more of a circus, as wireless providers experiment with a variety of so-called "zero-rating" plans. Zero-rating is the practice of selectively exempting certain content from wireless data caps. Zero-rating isn't monolithic -- there are many ways one can do it, which are varying degrees of bad -- which is why the FCC didn't explicitly rule on zero-rating, but rather left it up for review on a case-by-case basis. The two cases that are happening right now are T-Mobile's Binge-On
Subscribe to The Slow Hunch by Nick Grossman
Investing @ USV. Student of cities and the internet.
The Slow Hunch by Nick GrossmanFrom Crypto-Native to Crypto-Enabled
I’m not one to make big annual predictions, but one thing that seems likely to me is that 2024 will mark the emergence of mainstream apps powered by ...
The Slow Hunch by Nick GrossmanBitcoin as Battery
One of my favorite things about crypto is that, every so often, your conception of what it is changes.Bitcoin at first was "weird internet money...
The Slow Hunch by Nick GrossmanThe Butter Thesis
At USV, we talk a lot about our investment thesis. The USV thesis is a set of ideas that has guided our investing over the years. It is a tool we u...
Offering the full internet, for free, at reduced speeds (Aircel is doing this in India now)
Offer free data as an incentive to buy handsets (Mozilla is doing this in Bangladesh)
Offer a government-sponsored direct benefit to citizens for mobile data (as proposed here)
Related are the points that internet access in India is already growing very quickly without Free Basics (India grew from 300M to 400M mobile users in 2014) and that smartphone purchase is actually the most expensive part of getting online, not data access. So, I suppose that the "network level" innovation that's happening here is good in that it's teasing out all the possible schemes and giving us a real close look at the details of each. My view is that, despite its warts, T-Mobile's Binge-On is closer to the spirit of bringing users the whole internet as quickly and cheaply as possible, while Free Basics is closer to a geniusly evil world domination scheme.
Offering the full internet, for free, at reduced speeds (Aircel is doing this in India now)
Offer free data as an incentive to buy handsets (Mozilla is doing this in Bangladesh)
Offer a government-sponsored direct benefit to citizens for mobile data (as proposed here)
Related are the points that internet access in India is already growing very quickly without Free Basics (India grew from 300M to 400M mobile users in 2014) and that smartphone purchase is actually the most expensive part of getting online, not data access. So, I suppose that the "network level" innovation that's happening here is good in that it's teasing out all the possible schemes and giving us a real close look at the details of each. My view is that, despite its warts, T-Mobile's Binge-On is closer to the spirit of bringing users the whole internet as quickly and cheaply as possible, while Free Basics is closer to a geniusly evil world domination scheme.
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