Old, New Media Said to Offer Minority Vendors Opportunities
Cable channels, wireless devices, online video and other broadband products offer opportunities for minorities to provide services to large communications companies and their subscribers, Comcast, Google and Verizon executives said Monday at a Minority Media and Telecommunications Council conference. They said their companies probably won’t apply for broadband stimulus money, but some said the awards may create opportunities for them to work with recipients.
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“We do not have clarity on what the conditions are if one does accept stimulus dollars,” said Comcast Senior Vice President Joseph Waz. His company will keep working with a diverse array of suppliers, he said. Upstart businesses can help solve the puzzle of how to make money online, Waz said. “None of us in this room knows what the next business model is going to be” he said. “We are all wrestling our way through the models that may work.”
The U.S. role in expanding broadband use should include putting more government documents online and encouraging smart-grid use under a separate, $4.5 billion stimulus program, speakers said. Government use of cloud computing “would show leadership,” said Policy Counsel Harry Wingo of Google. “It’s time to bring the electrical grid forward” with advanced information and communications technology, he added. “It’s not price that’s keeping people from adopting broadband, said Verizon Vice President David Hill. It’s what people consider the lack of relevance of what’s available online their lives, he said.
The trend toward mobile applications, “one of the things that’s ignored” in talking about new broadband investments, “will open up huge opportunities for” traditional and new forms of content, Hill said. “Perhaps more important for the new media” will be to work with wireless devices, he said. Talks having been taking place for sometime to add new features, and the time to start taking part is “yesterday, frankly,” Hill said. There’s “a lot of opportunity still to be mined on the traditional video side,” and Comcast is adding “multi-ethnic” channels to carry at least 60 in each cable market, Waz said. The cable operator’s trial of subscriber access to video from cable channels (CD June 25 p2), with 23 participating networks, may add several with such content, he said.
“There’s an opportunity for anyone to come up with the next application,” said Wingo, citing a “very rich environment for entrepreneurs.” They'll be able to work together and “to partner with big companies,” he said. Increased use of netbooks and of the “cloud” to store content, instead of on PCs, means “you can see the price of computers falling really precipitously,” Wingo said. He asked his listeners to imagine a computer for kids that costs no more than a textbook and advocated that children be taught computer programming as “a second language” -- “coding for kids.”