Satellite Radio (Sirius/XM) Ping List
Freepmail me to be added.
Posted on 03/25/2006 3:41:57 PM PST by It Aint Easy
There's been a recent obsession over mobile content, from both the mobile operators and content providers. For the most part, this obsession was due to the unsustainable success of the ringtone market. Mobile operators who were desperate for more revenue from each subscriber suddenly thought mobile content was their ticket to big money. Content companies scared silly by the internet looked at mobile phones as basically a better internet -- because it's closed. However, that makes one huge assumption: that it always remains closed -- something that anyone with a sense of tech trends should have realized wasn't going to last. Mobile phones are quickly becoming just small computers -- and will have access to anything that's available online. Trying to block off and charge extra for mobile content doesn't work, because users are smart enough to recognize that they can just access what they want.
This issue is just now hitting the satellite radio business, apparently. As the satellite radio firms start desperately looking for new revenue streams, one area they've latched onto is the mobile channel. Both XM and Sirius say they have plans to offer a mobile offering (Sirius already has a small offering via Sprint which they expect to expand) -- which, no doubt, will involve some additional charge. There's just one (big) problem with that. Both offer up some of their content online -- and newer mobile phones have fairly open web access. With just a bit of tweaking, in fact, a few enterprising satellite radio fans have figured out how to listen to the streams via their Windows Mobile smartphones. This should be perfectly legal. They have a subscription, and they have a device that accesses the approved web stream -- but the satellite radio firms are having none of that and have sent out the lawyers to stop people from actually listening to the satellite feeds on their mobile phones. In many ways, this is reminiscent to a couple years back when XM got upset at people for writing software to make it easier to record XM. All of these actions seem like fair use ways of listening to content that the user has a legitimate subscription to. In fact, they make subscribing more valuable. Eventually people are going to realize that trying to get people to pay fifty different times for the same content isn't going to make your product appealing -- it's going to make people go elsewhere. In the meantime, though, expect to see the lawyers come out and the mobile operators talk about blocking such content -- and then wonder why no one wants to pay for it.
Found this to be pretty interesting about the mobile streaming of satellite radio.
This is one more reason why sat radio as it is now has no future as a stand-alone service. It's only a matter of time before people can easily acccess the internet in their car, and the gig will be up. Why would anyone pay for net access and sat radio, when the net access will give them more audio channels to choose from than sat radio? Simple. They won't.
I've got a Windows Mobile smartphone, but data x-fer is pretty slow over the connection. I can't imagine how long it would take to buffer streaming content of any decent quality.
I simply don't see cheap mobile Internet coming any time soon. But then, I've been wrong before.
I recently got a Sprint EVDO card for my laptop and I can now access the internet wirelessly at nearly broadband speed anywhere in the country. You are correct, satellite radio will soon be easier to access over the Net as a stream as opposed to rigging those funky antennas on top of your car or in your home.
I don't agree. I have a Samsung sch-i730 with 1XEV-DO and 1XRTT connectivity full time. I also travel to Yellowstone National Park on a very regular basis. When I'm inside the park, my phone is dead as a doornail. My XM radio is humming along just fine with a few minor fades on the north end of the park where towering mountains obscure my view to the south.
When I'm in a good EV-DO coverage area, the phone can do pretty high rate transfers. More than adequate for streaming audio content. The bad news is that most of the nation is still under "National Access" aka 1XRTT with a top throughput of 144 kbps. On average, you get a bursty 4 kbytes per second with 1XRTT. It's going to be a long time before the cellular infrastructure can support streaming audio everywhere the way XM does today.
I have 5 railcars connected with 1XRTT radios (Kyocera M200 modules). They also have GPS. The consequence is that I can create coverage maps for Verizon National Access. There are lots of areas with zero coverage. That necessitated creating a "store and forward" protocol for the railcar data. I keep a big FLASH disk on the car with ability to buffer data readings while I'm out of coverage. Once back in coverage, the stored data is fairly rapidly flushed back to the server and deleted from the FLASH disk.
Yeah, me too. I have an EVDO SmartPhone; I'm going to try it.
I can't help but think that at least part of the reason that satellite operators have a problem with mobile streaming/recording is because the way to keep the RIAA off of their butts.
You need to get out more. The EVDO card is only going to work well for you in the largest cities where EVDO capable towers have been installed. San Diego, Washington, DC, Atlanta, Jacksonville, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City and Lexington Park, MD are some places where I've found EVDO. Verizon has much more coverage than Sprint.
I'm frequently irritated with the integration level of my Samsung i730. I've had many experiences trying to make a voice phone call only to have the ActiveSync application launch a data connection and deny use of the voice path. Next time I'm returning to a plain phone and going with a card similar to what you have selected. My current phone is configured by Verizon to prohibit "tethered" mode where it could be my 1XRTT modem via USB to my laptop. I really just need a reliable cell phone and data coverage for my laptop when traveling. Browsing the web on my "phone" or reading e-mail on the "phone" is just not that important.
>>With just a bit of tweaking, in fact, a few enterprising satellite radio fans have figured out how to listen to the streams via their Windows Mobile smartphones.<<
I wasn't referring to cellular Internet access. It would have to be some other wireless method, perhaps satellite, like Sirius and XM. I predict those sat radio companies will try to stave off the inevitable by offering other content so others in the vehicle can access news, weather, sports, local radio stations, etc.
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