The folks over at Unstrung got confirmation from Sprint VP Atish Gude that one of the payment options for the upcoming US WiMAX network will be day passes. (via Broadband Reports) In other words, if you don’t want to sign a contract, you can pay for a day of use just like with a Wi-Fi hotspot.

I’ve written before that the per-use mobile broadband model would be my ideal. I don’t need mobile access often, but when I do, it’s critical, and I’m willing to pay. That said, I had an interesting conversation on this topic with Arnie Berman, chief technology strategist at Cowen and Co., and he makes a good argument that the “by-the-drink” model has serious flaws.

Broadly speaking, as Arnie says, all-you-can-eat pricing drives adoption by bringing predictability to monthly billing levels. Fine. WiMAX isn’t doing away with that model as its main option. However, the big question is whether wireless carriers can maintain flat-fee day-pass payments (predictable per-use fees) or whether they’ll start charging by bandwidth used. Since bandwidth caps are now a serious part of the conversation in fixed broadband, why shouldn’t we expect the same to happen on the mobile side? And if that happens, how can we gauge our own usage and avoid unpleasant billing surprises?

Over on GigaOM last week, Arnie talked about this very dilemma with regard to cloud computing. He argued there that we need more than a usage monitoring tool; we need a tool that forecasts likely usage. Maybe the same is true for mobile broadband. I’m all for WiMAX day passes, but if service providers end up charging by the byte, I want a simple way to determine what payment plan makes the most sense for me. And more importantly, whether I can afford mobile broadband at all.

Todd Spangler at Multichannel broke the news this morning. Comcast is buying up to six million digital terminal adapters (DTAs) this year in an effort to migrate to all-digital broadcasts throughout 20% of its footprint in 2008. The DTAs are coming from Motorola (my employer), Pace and Thomson. DTAs work by converting QAM channels broadcast without encryption to analog signals. They don’t include any conditional access technology, a program guide, or support two-way services such as VOD.

[Note from Dave: I received a tip from Glenn (thanks!) last week referring to USA Today coverage of same. Wonder if Comcast may attempt to bypass SDV entirely by freeing up this bandwidth? Hmmm. Perhaps going all QAM will force them to standardize how they label and map these channels (verus the current Comcast clear QAM chaos in my region).]

I took my first trip over to the new Comcast HQ yesterday for a meeting and was duly impressed. Smack in the middle of Philadelphia, the site is nothing like Verizon’s HQ, a sprawling campus in Basking Ridge. Instead, the building goes straight up; a little cafe with water fountains sprinkling the landscape outside. Indoors there are wildly impressive views on the upper floors, all reached by banks of elevators providing express routes to different levels in the tower. (My ears popped on the way up.)

Most impressive, however, was the IMAX theater environment in the lobby reception area. A massive wall of wood panels transforms into a screen for moonscapes, falling water, home-run hits, staged vignettes, and more. Add in the stereo sound and it’s quite a showstopper. Highly appropriate for a cable company making its living off premium television services. Can I have it installed in my home, please? Just don’t tell me the monthly fee.

Now that Time Warner Cable is testing a bill-by-the-byte approach for Internet access, it’d be nice to have a simple way to measure individual Internet use. We’re taught to track the upload and download speeds provided by ISPs, but exact measurements there are hardly necessary. If my downloads are moving more slowly than usual, I know without testing that I’m not reaching my promised 6-Mbps mark.

On the other hand, I don’t want to guesstimate how much I’ve downloaded in a month if I’m going to be billed a dollar every gigabyte I exceed my limit by, particularly because I’m not the only one in my household using the Internet connection.

Time Warner is apparently planning to put a “gas gauge” on its website so subscribers can tell how much of their download and upload allotments they’ve used up. (Something akin to TWC’s DVR storage gauge shown right?) But why are ISPs waiting until after they’ve instituted metered billing? Why not give users an easy way to measure now so we can get smart about how we use our bandwidth? Such a move might even help the ISPs by reducing strain on their networks from users willing to be a little more conscious of their Internet habits.

There are options available for measuring Internet usage today, like Hagel Technologies’ DU Meter software. But in my opinion, tools like this should be freely available from every ISP. Particularly if more operators plan to follow Time Warner’s lead in the future.

Mari and I sat in on the Sezmi webcast briefing earlier this week and we’ve been slow in covering the news… As it turns out, this gives me an opportunity to provide some clarity in response to the widespread confusion.

At a high level, Sezmi (formerly Building B) is a video service with the goal of replacing our existing cable or satellite provider (television programming), and enhancing value by providing additional content (think Internet) and new methods of interaction.

Business Model
Consumers won’t be Sezmi’s direct customers. Sezmi’s plan is to offer sidelined broadband providers, telcos, and local television franchises a platform to offer television services (including advertising) without having to roll their own solution. They haven’t announced any distribution partners yet but, with imminent trials and plans to launch by the end of the year, there’s at least one company on the hook. Obviously, Verizon (FiOS TV) and AT&T (Homezone, U-verse) are spoken for. Given the mega quadruple-play alliance dissolution and forthcoming WiMax push, Sprint’s a likely target. I also wouldn’t be surprised to hear of Sezmi going after Qwest or even an Earthlink. Though, perhaps I’m thinking too big here…

Content Distribution
Sezmi will be using a hybrid approach to receive (and in many cases, provide) content including local over-the-air broadcasts, transmission of “cable” channels via leased (or partner/reseller) airwaves (see USDTV, rip), and the Internet. Sezmi hasn’t announced which premium content providers they’ve signed, though the USA Network was featured in the webcast.

Hardware
The initial Sezmi (leased) hardware package consists of an antenna unit which includes 1 terrabyte of storage, set-top box, and remote. The long-term goal is to transform the STB into more of a thin-client with the NAS providing most of the heavy lifting - and supporting multiple STBs throughout the home.

Software
For me, the most interesting portion of the webcast was a live demo of the Sezmi interface/experience - which they’re calling “TV 2.0.” (Many screengrabs below.) In addition to the DVR functionality you’d expect, Sezmi provides some innovative new ways of integrating, organizing, and presenting content. I wouldn’t go so far as saying they bring social networking to the TV (though, that’s one of the things they’re saying), but the per-user playlist plus sharing and community rating features are overdue and appreciated.

Odds
Several folks have asked me if these guys are going to succeed. It’s difficult to handicap the odds without knowing who Sezmi’s initial partners are. Which brings up the probable point of this pre-announcement: drumming up interest on both the potential distributor/reseller side and on the content provider side. Breaking into the TV business as a new player will be difficult (and expensive), and neither building out compelling solutions nor educating customers of the added value is guaranteed against the entrenched players. At the very least, they’ll need to sign resellers with some serious muscle to have a just shot at pulling it off.

Update: Sezmi’s asked me to remove a dozen screengrabs, given non-finalized network deals and evolving interface.

Two calls from beyond the grave came recently from companies defunct… or very nearly so.

First, Worldgate turned the Ojo video phone service back on. I haven’t set mine up again yet and can’t say for sure it works, but since the problem was not a technical one, I assume I’ll be back up and running with my Ojo shortly.

Second, a company you’ve likely never heard of, Mirror Worlds, has risen again to pursue a lawsuit. Against Apple. I worked with Mirror Worlds once upon a time, and the Scopeware Vision product was impressive in concept. It was Desktop Search before Google had Desktop Search. The “Cover Flow” view before Apple had Cover Flow. Or at least that’s what the lawyers are claiming. I’ll be curious to see if David Gelernter talks publicly about the lawsuit, as he was the co-creator of the technology owned by Mirror Worlds and is most decidedly not shy about his opinions.

All TV (except sports) is moving to on-demand, right? You can’t successfully have hundreds of thousands of people accessing the same online video at the same time, right? You can’t hold an interactive video event online that’s open to the public, right?

Oprah says otherwise. That’s right, Oprah.

Very quietly Oprah’s been hosting an online, interactive class called A New Earth on Oprah.com for the last three weeks. What makes the initiative remarkable is that she’s using Skype video to do it. Not only can online visitors watch Oprah talk with guest/co-host Eckhart Tolle every Monday at 9:00 ET, they can also ask questions in a video split screen. (see above) Limelight is the content delivery network (CDN) partner for the series and Move Networks is handling the video player and encoding. The scale of the experiment is unprecedented.

Here are a few stats, including some otherwise-unpublished figures (that’s right, exclusive from ZNF…):

• More than 180k viewers have tuned in for the full 90 minutes of the Oprah series for three weeks running
• 500k people logged in the first week… and the system crashed. But this was a coding error only, remedied since, not a bandwidth or infrastructure problem. The 500k number breaks the previous Live Earth record of roughly 240k simultaneous streams.
• The Oprah folks are aiming for a million simultaneous streams. Just wait till they really turn on the Oprah marketing machine.