Of course no sooner that I wrote a slightly more positive spin on a particular spammer (Amir Gans, the top Israeli spammer, courtesy of the MIT Technology Review blog), another bad consequence of spamming came to light. 

A few months ago, I discovered an interesting blog listing site called Blizg.  According to its own old "raison d'etre", Blizg was "created out of a desire to use blog metadata in interesting ways. We want to seek out and understand the relationships between and among blogs. We want to help you find blogs of interest."   Meta tag content was indeed a great way to connect like-minded bloggers.

Unfortunately, the site went down late last year (around December sometime?) and I always wondered why (thought it might have been lack of funding).  So I went on a fishing expedition to discover what went wrong.  And I finally found the answer on Blog Cafe: spamming.  Brandon Stone, the webmeister of Blizg, had to shut it down because of the incredible amount of spam the site was getting.  He did not have the time and/or resources to clean that mess up.  It is sad that spammers infiltrate every corner of blogsphere, including a unique site such as Blizg.  I hope Brandon comes back with a new site name and a bit more security to prevent that next time.
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With all the talk about how the RBOCs should start building out fiber-based video networks instead of relying on the satellite approach, one would think that the fiber deployments should be happening in full force in 2005. Verizon (NYSE:VZ) is favoring a FTTP (Fiber To The Premises) strategy, whereas SBC (NYSE:SBC) and others are more inclined to a FTTN (Fiber To The Node) approach.

No doubt that FTTN is the "quick fix" method, being faster and cheaper, however there are risks (i.e. is there sufficient bandwidth for when the loop length exceeds a certain threshold, or for HDTV). Also, the standards issues persist (VDSL or ADSL2+?) and then, there is also the question of the cost and availability of the set top boxes. 

FTTP is slower, and entails a higher upfront cost, but it should give Verizon the best network asset among its peers.  But the buildout will be slow, as Verizon plans to launch FTTH to 10 million homes over the next five years. 

SBC's Project Lightspeed is highly ambitious in terms of their video share gain assumptions, which call for a higher portion of the pie than what DBS players get today.  But their roll-out pace, opex and capex estimates presented in November of last year look reasonable.  However, despite the fact that these numbers were well received by Wall Street, some naysayers still point to past experiences as the best predictor of how long this deployment will take (who remembers Project Pronto?).

Another factor that might definitely dampen the RBOCs pace of fiber deployment is the potential SBC and AT&T merger.  Om Malik highlights a Merrill Lynch report that should the deal close, US wireline CAPEX might decrease by 10% (or roughly US$ 2 billion).  The SBC and AT&T were planning to spend about $7 billion of wireline capex this year, but a combined organization would mean a shrinkage of 30% (or $2.1 billion).  Of course, some of this reduction might also trickle down to Project Lightspeed, as SBC focuses on integrating the AT&T network.  In such a scenario, it remains to be seen whether or not Verizon, after seeing a combined SBC/AT&T spending less, will also follow suit.

Regardless, the MSOs will have a significant time-to-market advantage in bundling voice service versus the RBOCs in bundling video with their fiber buildouts.