Greetings from a very cold Washington DC!

It’s been a busy week for all of us here at WebsEdge. This week we’ve been broadcasting from the American Colleges and Universities conference here in Washington. Despite all the usual running around - and even catching a Washington Wizards basketball game - it’s given us a fascinating insight into how Colleges are starting to use web based video to get their messages across to what’s now a very wide and diverse audience.

Once again the focus is on the consumer. There’s been a lot of talk recently about people watching video on mobile devices. But to most of us this has remained just talk. But I heard an interesting statistic this week. AT&T tell us that people who own Apple’s iPhone are now twice as likely to view data - including video - on their phones than they were before.

The message is clear - once you give people the right tools they’ll figure the rest out for themselves. Which brings me back to business. The problem here is that consumers are getting way ahead of the curve. We’re starting to see an explosion of interest in web based television in 2008. Both AT@T and BT are announcing rapid growth in IPTV roll out. And again the number of video aggregators has risen dramatically. All a testament to the demand for video over IP. But right now the business model just isn’t there. Too many people are relying on advertising income or worse still have no real idea where the income is going to come from. And until we figure that out this surge forward in our industry just won’t be sustained.