Comcast Roundup: NBC hearings begin today, a Google balance and More

Every Thursday morning at 8:30 a.m. EST, find all the stories you need to know about your friendly telecommunications giant in the Comcast Roundup. Get an e-mail subscription for our Comcast news updates.

DEFINITE READS

• USA Today reports that Hulu executives are likely eager to start experimenting with paid version of the popular video streaming site but must wait for the finalized result of Comcast’s deal with NBC, which owns nearly a third of the site.
• The Washington Post reports that today the congressional hearings on the Comcast-NBC deal have begun.
• paidContent reports on Democratic staff memos that discuss, ahead of today’s congressional hearings on the matter, the impact the merger has to “fundamentally shape the way Web video evolves.”

Read more

Vonage co-founder Pulver introduces 140conf social media meetup, but is it needed?

140conf organizers make introductions at National Mechanics in Old City before founder Jeff Pulver takes the stage.

Updated: 2:19 p.m., Copy error.
Updated: 2:26 p.m., Added final attendance figures.

When Vonage co-founder Jeff Pulver decided to take a closer look at social media last year, it was not without skepticism.

“I wanted to see how much of it was bullshit. But it’s real,” Pulver, dressed in a purple checkered shirt, said to a crowd of more than 50 attendees of Philly’s first 140conf, a new social media meetup, its name a play on Twitter’s character limit.

The quiet, bespectacled Pulver, who organized the first 140conf, a larger, semiannual event held so far in New York, Los Angeles, London and Tel Aviv, told Technically Philly in a pre-event interview that so many folks were making the trip from Philadelphia to New York that he decided to cut their trip. With local help, he introduced a Philly-centric monthly installment of the semiannual conference Tuesday evening.

Read more

[UPDATED] Comcast Roundup: NBC deal awaits Vivendi approval, Cohen called most powerful Philadelphian and More

Updated: 11/12/09 @ 11:19 p.m.: Vivendi no comment on NBC deal

Every Thursday morning at 8:30 a.m. EST, find all the stories you need to know about your friendly telecommunications giant in the Comcast Roundup. Get an e-mail subscription for our Comcast news updates.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Comcast and General Electric have agreed to value NBC Universal in the neighborhood of $30 billion, one of the final details of their impending deal. As the Inquirer’s Bob Fernandez reports, whether or not French cable company Vivendi—with a 20 percent stake in NBC—will exercise its ability to veto the deal, may be announced today during its third-quarter earnings call. The Inquirer reports that Vivendi executives gave no comment during the call.

But Bloomberg reports that Vivendi has little reason to move on the deal and may hold out to get a better deal.

The LA Times entertainment blog reports that “no major regulatory hurdles” need to be jumped for the Comcast-GE deal to happen.

After the jump, the most powerful man in Philadelphia, rivaling ESPN and more.

Read more

Old City VoIP provider Alteva scores Microsoft deal

Redmond needs a little help from Philly in its battle with Mountain View.

Microsoft has enlisted Old City-based VoIP provider Alteva to help integrate its popular Office suite with phone and communications systems in businesses. We spoke to Alteva CEO Will Bumbernick earlier this month. The companies hope that the partnership helps businesses become further entrenched in the Microsoft brand of business products while simultaneously preempting the inevitable Google Voice/Google Docs juggernaut.

Read more

Shop Talk: VOIP provider Alteva keeps it local, plans possible acquisitions

Alteva CEO Will Bumbernick, 35, came to Philadelphia for the same reason many men move to new cities.

“I followed a girl to Philadelphia. The girl didn’t work out, but the area did,” he says.

And did it ever. After running, and then selling, his own technology consulting firm, Bumbernick, along with engineer Mark Marquez, wanted to start a company in a new sector that relied on monthly subscriptions. Bumbernick said he was enticed bythe stability of a monthly invoice, especially after his consulting days.

The two soon founded Alteva, a company that provides voice over internet protocol (VOIP) services to over 300 small- to mid-sized businesses. And, unlike many tech companies in the Philadelphia region, they are doing it all from inside city limits.

Read more