An early hint that GE might move to Boston?

Tom Paine

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Perhaps this announcement by GE, as described by NJ.com on June 2, 2014, was a precursor for GE's announcement this week that it was picking up its toys and moving its headquarters from Fairfield, CT to Boston. Perhaps the move was already in the early planning stages. Major corporate moves of that size usually require a five year planning horizon.

GE subsidiary to move jobs from Princeton, Piscataway


"GE Healthcare Life Sciences confirmed today its plan to consolidate operations near Boston, which will impact many of its 400 New Jersey employees — including job loss for some.
The facilities that will be closed next year are in Princeton and Piscataway. Operations in Livingston and South Plainfield will be unaffected by the plan, according to a company spokesman.
Of the Princeton and Piscataway employees, some will be invited to relocate to the Massachusetts facility, some may end up working remotely, while the third category would be laid off."

Though I feel little sympathy for Connecticut, whose inflexibility helped lose GE according to reports, knowing a bit about how the power structure works in that state. However, Connecticut apparently offered considerable incentives to Comcast in order for NBC Sports to relocate there three years ago.

Coincidentally, GE's move will bring it closer to PTC, headquartered in Needham, which is GE's primary IoT partner, with a significant contribution from its Exton-based ThingWorx unit. The geographical proximity doesn't mean anything in particular, but GE could snap up PTC in a minute if it wanted to.

Note: PTC announced another acquistion today to support ThingWorx and its IoT strategy.

Boston's tech identity issue versus Philly's

Tom Paine

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So you think its just Philadelphia that has a tech industry inferiority complex?

Dan Pimack / Fortune TermSheet

Well, then read this article, What's really wrong with Boston tech? by Fortune's Boston-based Dan Primack (a Haverford College grad no less), who covers the PE business globally, on Boston's somewhat diminished national status in the tech world, although they are still much bigger than us (according to the MoneyTree Report from PricewaterhouseCoopers & the National Venture Capital Association based on Thomson Reuters data for 2013, New England ventures raised $3.3 billion versus $420 million for Philadelphia Metro). Although Primack notes a recovery from the meltdown of the old Route 128 minicomputer era, and a much more engaged and vibrant urban tech scene, he still wonders where the next big things are coming from.

As he sees it, some of the problem can be attributed to the lack of tech media based in Boston, although he notes the exceptions of a couple of Boston websites and one or two
people assigned to the beat from national tech blogs. While Silicon Valley is covered
to the hilt, on the east coast he perceives a New York media bias of sorts, in that since
so many media organizations are based New York, more reporters are based there and tend to hype up the next hot New York startup, which in a virtuous or vicious circle of sorts creates a stonger ecosystem for the New York tech scene. (That is my rough interpretation of his words, not his).

Of course Philly has, in addition to its local outlets (with due credit to Technically Philly), several well known tech reporters from national websites based around the area, though most are not here specifically to cover the Philly scene. In some cases, they only
live in the area due to its proximity to New York - at least that's my impression.

My point of view is that while a strong local tech media is important, it is also important that it is independent and objective in its coverage, rather than engaging in boosterism.

If you've got good stuff, you don't need to overhype it.

Time Warner Cable invests to build out fiber to some NYC businesses; What are Comcast's plans?

Tom Paine



Time Warner Cable's announcement this week that it would invest $25 million to provide fiber to the premise connectivity to selected business locations in parts of New York City generated some hype and inaccurate comparisons from those who compared it to Google's fiber buildout in Kansas City. Time Warner Cable's (TWC) announcment was somewhat vague, besides mentioning a few specific locations, in terms of how broad the coverage would be. And $25 million isn't a great deal of money when you consider a city with the telecommunications infrastructure of New York. Google Fiber's Kansas City project is planned to be residentially focused rather than aimed at businesses, and its investment there would reportedly be several hundred million dollars.

I had heard that Comcast had done a few small fiber buildouts such as this in some downtown areas, so I reached out to Comcast to ask about specifics. A company spokesperson responded by email: "Since 2011, we have been giving businesses more options for connectivity by bringing fiber into sections of cities that are becoming high-tech hubs". Specifically mentioned were a project with the city of Seattle to bring broadband to its Pioneer Square area, a similar partnership with Boston for its "Innovation District", and another arrangement for downtown San Mateo, CA. I'm not certain about the precise network architecture Comcast is using in these areas; it says it offers speeds of up to 100/10 Mbps which I believe can be delivered through its usual fiber optic-coaxial hybrid using Docsis 3.0, but also can provide speeds of up to 10 gigabits per second for heavy users. The latter would preumably require a direct fiber connection to the building.

Comcast says it will "continue looking for more places to expand – giving more businesses more options for affordable high-speed connectivity - but at this time has nothing specific to announce". There was no information available on any plans for Philadelphia.

Of course, in both New York City and Philadelphia the cable operators may face competition from Verizon's FiOS, although the buildouts in both locations are preceding at a snail's pace (but its much further along in New York.) Google Fiber says it will offer symmetrical 1 Gbps connections to individual residences for $70 a month (after an up front fee). Time Warner Cable says its service "enables businesses to be connected to a dedicated Internet network that provides speeds that reach 1 gigabyte per second and faster". although its not clear whether that kind of speed would reach every tenant in a large multi-tenant facility such as the Empire State Building, one of the facilities TWC named as having been recently wired.

Both TWC and Comcast have rapidly growing business telecom services segments. In its most recent earnings report released early this month, Comcast said its Business Services revenue increased 34 percent to $582 million.



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