Google is deploying fiber at its own expense in Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri to demonstrate the value of one gigabit (a gigabit is a billion bits -- a lot) per second residential Internet connections and perhaps to show at&t and Verizon and the cable companies how the search giant might fight back if its growth is restricted by their restrictions or limitations. ... Whoops. Google just learned the same lesson that President Obama learned in Stimulus 1 more
On September 12 China, the Russian Federation, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan released a Resolution for the UN General Assembly entitled "International code of conduct for information security." The resolution proposes a voluntary 12 point code of conduct based on "the need to prevent the potential use of information and communication technologies for purposes that are inconsistent with the objectives of maintaining international stability and security and may adversely affect the integrity of the infrastructure within States..." more
Qtel, the largest carrier in Qatar (and nearly the only Internet provider) appears to connect all their users (~600K) to the Internet through just one or a very few public IPv4 addresses. 82.148.97.69 was their single public address in 2006-2007. How can network address translation (NAT) put all those users through just one IP address? more
While it was good to see that the Administration included telecoms in its new stimulus package - which was launched in September 2011 - the concerns expressed when the project was announced last year still persist. Wireless is not a solution to the significant broadband problems the USA is facing. ... The new plan seems to be driven more by the failed attempts in previous initiatives to roll out more broadband infrastructure. more
Telecoms engineers from all of the major telecoms services and equipment companies around the world agree that FttH is the only future-proof telecommunications technology. So who should we trust - the technology experts or politicians with different agendas? If there had been a division of opinion among these experts it would have been necessary to investigate it; but if they are all in agreement it is safe to follow their advice. more
In June, the net neutrality debate took an unexpected turn when the Netherlands leap-frogged the USA to became the first country to legislate for mobile net neutrality. Business models for fixed and mobile networks must shift toward volume charges. The net neutrality debate has been seen not having much relevance outside the USA because the plight of carriers there was aggravated by unlimited usage. more
The market for cloud computing is getting more interesting every day. There is still a long way to go, as the success of cloud computing depends not only on high-speed networks, but also on capacity, robustness, affordability, low latency, ubiquity, security, privacy and reliability. Of course, the ideal infrastructure would be nationwide FttH networks, but obviously we can't wait for that... more
In the USA an interesting initiative has been taken by a number of leaders in the telco industry who are frustrated with the inability of the country to start building the high-speed broadband infrastructure that is needed for the development of its digital economy. While the Obama Administration has the right vision to make this happen - and the American National Broadband Plan is a good example of this - the dysfunctional political state of the country makes it impossible to establish the industry transformation needed to make this happen. more
At eComm, I interviewed on stage Neil Davies, founder of Predictable Network Solutions. (Disclosure: they are a consulting client, we are working together to commercialise their technology.) The transcript of the interview is up on the eComm blog, titled The Internet is Not a Pipe and Bandwidth is Bad. Neil's achievement is a breakthrough advance in the use of applied mathematics to describe behaviours of statistically multiplexed networks. more
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. The biggest threat to the Internet innovation ecosystem from network operators is not discrimination but terms of interconnection. Metered billing, bandwidth caps, and wholesale transit fees can all be implemented consistently with net neutrality rules. And in practice, net neutrality will be limited to "legal" content... more
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