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SpaceX Is Testing Starlink Roaming

Last April, Elon Musk tweeted that Starlink "should be fully mobile later this year, so you can move it anywhere or use it on an RV or truck in motion." It is good to know that mobility with a standard dish is in the works, but it's not yet available. David Lang had been able to connect his Starlink terminal about fifteen miles from his home in Simi Valley, California, but when he brought it to my place in Carpinteria, California, about forty-three miles away and in a different coverage cell, it failed to connect. more

Meet the Metaverse

I had already written this blog before Facebook announced it would be hiring at least 10,000 programmers to start moving the company towards the metaverse. I see the metaverse as one of the next big drivers of increased bandwidth usage. Wikipedia defines the metaverse as a collective virtual shared space created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical reality and physically persistent virtual space, including the sum of all virtual reality worlds, augmented reality, and the Internet. In the most basic sense, the metaverse consists of online worlds where people interact through avatars. more

Apple Rumored Building Its Own CDN, Negotiating Paid Interconnect Deals With ISPs

Apple has reportedly formed a new internal group to work on building out their own content delivery network (CDN) to deliver Apple software updates, apps and other Apple related content. more

SpaceX Wins FCC Approval to Deploy 7,518 Satellites for Broadband Communications

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. is granted permission from U.S. regulators to deploy over 7,000 satellites. more

SpaceX Launches Starlink Satellites for Global Cellular Coverage

SpaceX successfully launched 21 satellites, including the first six Starlink satellites equipped with "Direct to Cell" capabilities. These advanced satellites aim to offer seamless global access to texting, calling, and browsing for mobile network operators worldwide, eliminating dead zones with a space-based cellphone tower. more

The Cuba Internet Task Force - a Win for Trump and Castro

President Obama began working on Cuban rapprochement during his 2009 presidential campaign. After over five years of thought and negotiation, the Whitehouse announced a major shift in Cuba policy, which included allowing telecommunications providers "to establish the necessary mechanisms, including infrastructure, in Cuba to provide commercial telecommunications and Internet services, which will improve telecommunications between the United States and Cuba." more

Telecoms Competition on a Downhill Slide in America

That is what happens when you base your telecommunications policies on the wrong foundations. The problems with the telecommunications industry in America go back to 1996 when the FCC decided that broadband in America should be classified as internet (being content) and that therefore it would not fall under the normal telecommunication regulations. Suddenly what are known as telecommunications common carriers in other parts of the world became ISPs in the USA. How odd is that? more

Cuba’s (Hopefully Limited) ADSL Expansion

In 2015, ETECSA announced/leaked a plan to make ADSL service available in 50% of Cuban homes by 2020. I was skeptical. Doing so would mean investing a lot of money for obsolete technology between 2015 and 2020. They have recently announced the availability of ADSL connectivity at homes in portions of seven cities and, by December, they say some home connectivity will be available in every province. more

Google Responds to Criticisms Over Proposed Net Neutrality

Responding to recent controversies over Google-Verizon deal, Richard Whitt, Google's Washington Telecom and Media Counsel writes: "Over the past few days there's been a lot of discussion surrounding our announcement of a policy proposal on network neutrality we put together with Verizon. On balance, we believe this proposal represents real progress on what has become a very contentious issue, and we think it could help move the network neutrality debate forward constructively. We don't expect everyone to agree with every aspect of our proposal, but there has been a number of inaccuracies about it, and we do want to separate fact from fiction." more

Three Generations of Cuban WiFi Hotspot Sharing

As soon as ETECSA began installing public access WiFi hotspots, black market resellers began sharing connections. They would connect a laptop to an ETECSA account then use pirated copies of Connectify, a connection sharing program running on the laptop, to create small WiFi hotspots of their own. At the time, ETECSA charged 2 CUC per hour online (two day's pay for many Cubans) and the re-sellers typically charged 1 CUC per hour. They broke even with two users and made a profit with more. more

The UK Retail Telecom Sector Again Shows Results of Effective Regulation

The UK's regulator has undertaken much commendable work in recent years, which has helped to establish the country's telecom sector as one of the most competitive and vibrant in the world. The regulator stood up to BT's intransigence in the early days of Local Loop Unbundling (LLU), enforcing the creation of BT Openreach in January 2006 to operate as the company's wholesale division. The results have been very impressive... more

Connecting Every Home in Africa - Starlink Backhaul?

The vision of Kenyan ISP Poa! Internet is "to bring internet to every home in Africa." Poa! offers unlimited, uncapped, 4 Mb/s fixed wireless connectivity to homes for 1,500 KSh ($11.64) per month plus a one-time installation fee of 3,500 KSh ($27.16). But wait, there's more. They provide a dual-SSID router, and the home SSID is used by trusted family members, and the open street SSID is for others. Street users get 100 MB of free data each day and are charged 15 KSh ($.16) per GB with no expiry .data if they exceed 100 MB on a given day. more

New Jersey Becomes Latest State to Implement Its Own Net Neutrality Rules

New Jersey on Monday became the latest state to implement its own net neutrality rules following the FCC's Repeal. more

The First Month of Cuban 3G Mobile Internet Service

ETECSA, Cuba's government monopoly ISP, is offering a number of stopgap Internet services -- navigation rooms, home DSL and WiFi hotspots, but the recently rolled out 3G mobile service is the most important. The plot to the right shows the normalized rate of Cuban domain name requests to Oracle servers during the first full month of operation - a surrogate estimate of Internet traffic volume. more

Google to Begin Experimental Ultra High-Speed Broadband Networks

In a blog post today, Google has announced that they will begin a fiber network experiment of their own. From the announcement: "We're planning to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States. We'll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We plan to offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people." more

Industry Updates

$42 Billion Funding for US Broadband Deployment

Dormant IPv4 Addresses Can Help Mitigate Expected Network Outages

To Accelerate 5G Adoption, European Telcos Need More IP Addresses

Log4j Vulnerability: What Do the IoCs Tell Us So Far?

Gathering Context Around Emotet, Trickbot, and Dridex C&C Servers with Bulk IP Geolocation

i2Coalition and DNA Merger Creates North America’s Largest Internet Infrastructure Advocacy Group

i2Coalition Launches Survey on the Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Internet Infrastructure Providers

The Internet Infrastructure Industry Is Protecting Digital Trust and Fighting COVID-19 Related Fraud

Carpet-Bombing Attacks: A Rising Threat to ISPs

Currents of Change: Empowering the Growth and Interplay of Subsea and Interconnection

Peering Versus IP Transit: Answering the Age-Old Question

2016 U.S. Election: An Internet Forecast

Neustar Expands Professional Services Offerings for Communications Service Providers

Australian ISP iiNet selects ARI Registry Services to Help It Apply for and Operate .iinet TLD

NeuStar Names Steven Edwards General Manager, Senior Vice President of Converged Addressing Services