Access Providers

T-Mobile Gives Free Unlimited Data for Pokemon Go - Raising Net Neutrality Concerns

T-Mobile announced today that as a part of its "T-Mobile Tuesdays" promotion it will give its customers unlimited data to play Pokemon Go until August 2017. Move called Net Neutrality violation. more

The Impact of Satellite Broadband

Recently I've had several people ask me about the expected impact of low-orbit satellite broadband. While significant competition from satellites is probably a number of years away, there are several major initiatives like StarLink (Elon Musk), Project Kuiper (Amazon), and OneWeb that have announced plans to launch swarms of satellites to provide broadband. more

No Love for the Big ISPs

It's the time of the year when the results come out for the American Customer Satisfaction Index that asks customers to rate their satisfaction with a wide range of industries and the larger companies within those industries. This is a huge nationwide poll that ranks the public's satisfaction with 400 large companies in 45 sectors. more

Keeping Track of Satellites

The topic of satellite broadband has been heating up lately. Elon Musk's StarLink now has over 540 broadband satellites in the sky and is talking about starting a few beta tests of the technology with customers. OneWeb went into bankruptcy, but it is being bought out by a team consisting of the British government and Bharti Airtel, the largest cellular company in India. Jeff Bezos has continued to move forward with Project Kuiper, and the FCC recently gave the nod for the company to move ahead. more

5 Broadband Predictions for 2020

The 2010's have been nothing short of transformative in the broadband space. Despite disappointing deployment rates across the U.S., the past decade has been a period of exponential change and innovation. As we look toward the new decade, here are five key predictions based on current trends and developments in the broadband industry. more

Chinese Company Launches First Satellites for Massive Network to Rival Starlink

A Chinese state-backed company has successfully launched its first 18 satellites, marking the initial phase of a significant project to establish a vast orbital network intended to compete with Starlink, according to The China Securities Journal. more

The Price for Faster Upload Speeds

I've always been impressed by the marketing folks at the big cable companies. They are masters of extracting money from customers willing to pay for better broadband. The latest example comes from Comcast. The company is introducing a new product in the Northeast that offers faster upload speeds -- for a price. Comcast knows that its biggest weakness is upload speeds. more

Mozilla Offers Proposal for Solving Net Neutrality Problem

Mozilla says that the FCC shouldn't look at an Internet line only as a relationship between an Internet provider and a subscriber. Regulators should formally recognize that there's a third party involved: Content providers such as websites, apps, gaming and more, Mozilla says. more

The Wall Street Lesson for Net Neutrality

As the institutions of Wall Street continue to crumble one after another, there's a lesson to be learned for those of us who want to make sure the Internet remains as free and open in the future as it has been in the past. The collapse of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, AIG and the rest didn't happen overnight. The situation has been brewing for years. The subprime mortgage crisis may have precipitated the immediate tragedy, but underpinning the whole mess is a philosophy about business and government. more

In an Eight-Hour Test, Cuba Makes Internet Access Available Nationwide

Cuba's government provided free internet to more than 5 million cellphone users on Tuesday as an eight-hour test prior to launching sales of the service. more

Terahertz WiFi

While labs across the world are busy figuring out how to implement the 5G standards, there are scientists already working in the higher frequency spectrum looking to achieve even faster speeds. The frequencies that are just now being explored are labeled as the terahertz range and are at 300 GHz and higher spectrum. This spectrum is the upper ranges of radio spectrum and lies just below ultraviolet light. more

Why Homegrown Subscriber ID Solutions Limit Problem Solving

Most service providers are aware that there needs to be a simple, fast way to identify subscribers. Unfortunately, in reality, mapping IP addresses back to subscribers for identification purposes - such as lawful interception requests or acceptable use policy violations - can be complicated. It usually involves analyzing data sets, completing manual audits, or reliance on multi-step solutions. more

Lawful Access Bills Proposed for ISPs in Canada

Michael Geist writes: "The bills contain a three-pronged approach focused on information disclosure, mandated surveillance technologies, and new police powers. The first prong mandates the disclosure of Internet provider customer information without court oversight. Under current privacy laws, providers may voluntarily disclose customer information but are not required to do so. The new system would require the disclosure of customer name, address, phone number, email address, Internet protocol address, and a series of device identification numbers." more

Counting Gigabit Households

I ran across a website called the Gigabit Monitor that is tracking the population worldwide that has access to gigabit broadband. The website is sponsored by VIAVI Solutions, a manufacturer of network test equipment. The website claims that in the US, over 68.5 million people have access to gigabit broadband or 21% of the population. That number gets sketchy when you look at the details. more

San Francisco Supervisor Working on Plan for Citywide High-Speed Internet

San Francisco Supervisor Mark Farrell has assembled a group of business, privacy and academic experts to discuss crucial, early-stage questions surrounding Farrell’s plan to wire the city with high-speed Internet service. more