Access Providers

U.S. Government Invests $930 Million in Expanding Nationwide Internet Connectivity: Bridging Digital Divide in Remote and Underserved Regions

In a bid to expand nationwide internet access, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced a major $930 million grant initiative on Friday aimed at improving internet connections in remote parts of Alaska, rural Texas, and other regions with significant connectivity issues.  more

Google Fiber Launches 5-Gig Service in 4 of Its 12 Existing Metro Markets

Google Fiber is boosting its internet speeds and availability by offering a new 5-gig tier in four of its existing markets. Nick Saporito, Head of Multi-gig and Commercial Product, made the announcement in a blog post on Valentine's day titled: Fall in love with fast -- 5 Gig is here! more

The Fiber Land Grab

It's becoming clear that we are now deep into a fiber land grab. By that, I mean that companies that overbuild fiber in the United States are moving into markets to build fiber as quickly as possible. The biggest ISPs have publicly discussed their plans for building a lot of fiber in 2023. Following are some of the latest projections for 2023: more

The Big Questions Facing the Telecom Industry

I took a pause the other day to think about the big issues facing the telecom industry. When I've done that in past years, I always came up with a few major issues and more smaller ones. But we are in such turmoil right now that I rattled off the following list quickly. I can't remember a time when our industry was wrangling with so many major issues at the same time. The industry's performance over the next decade is going to depend upon how we handle these issues. more

Implications of California Telecom Attack Gone Un-Reported

In an article titled "A Cyber-Attack on an American City", Bruce Perens writes: "Just after midnight on Thursday, April 9, unidentified attackers climbed down four manholes serving the Northern California city of Morgan Hill and cut eight fiber cables in what appears to have been an organized attack on the electronic infrastructure of an American city. Its implications, though startling, have gone almost un-reported. That attack demonstrated a severe fault in American infrastructure: its centralization. The city of Morgan Hill and parts of three counties lost 911 service, cellular mobile telephone communications, land-line telephone, DSL internet and private networks, central station fire and burglar alarms, ATMs, credit card terminals, and monitoring of critical utilities..." more

Facebook In Talks with U.S. Government About Offering Its Free Internet Service

Facebook is talking to the White House about giving US citizens ‘free’ Internet access via its Free Basics program, Brian Fung reporting in the Washington Post today. more

U.S. Officials Asking Cuba to Speed Up Its Internet Infrastructure Build Out

A number of Senior U.S. officials and business leaders visited Cuba last week and urged the government to speed up its build out of Internet infrastructure and to make it more widely available, Mario Trujillo reports in The Hill. more

Syria’s Undersea Cable Repairs Will Take Down 60% of Nation’s Internet for Close to 10 days

Syrian Telecom has announced that 60 percent of the country's Internet will be down for close to ten days, starting Wednesday. more

Hawaiian Airlines Introduces Free Starlink Satellite Internet on Entire Airbus Fleet

Hawaiian Airlines has completed the installation of Starlink's high-speed satellite internet across its entire Airbus fleet, making it the first major U.S. carrier to offer free Wi-Fi powered by Starlink on transpacific flights. more

Neighbours Create Their Own Internet Service on Orcas Island

Faced with slow and outage-prone Internet access, residents of Orcas Island, one of the San Juan Islands in Washington state, decided to design their own network and built it themselves. more

Latvian ISP Closure Dents Cutwail Botnet ...for a Whole 48 Hours

From MessageLabs' latest report: "Real Host, an ISP based in Riga, Latvia was alleged to be linked to command-and-control servers for infected botnet computers, as well as being linked to malicious websites, phishing websites and 'rogue' anti-virus products. Real Host was disconnected by its upstream providers on 1 August 2009. The impact was immediately felt, where spam volumes dropped briefly by as much as 38% in the subsequent 48-hour period. Much of this spam was linked to the Cutwail botnet, currently one of the largest botnets and responsible for approximately 15-20% of all spam. Its activity levels fell by as much as 90% when Real Host was taken offline, but quickly recovered in a matter of days." more

Satellite Broadband Rivals: Beyond Starlink’s Dominance

Starlink gets almost all of the satellite press in the U.S., which is fair since the company now serves many homes and RVs with broadband. The company currently has over 4,600 active satellites in orbit, and if it sticks with its original business plan, it will eventually have 30,000. But there are a few other satellite companies working in the broadband space that don't get the press. more

Quantifying the Benefits of Telemedicine

There was a recent article in JAMA Network Open, part of the monthly journals of the American Medical Association, that reported on a large study to quantify the benefits of using telemedicine with cancer patients. The study was conducted at National Cancer Institute - Designated Comprehensive Cancer Center in Florida from April 2020 through June 2021. The study wanted to quantify the cost savings for patients that were able to conduct visits via telehealth rather than drive to the cancer center. more

Experience is Paramount at the 2017 ANGA COM

Right as May turned into June, we joined thousands of attendees at the latest edition of ANGA COM in Cologne, Germany. Over the course of three days, I had the opportunity to listen and gain insights on the challenges faced today in the industry. As we're already aware, data consumption and demand continue to march upwards. This is further evident by the sheer amount of FTTx-related vendors and solutions present at the show. Cable service providers can look at DOCSIS 3.1 or tilt their HFC towards FTTx. more

Massive African Internet Outage and the Fragility of Undersea Cables

Eight countries in West Africa reported Internet outages after damage was reported to four different undersea fiber cables. The most affected countries are Ivory Coast, Liberia, and Benin, with additional problems caused in Ghana, Nigeria, and Cameroon. Lesser impact was felt in South Africa, Senegal, and Portugal. There has been no official word on what caused the problem, but it's likely due to the shifting of the seabed due to seismic activity. more