As long as US telecom is duopoly dominated, a neutral Internet is endangered if not impossible; regulation of this kind of concentrated power is necessary but is unlikely to be sufficient. The solution, IMHO, is to dilute the power of the duopoly so that consumers can buy whatever kind of Internet access they want. Countries like the UK with a competitive ISP market do not seem to have net neutrality problems nor require net neutrality regulation and have better Internet access than we do at lower prices. more
In the global telecoms industry, it looks as though 2013 will be remembered as the year when construction of new greenfield HFC networks came to a halt. Of course, there will still be upgrades to existing networks but the cost of fibre deployment -- linked to its much lower operational cost -- is now convincing cablecos and telcos alike to build new fibre networks wherever possible. This is not necessarily directly driven by customer demand, but by network costs and network efficiencies. more
SpaceX delayed last Wednesdays Starlink launch due to high winds and on Thursday they decided to do a software update and postpone the launch until next week, but they revealed significant progress in their Starlink mission press release and in tweets by and a media call with Elon Musk. The mission press release said SpaceX has significantly reduced the size and weight of their satellites. more
In a letter released on Monday, the Internet Society Board of Trustees has expressed concern with a number of U.S. legislative proposals that would mandate DNS blocking and filtering by ISPs to protect the interests of copyright holders. "Policies mandating DNS filtering undermine the open architecture of the Internet and raise human rights and freedom of expression concerns," says Internet Society (ISOC). more
In 2019, I wrote that Amazon would be a formidable satellite-ISP competitor. I still think so, but I didn't expect it would be over four years until they launched the first test satellites. In the meantime, SpaceX has put over 5,000 satellites in orbit and has over two million Starlink customers. Amazon has permission to launch 3,236 satellites. more
British Telecom (BT) is hurting because the wireline phone business is inevitably declining. Their new hire is one of the world's most interesting thinkers on possible new businesses for telcos. Martin has been part of the Telco 2.0 group at STL Consultancy, the best small group of European analysts... more
At the end of 2017, I posted a review of important LEO-satellite Internet service developments. I've been updating those posts during the year and have also added the following new posts in 2018. ... SpaceX, OneWeb and Telesat are planning to offer Internet-service from LEO, but O3b is already providing connectivity to relatively large customers like mobile phone companies, government organizations, and cruise ship lines using a constellation of medium-Earth orbit (MEO) satellites. more
While Google admits that offering its services over IPv6 is still in its infancy, the company today announced the option for accessing Google services over IPv6. Last year, Google started offering Google search over IPv6 on IPv6-only websites like 'ipv6.google.com' requiring IPv6 connection, but other Google products have not been generally available over IPv6, says Google. "That's why we created Google over IPv6." more
Three companies, SpaceX, OneWeb, and Boeing are working on constellations of low-Earth orbiting satellites to provide Internet connectivity. While all three may be thinking of competing with long, terrestrial cables, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said "the goal will be to have the majority of long-distance traffic go over this (satellite) network" at the opening of SpaceX's Seattle office in 2015. Can he pull that off? more
The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University today announced the release of its 232-page study commissioned by the FCC examining global broadband deployment and usage. The draft of the study titled, "Next Generation Connectivity: A review of broadband Internet transitions and policy from around the world," has now been posted for public comment. more
Here is a list of the most viewed news and blog postings that were featured on CircleID in 2008... Best wishes for 2009 and Happy New Year from all of us here at CircleID. more
The telecommunication industry is continuing to resist structural changes, but the reality is that if they don't transform, technology will do it for them. We have seen the fixed telecom operators slowly being pushed back into the infrastructure utility market. Mobile networks are moving in that same direction - that is, the largest part of their network will be a utility, with currently two, three or four mobile infrastructure providers per country... the industry is facing serious problems. more
China briefly disconnected from much of the global internet for over an hour on Wednesday, following a disruption traced to the country's "Great Firewall." According to activist group Great Firewall Report, the outage began at 12:34 a.m. Beijing time and lasted until 1:48 a.m. on August 20. more
One of the obvious drivers of broadband usage is online video, and a study earlier this year by the Leichtman Research Group provides insight into the continuing role of video growth in broadband usage. The company conducted a nationwide poll in the US looking at how people watch video, and the results show that Americans have embraced online for-pay video services. more
2016 has seen a steady flow of announcements on successful Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) Proof-of-Concept deployments, mostly focused on virtualizing Customer Premise Equipment (vCPE). This has been a relatively straight forward starting point because unlike many other NFV applications, the vCPE use case does not involve complex activities like having to scale in or out individual services. more