Access Providers

Map Illustrates Global Internet Population and Penetration

A map released by Information Geographies at the Oxford Internet Institute illustrates the total number of Internet users in a country as well as the percentage of the population that has Internet access. "The distortion in the map paints a revealing picture about human activity on the Internet. China is now home to the world’s largest Internet population at over half a billion. The United States, India, and Japan then follow as the next most populous nations of Internet users." more

US-China Tech War Threatens Global Internet Infrastructure: China Plans $500 Million Subsea Cable Rival

Chinese state-owned telecom firms plan an extensive undersea fiber-optic internet cable network to link Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. The cable, to be named EMA (Europe-Middle East-Asia), would cost approximately $500 million to complete and be manufactured and laid by China's HMN Technologies Co Ltd, a fast-growing cable firm whose predecessor company was majority-owned by Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies Co Ltd. more

Cuban Undersea Cable Politics

Undersea cables between the U. S. and Cuba have long been intertwined with politics. In 1887, The New York Times reported on the inauguration of a cable in support of the Cuban insurgents fighting for independence from Spain -- a precursor to the Spanish-American war. Phone service between the U.S. and Cuba began in 1921 with AT&T's installation of an undersea cable and AT&T dominated international telephony to Cuba until the 1990s. more

Reflections on the Pandemic Effect on Internet Use and Democracy

Last year, around the same time, the release on the same day of two flagship reports on 'the Internet' had prompted me to write an article on CircleID entitled 'Connecting the Next 46 Percent: Time to Pick the Good From the Bad and the Ugly'. I was then prudently asking whether 'the more we connect the world, the less free it becomes?'. Who would have known that a pandemic would erupt a few months later, unveiling different perspectives in assessing that very same question? more

Investing in Rural Broadband

There was a headline in a recent FierceTelecom article that I thought I'd never see - Jeffries analyst says the rural broadband market is ripe for investment. In the article, analyst George Notter is quoted talking about how hot rural broadband is as an investment. He cites the large companies that have been making noise about investing in rural broadband. Of course, that investment relies on getting significant rural grants. more

A Repeat Performance for Cable TV 3Q22

Traditional cable providers in the United States continue to lose cable TV customers at the same fast pace as the second quarter of the year. In the third quarter, the cable companies list 1.68 million customers after losing over 1.65 million customers in the second quarter. These numbers come from Leichtman Research Group, which compiles most of these numbers from the statistics provided to stockholders, except for Cox, which is privately held and estimated. more

Amazon Gets FCC Approval to Deploy Its Project Kuiper Broadband Satellites

Today, the FCC has sided with Amazon in a regulatory battle over Project Kuiper, the company's satellite internet system. Despite objections from rival SpaceX, the commission has approved Amazon's plan to prevent the upcoming satellite internet constellation from causing orbital debris in space. more

The US-China Technology Cold War Battle Over Optical Communication in Space

The United States and its allies are in a technology cold war with China and its allies. This is evidenced by major battles like the US ban on Huawei and China's drive for technological independence and their global infrastructure program to create a digital silk road. (The cold war began under Trump, but President Biden is continuing it). There are other, less well-known battles like the battle over optical communication in space. more

Fiber to the Home: Ideal Economic Stimulus?

This week, the headlines seem to be full of fresh doom and gloom for wireline carriers, who employ people in every congressional district across America. Sooner or later, someone is going to call for Congress to tap some of the hundreds of billions in 2009 economic stimulus to help the LECs through troubled times, save lots of jobs, and preserve the way we do business in our critical last-mile communications infrastructure. Is this wise? Is there a better way? more

Whose Network is it Anyway?

In reading a Q&A with Verizon's Brian Whitten I found this striking Q and A: "Q. With a fiber connection being symmetric, many fiber providers such as Paxio are providing symmetric connections such as 5Mbit, 10Mbit, 30Mbit. Why is Verizon keeping this arbitrary asymmetric limit with Fiber? A. ...Indeed, our FTTP network can easily support a symmetric data service. As market dynamics change, we would re-assess the benefit to our customers of introducing a class of symmetric data services." My reaction is "No thank you, I'd rather do it myself". To understand my reaction you need to recognize the difference between wanting to build my own bridge across a stream and asking why I'm not allowed to cross it myself using my own boat. more

Will Work for Bandwidth

The Internet is in for interesting times. Previously, on Renysys' blog I wrote about the engineering issues and the policy issues facing us over the next five years. But there is at least one large issue still lurking. Most of you will not be surprised to learn that almost all of these issues are outgrowths of a single factor: money. The core of the Internet still doesn't have a sustainable business model. more

ICANN and Free Speech

Upon being appointed as ICANN's new CEO in Sydney, Rod Beckstrom gave a rousing speech in which he stressed the vital importance of free expression on the Internet... Many ordinary, powerless people are indeed willing to fight and die. But is ICANN going to help them? Or at very least make sure that their decisions won't help those who want to muzzle them? more

The WiFi 6 Revolution

We're edging closer every day to seeing WiFi 6 in our homes. WiFi 6 will be bolstered by the newly approved 6 GHz frequency, and the combination of WiFi 6 and 6 GHz spectrum is going to revolutionize home broadband. I don't think many people understand how many of our home broadband woes are caused by current WiFi technology. WiFi has been an awesome technology that freed our homes from long category 5 wires everywhere, but WiFi has a basic flaw that became apparent when homeowners started to buy hordes of WiFi-enabled devices.  more

Meta Spells Out Absurdity of EU’s Plan to Tax Big Tech for Broadband Expansion

The EU is proposing a telecom-industry-backed plan to effectively tax Big Tech companies, with the intention of throwing that money toward Big Telecom companies for broadband expansion. The proposal is part of the EU's efforts to craft digital policies for the next few decades, with an eye on shoring up lagging broadband access. more

ISPs in UK Legally Obliged to Provide High-Speed Broadband Upon Request, Starting 2020

UK Government says internet providers will be legally required to meet user requests for speeds of at least 10Mbps starting in 2020. more