Google and Verizon have developed a "Proposal" on Internet access which I am sure they expect to serve as a template, starting point and frame of reference going forward. In light of the FCC's judicial reversal in the Comcast case, the absence of substantive progress at the FCC and the unlikelihood of congressional action, two major stakeholder can and have taken the lead. It should come as no surprise that Verizon and Google have emphasized and begrudgingly compromised on their corporate interests. more
Fibre-based infrastructure requires vision and recognition of the fact that many of today's social, economic and sustainability problems can only be solved with the assistance of information and communications technology (ICT). In many situations the capacity, robustness, security and quality necessary for this calls for fibre optic infrastructures. This need will increase dramatically over the next 5 to 10 years as industries and whole sectors (healthcare, energy, media, retail) carry out the process of transforming themselves in order to much better address the challenges ahead. more
Last night millions of people were left without electricity in two of Brazils' biggest cities, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, as a result of a massive power failure. Consequently the outage has also had a significant impact on telecommunications and the Internet routing system in a number of South American regions. According to a related report released today by Renesys, while Brazil took the largest hit, Paraguayan and Uruguayan networks also went out "as a result of the largest regional power outage to hit Brazil and its neighbors in several years." more
There was a somewhat unfortunate outage for a major communications service provider in Australia, Optus, in mid-November. It appears that one of their peer Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) networks mistakenly advertised a very large route collection to the Optus BGP network, which caused the routers to malfunction in some manner. more
China's internet development has released a report stating the number of internet users in China reached 802 million at the end of June, an increase of 3.8 percent from six months ago. more
If you are passionate about ICT policy, Peering, and Interconnection, then the Africa Peering and Interconnection Forum (AfPIF) is the place to be. The 7th annual AfPIF takes place in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania from 30 August – 1 September 2016. AfPIF is a multistakeholder forum organized by the Internet Society that brings together a diverse range of business leaders, infrastructure providers, Internet service providers (ISPs), Internet Exchange Points (IXPs), international financial institutions, policy-makers, and regulators from all over the world. more
The United States House and Senate Democratic leaders are about to unveil new legislation today proposing to restore federal net neutrality rules on Internet providers. more
Many commentators rushed into print when they heard that Craig Barratt, senior vice-president of Google's parent company Alphabet and CEO of Access (the unit of which Google Fiber is part), stated that he would quit the job and that Google would slow down or stop its fibre deployment. So, yes, obviously something is happening at Google; but at the same time, the company has a commitment to complete the fiber deployment projects it has already started and also to build the many new networks that have been announced over the last six months. more
At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Tom Wheele, the FCC Chairman, gave a range of spirited responses to a grilling from the Director of the GSMA, Anne Bouverot. She was following the line of the telcos and questioned if the FCC intervention would stifle growth and investments in the market; however she had problems reconciling her position with the fact that, despite these regulatory changes, the American industry was still prepared to invest a whopping $45 billion in new spectrum. more
It's Friday, a day to tie some threads together. There were three announcements/events this week that are connected in a non-obvious way... These three elements go together in creating a picture of US policy towards Internet access at the beginning of 2008. Rather than seeing the Internet as an engine for economic growth, creativity, innovation, and new jobs -- and as the converged communications medium for the next generation -- current policy is to wait for private companies to decide when investment in access makes sense for them. Those private companies have plenty of incentives to shape access to suit their own business plans. more
The mobile phone market is growing exponentially and will continue to evolve for years to come. Why has the Cable Industry not moved into the lucrative mobile phone market? It could definitely be a revenue bonanza, as it currently is for telecom companies. ... Verizon and AT&T's revenues, as a percentage of stock price by division, attributes mobile phone service up to 40-42% of total revenues. more
There is no such thing as a 25/3 Mbps broadband connection, or a 100/20 Mbps broadband connection, or even a symmetrical gigabit broadband connection on fiber. For a long list of reasons, the broadband speeds that make it to customers vary widely by the day, the hour, and the minute. And yet, we've developed an entire regulatory system built around the concept that broadband connections can be neatly categorized by speed. more
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
Something over 55% of landline broadband users are in the "Global South," about 500M. The South is about 65% if you include "wireless-only" many of which are 4G LTE at ten megabits or more. The gap is widening rapidly and will increase by well over 70M in 2018. Six large developing countries are growing 5% or more in the last year, compared to only one in the developed world. China is adding ~30M more each year. Most developed countries are between 75% and 95% connected. That leaves little room for growth. more
In 2014 I wrote a blog asking if 4K video was going to become mainstream. At that time, 4K TVs were just hitting the market and cost $3,000 and higher. There was virtually no 4K video content on the web other than a few experimental videos on YouTube. But in seven short years, 4K has become a standard technology. Netflix and Amazon Prime have been shooting all original content in 4K for several years, and the rest of the industry has followed. more
A World-Renowned Source for Internet Developments. Serving Since 2002.