Access Providers

Cuba Reaches Five Million Mobile Accounts

Cubans now have 5 million mobile accounts. The five-millionth account was recently opened Guanabacoa, in the eastern part of Havana and we see here that growth slowed last year, but has resumed -- perhaps due to increased 3G availability. Most Cubans have 2G phones, which are used primarily for making calls and sending text messages that may have attached images. more

Getting Ready for the Metaverse

In a recent article in LightReading, Mike Dano quotes Dan Rampton of Meta as saying that the immersive metaverse experience is going to require a customer latency between 10 and 20 milliseconds. The quote came from a Wireless Infrastructure Association Connect (WIAC) trade show presentation. Dano says the presentation was aimed at big players like American Tower and DigitalBridge, which are investing heavily in major data centers. more

Can 5G Replace WiFi?

Verizon recently posted a webcast with investors where Ronan Dunne, EVP and CEO of the Verizon Consumer Group said that he believed that 5G hotspots using millimeter wave spectrum would eventually displace WiFi in homes. He cites major benefits of 5G over WiFi. He believes that a 5G network will be more reliable and more secure. He thinks that people will value the safety that comes from having traffic inside their home being encrypted... more

SpaceX Starlink Service in Ukraine Is an Important Government Asset

At 4:04 AM on February 26 Mykhailo Fedorov, Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine requested Starlink service from Elon Musk and at 2:45 PM on the 26th, Elon Musk tweeted "Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More terminals en route." On February 28 at 12:29 PM Fedorov posted a photo of a truck load of terminals. (Kyiv is 10 hours ahead of California). more

Beavers Kill Fiber Route

An article from CBC earlier this year reported that beavers had chewed through an underground fiber and had knocked 900 customers in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia off broadband for 36 hours. The beavers had chewed through a 4.5-inch conduit that was buried three feet underground. This was an unusual fiber cut because it was due to beavers, but animals damaging fiber is a common occurrence. more

America Closing Down Its Copper Network - So What’s Next?

We have reported in the past on the rapid decline of the copper telecoms network in the USA. A decade ago BuddeComm predicted that it would be impossible to move two customer access networks in parallel towards the new fibre future, the one operated by the telcos and the other operated by the cable companies. At that stage we indicated that a possible outcome could be that the telcos would upgrade their networks to FttH and that the cable companies would become the key tenants on that network. more

DNS, My God It’s Full of Stars…

Since my last post about DNS subversion we have had some good feedback. We had 29 responses, I agree a small sample, but what we found is very interesting. Let's remind ourselves of what we are looking at? Does your ISP redirect DNS queries? Specifically, if you try to make a port 53 UDP or TCP connection to a server outside of your ISP's network does it get there? more

23 Countries Ahead of U.S. in Internet Usage According to ITU Broadband Report

United States ranks 24th worldwide in the percentage of residents who use the Internet, according to the International Telecommunications Union's 2013 State of Broadband Report, released recently at a meeting of the Broadband Commission for Digital Development. Eighty-one percent of U.S. residents use the Internet, the ITU said. Countries with the highest percentage of people using the Internet was Iceland, where 97 percent of the people are Internet users. The top 10 countries all had usage rates above 88 percent. more

Why Most Discussions for Fibre Optic Infrastructure Take Place from the Wrong Perspective

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

FCC Announces Near $1 Billion Plan to Restore Broadband in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai today proposed close to $954 million toward restoring and expanding communications networks in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands that were damaged and destroyed as a result of the 2017 hurricane. more

eco and AV-Test Publish Monthly topDNS Reports for Internet Service Providers

eco's topDNS initiative and AV-Test are publishing monthly reports to help ISPs detect and mitigate DNS abuse by analysing malware, phishing, and PUA trends, creating a long-term data foundation for industry-wide transparency. more

Trans-Sector Thinking Spreading to the Highest Levels in Government

Australia, New Zealand and the USA have taken international leadership in relation to their approaches to the infrastructure investment their countries are committed to in relation to the multi-billion dollar investment in national broadband and smart grid infrastructure. This is based on open networks, which will allow multiple access to infrastructure that can be used for e-health, smart grids, tele-education, as well as, of course, to telecoms, Internet and entertainment services. more

Mobile Broadband in Africa and the GCC Countries

The story of the growth of pre-paid mobile voice and SMS in Africa and the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council is well known. The challenge is to move to mobile broadband, which is seen as having potentially explosive growth. Operators will need to create new value propositions, they face significant internal challenges and risk being displaced by rivals moving faster or better able to understand and meet the needs of customers... more

Will Telesat Survive?

In 2017, Telesat, an established Canadian geostationary satellite operator, announced a planned low-Earth orbit Internet service constellation. The plan called for 117 satellites with inter-satellite laser links in a mix of inclined and polar orbits, enabling global coverage. more

The Canoe Tipping Point

Google has successfully created a nationwide (worldwide) fine-grained, targeted ad market by using queries to its search engine. The cable industry would like to be able to use its cable and broadband subscriber data to create a nationwide, fine-grained, targeted ad market. This race has substantial implications for the future of online video -- and online activity generally. more