As the rollout of fiber to the home project (FttH) remains a slow process, it is no wonder that more and more people are looking towards mobile as a potential alternative. Obviously, mobile communication has improved over recent years in providing excellent access to broadband. It has also become more affordable. At the same time, there is the hype surrounding 5G, and the public relations and media machines of the vendors involved makes you believe that this will become a real competitor to the slow-moving FttH developments. more
For the first time in my memory, broadband has entered into U.S. presidential politics. This is an important milestone for rural broadband – not because of the proposals being made by candidates, but because it indicates that the voices of those without rural broadband have reached upward to the top of the political system. I'm sure that when the presidential candidates go to rural areas, they are asked if they can help find a solution for the lack of broadband in many rural counties. more
Opensignal recently published a report that looks around the world at the quality of cellular video. Video has become a key part of the cellular experience as people are using cellphones for entertainment, and since social media and advertising have migrated to video. The use of cellular video is exploding. Netflix reports that 25% of its total streaming worldwide is sent to mobile devices. The new Disney+ app that was just launched got over 3 million downloads of their cellular app in just the first 24 hours. more
Damage to a single submarine cable has left the entire Red Sea region disconnected from the Internet. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Ethiopia have all suffered from the last week's cut of the so-called Falcon cable. more
I posted reviews of important LEO-satellite Internet service developments during 2017 and 2018. I've been updating those posts during the years and have 16 new posts for 2019. In 2019 we saw four inciteful simulations, Leosat suspending operations and Amazon announcing the availability of a new ground station service and plans for a LEO constellation, progress in phased-array antennas but a lowering of expectations for inter-satellite laser links (ISLLs), new competition from China... more
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Chief Technology Officer John Paul Farmer today announced an Internet Master Plan for the City aimed to chart a path for internet providers in the private sector to work in partnership with the City in order to address market gaps and deliver universal broadband to New Yorkers. more
A few weeks, I attended a one-day conference at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) at the occasion of the launch of their new $7.5 million Centre for Data Science. This laboratory is also the lead node of a new Australian Data Science Network, bringing together data science organizations from across the country. The new center aims to support data-led decisions across key areas like health, environment, business, government and society -- in short, data for the good. more
There is already a growing shortage of fiber resources that includes engineers, construction companies, and fiber consultants. The upcoming $16.4 billion RDOF program will create a resource shortage in 2020 for those who can help companies seek grant funding. Once the grants are awarded, the size of the program will add stress to the resources needed to build networks. Companies that don't line up their experts early might find themselves without help. more
Handley's simulation shows that, while not as fast as an equivalent ISLL path, long bent-pipe paths would typically have lower latency than terrestrial fiber routes between the same two points. Mark Handley, a professor at University College London, has made two terrific videos based on runs of his simulation of the first – 1,584 satellite – phase of SpaceX's Starlink Internet-service constellation. I discussed the first video, which assumes that the satellites have inter-satellite laser links (ISLLs), in recent post. more
Russia's Ministry of Communications has announced that it has successfully tested a country-wide alternative to the global Internet and that general users did not notice any changes. more
The fiber industry is as busy as I have ever seen it, and it's about to get even busier. The cellular carriers, particularly Verizon are actively building fiber to reach small cell sites. The cable companies are building a significant amount of fiber, particularly Altice which is upgrading to FTTP. The FCC is going to award $9 billion in 2020 for the 5G Fund grant program, much which will go for fiber to reach rural cell sites. more
A new book came out in November that tells about one of the first attempts to solve the digital divide on a large scale. The book is 'The Charisma Machine: The Life, Death, and Legacy of One Laptop per Child' published by MIT Press and available on Amazon and other places online. In 2005, Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of MIT Media Lab, created a program that he hoped would solve the digital divide in the third world. more
I ran across a website called the Gigabit Monitor that is tracking the population worldwide that has access to gigabit broadband. The website is sponsored by VIAVI Solutions, a manufacturer of network test equipment. The website claims that in the US, over 68.5 million people have access to gigabit broadband or 21% of the population. That number gets sketchy when you look at the details. more
One of the more interesting rules-of-thumb in the industry is Nielsen's Law of Internet bandwidth, which states that: A high-end user's connection speed grows by 50% per year. This 'law' was postulated by Jakob Nielsen of the Nielsen Norman Group in 1998 and subsequently updated in 2008 and 2019. Nielsen started by looking at usage for himself and other big data users, going back to a 300 bps (bits per second) modem used in 1984. more
Iran has almost entirely shut down internet access across the country amid protests over an increase in fuel prices. more
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