Broadband

Why You Needed to Be at eComm 2009

I've been posting photos and snippets during eComm 2009 this week, but composing my overall impressions has been another matter. Sitting through 3 days mostly filled with continuous 15 minute presentations is a surefire recipe to fry your brain, and most people I talked to were topped out well before things wrapped up Thursday night. It's information overload of the highest -- and best -- order... Here's my top-line takeaway, and reading the rest of this post is really just detail. But it's detail you'll probably love if you really want to know what you missed... more

How to Move Telecoms Forward in the USA

In the last few weeks courts in the USA have carried on business as usual. They continue to provide the two major telcos in the USA, Verizon and AT&T, with extraordinary protection -- basically retaining the outdated regulatory system in the USA that identifies the duopoly between the telcos and the cablecos as the best way forward for the development of telecoms competition in this country. This is rather different from the position taken by the new Obama Administration, which has indicated that it will break with past regulations... more

WiMAX Has Early Lead Over LTE, Says New Report

Mobile WiMAX will outpace LTE over the next few years due to its head start on deployments, reports In-Stat. While WiMAX and LTE will take very different paths, the report suggests Mobile WiMAX already has commercial deployments where as LTE won't be commercially available until late 2009. more

New Internet Study Finds Web and Streaming Higher Than P2P Traffic

ipoque, a European deep packet inspection hardware provider has published an Internet study for 2008/2009 providing an overview of the Internet's current state based on analyzing 1.3 petabytes of Internet traffic -- "the amount of data equal to 300,000 DVDs" -- in eight regions of the world (Northern Africa, Southern Africa, South America, Middle East, Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, Southwestern Europe, Germany). The study includes the use of about 100 of the most popular Internet protocols including P2P, VoIP, media streaming, instant messaging. more

Dumb When They Want To Be…

David Akin pointed me to this article in the Ottawa Citizen which describes CRTC initiatives aimed at getting the cablecos to pay into a fund that would support, "the creation of high-quality, high-cost, scripted Canadian broadcasting content in the new media." In it, Ken Engelhart, senior vice-president of regulatory [affairs?] for Rogers Corp. is quoted saying... more

FttH Boom in North Asia

In the mid-year 2008 rankings by the Fibre-to-the-Home (FttH) Council, South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan occupy the top four positions in terms of household penetration percentage. Asia Pacific now accounts for more than 27 million of the world’s 32 million FttH connections. more

Government Policies Beyond Broadband

The telecom infrastructure decisions we are now facing have very little to do with developments or the need for services in 2009 or 2010. They are more related to where the digital economy is taking us in the future. This is well beyond the time needed to kick-start sluggish economies. more

Open Networks Delivering the Goods for All

The City of Amsterdam announcement to now move to the next stage of their FttH (fibre to the home) project -- with another roll out covering 100,000 connections -- is a clear indication that the concept of open access FttH networks is a valid one. This will have large scale implications for countries around the world who are looking at using open network based telecoms infrastructure projects to stimulate their economies. more

Telco Stimulus Package: Australian Case Study

Most developed nations are now revisiting their telecoms policies with a view to using telecoms infrastructure as a tool to revive the economy. And when exploring this it quickly becomes clear that open networks are necessary if we are to achieve the economic benefits that the digital economy has to offer. The multiplier effect of open infrastructure is obvious. It stimulates developments in healthcare, education, energy, media and Internet -- this in stark contrast to the closed (vertically-integrated) networks that are currently operated by most incumbent telcos around the world. more

Google, Microsoft, Motorola, Others Launch the White Spaces Database Group

In the move towards enabling mobile devices to use TV white spaces spectrum, Google along with Comsearch, Dell, HP, Microsoft, Motorola, and Neustar today announced the launch of White Spaces Database Group. The creation of this database has been part of FCC's big vote and approval of white spaces for broadband back in November. This is a required measure to ensure devices can locate channels and avoid interference. more

Benkler Analyzes Broadband in Stimulus Bills

Yochai Benkler has done a close reading of the broadband portions of both House and Senate stimulus bills. Nice work. To summarize Yochai's summary: House: $6 Billion, split between Commerce and Agriculture Depts., requires adherence to FCC's Four Internet Principles (the Martin FCC Version); Senate: $9 Billion, via Commerce Department's NTIA, requires less specific "interconnection and nondiscrimination." How much broadband can a Billion buy? more

An Interview With Richard Whitt, Google’s Washington Telecom and Media Counsel

I recently had the opportunity to interview, Richard Whitt, Google's Washington Telecom and Media Counsel, who will be one of the keynote speakers at the upcoming Emerging Communications Conference (eComm 2009) being held on March 3-5 at the San Francisco Airport Marriott. The following is the transcript of our phone conversation and the audio recording of the interview. more

Extra Details on the Measurement Lab Launch

Well if you've been following tech news today, you probably already know -- after month (years, really) of work, the MeasurementLab.net (M-Lab) initiative has now officially launched. Given how many people have been working on this project, I'm amazed it didn't leak. Having just launched, I've been stunned by the immediate outpouring of interest — not only did it peg our servers, taking a couple of the research tools momentarily offline, but my inbox has been entirely flooded by correspondences. more

Google and Others Launch M-Lab, Allows Users Track ISP Performance

Announced today, Google Inc. along with the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute, PlanetLab Consortium, and academic researchers are launching a new initiative called Measurement Lab, or M-Lab. According to Google's announcement, M-Lab is an open, distributed server platform for researchers to deploy Internet measurement tools. "The goal of M-Lab is to advance network research and empower the public with useful information about their broadband connections. By enhancing Internet transparency, M-Lab helps sustain a healthy, innovative Internet." more

Obama’s Tech Stimulus Plan: Health IT, Broadband, and Smart Grid

Steve Lohr has a nice piece in the New York Times ('Technology Gets a Piece of Stimulus,' 26 Jan 2009, p. C1) this morning about the role that technology and innovation will play in the economic recovery (aka stimulus) bill supported by the Obama Administration. In the past, health IT deployment has been approached as an engineering problem: what computers have to be part of which networks exchanging which types of data? This loses sight of the purpose of electronic medical records... more