Broadband

Bill Gates Has Not Forgotten Teledesic – Might We See Another Broadband LEO Constellation?

Teledesic was the first company to plan to offer broadband connectivity using a constellation of low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellites. Craig McCaw, who had sold McCaw Cellular to AT&T, founded Teledesic in 1990 and it got a big visibility and credibility boost when Bill Gates made a small ($5 million) investment in the company. McCaw and Gates were able to attract capital - $200 million from a Saudi Prince, $750 million from Motorola, and $100 million from Boeing, which signed on as the prime contractor.  more

A New Fiber Optic Speed Record

Researchers at University College London (UCL) have set a new bandwidth record for fiber optic bandwidth transmission. They've been able to communicate through a fiber optic cable at over 178 terabits per second, or 178,000 gigabits per second. The research was done in collaboration with fiber optic firms Xtera and KDDI Research. The press release of the achieved speed claims this is 20% faster than the previously highest achieved speed. more

ICANN Introduces Pandemic Internet Access Reimbursement Program

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) on Monday announced its Pandemic Internet Access Program Pilot for the upcoming ICANN69 meetings. more

Is Telemedicine Here to Stay?

It's going to be interesting to see if telemedicine stays after the end of the pandemic. In the past months, telemedicine visits have skyrocketed. During March and April, telemedicine billings were almost $4 billion, compared to only $60 million for the same months a year earlier. As soon as Medicare and other insurance plans agreed to cover telemedicine, a lot of doctors insisted on remote visits during the first few months of the pandemic. more

Gaming and Broadband Demand

Broadband usage has spiked across the US this year as students and employees suddenly found themselves working from home and needing broadband to connect to school and work servers. But there is another quickly growing demand for broadband coming from gaming. We've had online gaming of some sort over the last decade, but gaming has not been a data-intensive activity for ISPs. more

Keeping Track of Satellites

The topic of satellite broadband has been heating up lately. Elon Musk's StarLink now has over 540 broadband satellites in the sky and is talking about starting a few beta tests of the technology with customers. OneWeb went into bankruptcy, but it is being bought out by a team consisting of the British government and Bharti Airtel, the largest cellular company in India. Jeff Bezos has continued to move forward with Project Kuiper, and the FCC recently gave the nod for the company to move ahead. more

The Impact of a Work-at-Home Economy

Analysts at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta looked at the long-term impact of working from home on the economy and ranked different parts of the economy on two factors related to working at home – the likelihood that an area will generate a lot of work-at-home opportunities, and the ability of an area to support a work-at-home economy. more

The Defense Department Opening Large Areas of Mid-Band Spectrum to Help US Compete With China in 5G

On Monday, the Trump administration announced plans to auction off 100 megahertz of mid-band spectrum dedicated initially to military purposes for commercial use starting in mid-2022 to fuel 5G network deployment in the United States. more

Is the Internet Sustaining the Growth Trajectories Observed as the COVID-19 Pandemic Hit the World?

With the COVID-19 pandemic hitting the fifth month of global disruption, many companies have readily shared data, statistics and observational insights on how the pandemic has impacted the global data infrastructure. At DE-CIX, we quickly observed core Internet infrastructure demand increasing and readily reported this data in April of 2020. Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella remarked to DatacenterDynamics in April of 2020 "we have seen two years' worth of digital transformation in two months." more

Washington’s 5G Mania Endpoint – Global CyberBalkanisation

Over the past two years, governments and foreign intelligence agencies around the world have tried to understand the inexplicable, chaotic, irrational, indeed maniacal 5G policies of the Trump Administration. Revelations by former Trump administration officials and most recently Trump's niece confirm that there is no rational basis for Trumpian positions and policies and that the best response is to recognize that Washington is no longer capable of playing a meaningful role... more

U.S. Department of Energy Unveils Blueprint for the Quantum Internet

In a press conference on Thursday at the University of Chicago, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) unveiled a report that lays out a blueprint strategy for the development of a national quantum internet. more

5G Carriers Hoping for Handouts

The Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) published a recent report that looks at "5G policy Principles and 5G Essentials for Global Policymakers." For those who don't know ITI, they are a DC-based lobbying group that represents most of heavy-hitter tech firms, and which works to help shape policy on tax, trade, talent, security, access, and sustainability issues. I don't think I've seen another document that so clearly outlines the hopes of the big US cellular companies. more

OneWeb Rises From the Ashes – Maybe

A consortium of the UK Government and Bharti Enterprises bought bankrupt OneWeb, a company that had raised $3.2 billion and had acquired valuable spectrum rights, for $1 billion. That is a good start, but a BBC article says experts believe that at least $3 billion is needed to complete the OneWeb constellation. Will they make it?
The UK government will be a source of further funding. OneWeb's primary goal is closing the digital divide by bringing broadband connectivity... more

Can 5G Compete with Cable Broadband?

One of the recurring themes used to promote 5G is that wireless broadband is going to become a serious competitor to wireline broadband. There are two primary types of broadband competition - competition by price or performance. Cable companies have largely won the broadband battle in cities and suburbs, and I've been thinking about the competition that cable companies might see from 5G. more

UK Bans Huawei 5G Equipment, Also Orders 5G Kit to Be Removed From UK Networks by 2027

All mobile providers in the UK will be banned from buying new Huawei 5G equipment after 31 December and ordered to remove all the Chinese firm's 5G kit from their networks by 2027. more