Last Sunday I attended the 10th meeting of the UN Broadband Commission for Digital Development in New York, where we launched this new report -- State of Broadband Report 2014. Here are some of the highlights of the report. Over 50% of the global population will have Internet access within three years' time, with mobile broadband over smartphones and tablets now the fastest growing technology in human history, according to the 2014 edition of the State of Broadband report. more
In the 2014 Istanbul-Turkey IGF workshop on policies to promote broadband access in developing countries organised by Rui ZHONG of ISOC China, we realized that while technological solutions are advancing rapidly, policy and regulations remain a significant barrier to affordable internet especially in the developing world. According to a report by Alliance for Affordable Internet ( A4AI), the key to affordability is the policy and regulatory environment that shapes the different actors in the market. more
This never-ending story is used by opportunistic telcos and their lobbyists to confuse the issue in order to gain regulatory or political advantage. The debate is now raging again in the USA. In an attempt to talk down their monopolistic position in the market the three telcos - and this time in particular, Comcast - are claiming that real competition does in fact exist in the American broadband market, citing competition from the mobile 4G LTE services as an example. more
A new coalition of public and private entities was launched today with the mission to support the rights of local communities to make their own decisions regarding broadband Internet networks - "unhindered by state laws or other policies that attempt to stifle or preclude local innovation and investment." more
The timeline of the Net Neutrality issue has been detailed here. And quoting from Vox: 'Wheeler said that peering is "an issue that we are investigating, it's an issue we are very interested in, but it's not the issue here today."' more
With more than 100 countries now involved in the rollout of FttH there is increased evidence that commercial demand exists for this infrastructure. In developed economies FttH demand will, over the next 5 years, grow to between 30%-50% of the population. Competition aimed at the top end of this market will trigger a broader rollout. A Bernstein study of Google's rollout of FttH in Kansas City concluded that the penetration measured by them was much higher than they had expected. more
The Internet was replaced by a dual system created in 2014: a fiber optic network called "Net2Cash". It has a speed of one hundred Petabits per second (equivalent to 100 million Gigabits per second or 100,000 million Megabits per second). We no longer talk about Megabytes or Gigabytes because that is old school. Nowadays a couple of Exabites store the content of all written by man, from books and newspapers to Sumerian clay tablets; from Inca quipus and Egyptian hieroglyphs to all homework made by kids registered in elementary school. more
When talking about the problems of attracting infrastructure funds to the telecoms industry, I would make one exception; that is backbone infrastructure... We increasingly describes mobile networks as fibre networks with a wireless access component. This clearly indicates the need for fixed backbone network capacity, eventually all the way to the street. more
Peering has come back in the news with the FCC mentioning it in its set of reviews of the telecommunications market in the USA, following its Network Neutrality decision. The peering and interconnect issues are going to the heart of the telecoms matter in relation to competition, innovation and the Open Network. You don't need Network Neutrality rules, if you have a well functioning, transparent, interoperable and competitive infrastructure environment. more
It is interesting that when governments and financial investors, such as superannuation funds, talk about infrastructure investments and infrastructure investment funds they rarely include telecommunications in their deliberations... Most politicians and infrastructure investors have problems seeing telecoms infrastructure in that context. From a visionary and strategic aspect one could argue that, at a political level at least, telecoms should be seen as, and included in any policies on, national infrastructure. more
Carlos Slim of Telmex tells me the world is about to change. "Two billion more people will connect to the Internet when smartphones cost $50. The phone makers are promising me a $50 phone in 2014." If Spreadtrum and Firefox deliver a $25 smartphone, as promised, that could accelerate takeover. ~310,000,000 Africans will be connected to the Internet in 2017, Arielle Sumits of Cisco predicts... It's inevitable that the U.S. will be dwarfed by the rest of the world. more
Facebook has announced more details on how its Connectivity Lab is working to connect the world from the sky with drones, satellites and lasers. more
While there are plenty of articles continuously updating us on the incredible social and economic developments that are taking place in China it is still sometimes good to stand still and have a look at some of these developments. It was 15 years ago that the Chinese Government - in its 5-year plan - stated that it wanted to connect all of its half million villages to the telecommunications network. At that point the plan simply called for narrowband telephone connections. more
Last month, I talked about keeping the Winter Olympics from clogging up your networks as employees raced to stream live events during the workday. Well, in the U.S., we are in the middle of NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament, the annual "madness" repeats itself all over again. And let's be honest, most of us want to sneak a peek at the scores and witness some of the thrilling upsets that happen every year. more
For many years I have been saying that in order to generate business cases that will support the developments of national broadband networks it is necessary to take into account the social and economic benefits of such investments. The reality is that these benefits do not show up on the balance sheets of the traditional telecoms infrastructure companies and this is a key reason they are reluctant to make such investments. more
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