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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

New EU Satellites to Protect Government Communications, Provide Connectivity and Surveillance

A new network of European telecommunication satellites will be active from 2024, following the green light by European Parliament. The Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite project is aimed at providing a secure communications infrastructure for EU government bodies and agencies, emergency services and European delegations around the world. more

Cuban Satellite Connectivity - Today and (Maybe) Tomorrow

In January of 2017, Doug Madory of Dyn Research reported on Cuban traffic, noting that C&W's share had increased. Later in December Madory reported that ETECSA had activated a new internet transit provider, medium-Earth orbit (MEO) satellite-connectivity provider O3b Networks (Other 3 billion), replacing geostationary satellite provider Intelsat. (They have also added Telecom Italia, which, until 2011, owned 11% of ETECSA, but I will save that for another post). more

Telcos Players in the U.S. Set to Become Even Lazier

With all of the current turbulence in the American society, it is no wonder that its telecommunications market is also under severe pressure. In his election campaign, Trump promised his American supporters to make changes to what he called the Washington swamp, but it has become clear that the opposite is happening. While in previous Administrations lobbyists were at least somewhat separated from the politicians, now many of these lobbyists are actually part of the Trump Administration. more

Net Neutrality, Slippery Slopes &  High-Tech Mutually Assured Destruction

Ten years ago, Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman lamented the "Business Community's Suicidal Impulse:" the persistent propensity to persecute one's competitors through regulation or the threat thereof. Friedman asked: "Is it really in the self-interest of Silicon Valley to set the government on Microsoft?" After yesterday's FCC vote's to open a formal "Net Neutrality" rule-making, we must ask whether the high-tech industry -- or consumers -- will benefit from inviting government regulation of the Internet under the mantra of "neutrality." more

T-Mobile, Sprint Announce Merger Plans, Deal Will Combine 3rd and 4th Largest US Telecom Companies

T-Mobile and Sprint on Sunday announced a plan to merge in a deal that would reduce the number of wireless carriers in the U.S. from four to three. more

National Broadband Infrastructure: Global Regulatory Re-Think Required

Around the world governments, regulators and the industry are struggling with the old regulatory legacy systems. These have become a major stumbling block in the transition to a new environment. Increasingly countries are beginning to understand the social and economic benefits a national broadband infrastructure can offer, but it is impossible to bring that about while the systems are based on the present regulatory regimes. To take these broader benefits into account we will need to develop government policies to facilitate the digital economy... more

Internet for All Now: Legislation That Needs Your Support

California was recently reminded that rain can be very dangerous. In February, the nation's tallest dam, the Oroville dam in northern California, became so overloaded with rain that over a 100,000 people had to evacuate their homes. Many of them ended up at the fairgrounds, a common place for rural communities to gather in times of disaster. Many rural fairgrounds remain unconnected to broadband Internet services, which can make a dangerous situation worse. Especially during critical times, the public must be able to access resources and communicate with their loved ones through the Internet. more

The Growing Rate of Standalone Broadband Adoption

Parks Associates recently announced its Home Services Dashboard release, a for-pay service that tracks consumer adoption of telecom services like Internet, pay-TV, and cellphones. As part of the announcement, the company released a blog that shows that at the end of the first quarter of 2021 that 41% of US homes are buying standalone broadband - meaning broadband that's not bundled with cable TV or a home telephone. more

Apple Satellites?

Word has leaked out that Apple is working on a satellite project. The company is at the beginning of the research project, so there is no way to know exactly what they have in mind. For example, is the company considering launching satellites, or would they lease capacity from one of the other planned satellite networks? The fact that Apple is working on the concept is a good segue to discuss the many ways that satellite connectivity could be useful to Apple or other companies. more

Net Neutrality, Health Care, and “The Customer is Always Wrong!”

The surest way to screw up future innovative applications would be for ISPs to make constraining assumptions about the future based on existing applications' performance. Discussing P2P behavior as if it were some monolithic, unchanging entity is simply wrong. What is P2P? BitTorrent? Skype? CNN live video feed fan-outs? And what of changes to these existing apps? What of future apps? more

Analysing the USA: An Outsider’s Perspective

Over the last year I have become deeply involved in the debate in the USA regarding the future of their telecoms sector, which is proceeding very much along the lines of the trans-sector approach towards infrastructure (using it for other sectors such as healthcare, education, energy), open networks and a separation between infrastructure and applications. While many of the issues are universal it was also interesting to observe the specific elements that make the USA so unique. more

Looking Back on 2012: What’s in our Rearview Mirror?

Well, 2012 is almost over, and we can now reflect on the major events that hit our industry this year. If I had to choose the top three trends from the past 12 months, they would have to be: 1. Over-the-top (OTT) services; 2. IPv6 deployments (finally!); 3. TR-069 adoption. Let's examine each of these in more detail. more

Positive Outlook for Investments in Backbones

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

High-Speed Fibre Makes Up One-Quarter of Fixed Broadband Internet Connections in OECD Countries

Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reports that the share of high-speed fiber in fixed broadband Internet connections in its member countries has risen to 25%, up from 12% eight years ago. more