In our physical world, census information is used to inform the planning processes behind the provision of infrastructure, such as schools, hospitals, housing, and similar. It can be used to assess the impact of natural disasters or to understand a society's needs in terms of food and energy security. Demographic data is also used to inform investment and business decisions. You'd think that the Internet itself would be awash with similar information. more
From all across the country, I'm hearing that communities without broadband are tired of waiting for a broadband solution. Local broadband advocates and politicians tell me that folks with little or no broadband are hounding them about when they are going to see a broadband solution. A large part of the frustration is that folks have heard that broadband is coming to rural America but aren't seeing any local progress or improvement. 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
The non-stop wireless industry claims that we've moved from 4G to 5G finally slowed to the point that I stopped paying attention to it during the last year. There is an interesting article in PC Magazine that explains why 5G has dropped off the front burner. The article cites interviews with Art Pouttu of Finland's University of Oulu about the current state and the future of 5G. That university has been at the forefront of the development of 5G technology and is already looking at 6G technology. more
With a data rate of 6 Gigabit per second over a distance of 37 kilometers, a collaborative project in Germany including researchers from the University of Stuttgart and the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics IAF has exceeded "the state of the art by a factor of 10" -- equivalent to transmitting the contents of a conventional DVD in under ten seconds. more
New technology enables new art forms and artists Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz (K&S) began working with geostationary satellite links in 1977. Their first work was an experiment in remote dance and music. Video of dancers at The Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and an educational television center in California was transmitted to a central control studio where a composite was formed and sent back to monitors the dancers could see. more
In the fourth quarter of 2010, a mobile provider in Greece (GR-1) had the highest average connection speed, at just over 4.5 Mbps, according to Akamai's latest State of the Internet Report. "The mobile providers in Slovakia and Russia that had previously been reported as having the highest average connection speeds were removed from consideration in the fourth quarter, as further research determined that their autonomous systems carried a mix of traffic from fixed and mobile connections." more
An industry group calling itself 5G Americas has published a whitepaper that touts the advantages of a smart auto grid powered by 5G and the C-V2X technology. This technology is the car connectivity standard that much of the industry has gelled around, replacing the older DSRC standard. Over a decade ago, the FCC became so enamored over the idea of self-driving cars that the agency dedicated the 5.9 GHz spectrum band for the sole use of smart cars. more
I periodically take a look at broadband trends into the future. But as I was thinking about how unique 2020 was for everybody, I realized that there were some events during the year that we're going to look back on a decade from now as important to the broadband industry. Interestingly, most of these events were not on anybody's radar at the beginning of the year. more
"Pai, a Barack Obama nominee who has served as the senior FCC Republican for more than three years, could take the new role immediately and wouldn't require approval by the Senate because he was already confirmed to serve at the agency," Alex Byers and Tony Romm reporting in Politico. more
Verizon and AWS have deepened their collaboration to build dedicated fiber infrastructure, addressing the growing need for low-latency, high-capacity connectivity to support the rapid expansion of enterprise-scale artificial intelligence workloads. more
"In a defeat for digital privacy advocates, the House of Representatives voted Tuesday to allow internet service providers to sell information about consumers’ browsing history without their knowledge or consent," Molly Olmstead reporting in Slate. more
As the recent Senate vote on gun reform legislation has shown (wherein 42 of the 45 dissenting senators had recently received donations from gun industry lobbyists), getting things done for the good of the people is a hard task where legislation is concerned. It has been thus with the US's broadband infrastructure for years. A number of states have legislated against community broadband networks, often resulting from the lobbying efforts of the main telcos affected. State Legislatures commonly pass bills revoking local decision-making authorities from communities, effectively making them dependent on the dominant cableco and DSL provider. more
Despite its promise of universal access, Starlink often fails to meet broadband benchmarks across key markets. New data reveals fluctuating performance and raises questions about reliability, digital equity, and tiered service models. more
OpenVault Just released its Broadband Industry Report for 4Q 2019 that tracks the way that the US consumes data. The results of the reports are as eye-opening as OpenVault reports for the last few years. OpenVault has been collecting broadband usage for more than ten years. As usual, the OpenVault statistics are a wake-up cry for the industry. more