Broadband

Broadband Consumption Continues Explosive Growth

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

My Name is Vint Cerf, I’m a Scientist and I am Voting for Barack Obama

Vint Cerf, Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist who is also credited as the co-founder of the Internet, has endorsed U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama in a YouTube video submitted to AVoteForScience channel. In the video, Cerf discusses the importance of Net Neutrality (NN) and the fact that Obama is the candidate that supports NN. The following excerpt is a portion of what Cerf says in the video... more

ITU Targeting Broadband for Over Half of World Population by 2015

ITU Secretary-General, Dr. Hamadoun Touré, has challenged global leaders to ensure that more than half of all the world's people have access to broadband networks by 2015, and make access to high-speed networks a basic civil right. "Broadband will be a game-changer in addressing rising healthcare costs, delivering digital education, empowering marginalized communities, and mitigating climate change." more

FCC Implements Broadband Labels

The FCC voted recently to implement consumer broadband labels. This was required by section 60504 of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The new rules will become effective after the Office of Management, and Budget approves the new rules and after the final notice is published in the federal register. ISPs will then generally have six months to implement the labels. The labels look a lot like the nutrition labels that accompany food. more

U.S. Falls Behind China in Broadband, Light-Touch Regulation Blamed for the Decline

Recent reports indicate that China has now surpassed the U.S. and is becoming the number one broadband country in the world. According to data analysis by market research firm Point Topic, both the U.S. and China had about 78 million broadband lines at the end of August; however China is growing twice as fast. Point Topic says that when broadband use initially surged in China, some experts predicted the country would overtake the U.S. in 2006. However the U.S. speeded up in the number of broadband lines and growth in China leveled off. For 18 months the two countries were more or less even with similar numbers of lines added in each quarter until the first quarter of this year. 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

What Will 2021 Have Install for the ICT Industry?

While 2021 will remain a year with lots of uncertainties, at the same time, we can say that the pandemic has not affected the information and communications technology (ICT) industry in any significant way. Yes, there has been a slowdown, for example, in the sale of smartphones. Shortages in both materials and expertise are slowing fiber deployment, and the recovery over 2021 will be slow and uncertain because of the many lockdowns and travel restrictions. more

The Myth of Infinite Bandwidth

Back in the late 1990s I was often asked what I thought would happen if Internet bandwidth was infinite -- what would that change about the Internet itself? Level 3's (LVLT) recent decision to slash prices on its content distribution network and rumors of new multi-terabit cables across the Pacific have me wondering if we are actually getting closer to having infinite bandwidth. But when replying to the infinite bandwidth question I was prone to posing a return question -- what does infinite bandwidth actually mean? more

17 Countries to Reach 60% Household Broadband Penetration by 2012, Says New Study

Worldwide consumer broadband connections will grow from 323 million connections in 2007 to 499 million in 2012, according to latest research by Gartner. Worldwide consumer broadband connections penetrated 18 percent of households in 2007, and by 2012, households with a broadband connection are expected to reach 25 percent. Five countries exceeded 60 percent broadband penetration into the home in 2007; and, this is expected to grow to 17 countries by 2012. The five countries with broadband penetration into the home above 60 percent are Canada, Netherlands, Switzerland, South Korea and Hong Kong. more

FCC Adopts New Rules for 5G Networks, US First Nation to Make the Move

U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopts new rules to enable rapid development and deployment of next generation 5G technologies and services. more

Net Neutrality Alternative: Effective Interpretation, Oversight and Enforcement of Existing Rules

The US government is proposing broad new regulations for telecommunications and cable internet service providers. The new proposals appear to target specific providers for regulation and government oversight. Specifically, Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey has proposed the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009, or the "Net Neutrality" bill, outlining government policies to impose new governance and restrictions targeting telecommunications and cable providers AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner and Comcast. more

Expect Big Changes from Streaming Video

One of the biggest uses of bandwidth continues to be streaming video from the many online vendors like Netflix, Disney, Hulu, and many others. Final 2022 earnings reports show that this is an industry segment in crisis. Altogether, the losses for just these four video platforms were almost $11 billion in 2022. There are other big platforms like Apple, Google (YouTube), and Amazon that don't specifically report on the performance of the video streaming segment. more

Is the U.S. Dancing to a Different Drummer?

Is the United States in full retreat from internationally recognized regulatory best practice? Or is it instead headed toward some different destination -- "dancing to the beat of a different drummer"? Where is this likely to lead? The following is an introduction to a paper, published by IDATE, from J. Scott Marcus, a Senior Consultant for WIK-Consult GmbH: "...What has radically changed is telecoms regulatory practice in the United States. The U.S., in a long series of regulatory decisions, has largely abandoned its long-standing regulatory principles and moved in an entirely new direction." more

War-Torn Syrian City Aleppo Gets New Fiber Link

The northern Syrian city of Aleppo is one of the key battlegrounds of that country's on-going civil war as well as the epicenter of the European refugee crisis. The most appropriate United States response to events in Aleppo has become a major foreign policy question among the candidates in this year's U.S. presidential election. Experts are now predicting that forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, backed by the Russian military, will take control of rebel-held eastern Aleppo within weeks. more

Why Don’t We Have Peak and Off-Peak Pricing for Broadband?

I saw a poster on the London Underground yesterday, and as is often the case it got me thinking about the parallels with telecoms. The poster explains the peak and off-peak fare structure for tube travel. The purpose of this pricing system is to manage the relationship between supply and demand in a system that is capacity constrained. Over short and medium timescales the supply is essentially fixed, and demand can oversaturate that supply. more