Broadband

Questions About Cuba’s 3G Mobile Expansion

ETECSA, Cuba's telecom provider and sole operator of fixed telephony, mobile, and data in the country, is rolling out 3G mobile service in Havana and elsewhere in the country. Telegeography reports there are now 229 3G base stations in Cuba... ETECSA says 3G coverage is available in all of Havana, provincial capitals and tourist resorts. AT&T says there is GSM/GPRS coverage for 85% of national territory. more

The U.S. Fiber Expansion Craze

I've written several times recently in blogs that there is a growing backlog in buying fiber cable. Some of the backlog is due to the general supply chain malaise that seems to be affecting almost everything we buy. During the recent gas shortages in North Carolina, I found out that there is a shortage of truck drivers. Apparently, many truck drivers found something else to do during the pandemic, and now there is a shortage of drivers to deliver the many goods that are shipped by truck. more

Watching North Korea’s Internet Connectivity Go Up and Down Via Twitter

One thing I enjoy about following Dyn Research (formerly Renesys) on Twitter is that they provide quite interesting graphics and charts about Internet outages. They've been tracking North Korea's Internet access quite closely over the past week and their tweets have been quite enlightening. Back on December 22, for instance, DynResearch tweeted a chart showing a 9-hour, 31-minute outage... more

The Role of the BFR in SpaceX’s Satellite Internet Service

SpaceX started with their Falcon 1 booster followed by several versions of the Falcon 9. The Falcon Heavy will fly later this year, and the rocket that will take the first person to Mars is called, for now, the Big F*ing Rocket or BFR. The 150-ton BFR payload will be ten times that of the Falcon 9. It will have an extra landing-guidance engine for reliable reusability and SpaceX also expects to be able to soft-land and reuse the second-stage payload rocket as well as its protective nose cone, substantially reducing cost per launch. more

US House of Representatives Pass a Bill to Restore Net Neutrality Rules Repealed by Trump’s FCC

The US House of Representatives just passed the Save the Internet Act of 2019 on a vote of 232-190. more

The IPTV Growth in South Korea

At the beginning of 2008, the South Korean government passed a law that allowed telecoms operators to broadcast programmes in real-time over their broadband networks. The KCC awarded IPTV licences to KT Corp, Hanaro Telecom and LG Dacom. KT was banking on real-time Internet TV services because growth in the traditional broadband and telephone markets had slowed. The company planned to invest more than KRW1.7 trillion (US$1.5 billion) in IPTV services by 2012 as part of efforts to cultivate new sources of revenue. more

NANOG 65 Report

NANOG 65 was once again your typical NANOG meeting: a set of operators, vendors, researchers and others for 3 days, this time in Montreal in October. Here's my impressions of the meeting... The opening keynote was from Jack Waters from Level 3, which looked back over the past 25 years of the Internet, was interesting to me in its reference to the "Kingsbury Letter". more

What If I Were Wrong About Edge-Caching?

Nicholas Thompson at Wired Blog sums up yesterday's Wall Street Journal piece on Google. To summarize his summary: Google's edge caching isn't new or evil; Lessig didn't shift gears on NN; Microsoft and Yahoo have been off the NN bandwagon since 2006; The Obama team still supports NN; Amazon's Kindle support is consistent with its NN support. Yet... yet... more

Telesat Begins Testing Low-Earth Orbit Satellite Internet Service

SpaceX and OneWeb get a lot of publicity and have ambitious plans, but Telesat is the first low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite Internet service provider to begin testing with potential resellers. Last January, Telesat launched a demonstration satellite and it is now ready for testing. Maritime connectivity provider OmniAccess and Australian ISP Optus had committed to testing the system previously and this week they were joined by in-flight entertainment company Global Eagle Entertainment. more

SpaceX Starlink Is Coming to Low-Income Nations

Beta testers in the US and Canada paid $500 for a terminal and are paying $99 per month for the service. The beta tests began in high-income countries, but SpaceX is beginning to roll Starlink out and will include low-income nations, for example, India. Last September, SpaceX responded to a request for consultation on a roadmap to promote broadband connectivity and enhanced broadband speed from TRAI, the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of India. more

Undersea Cable Cuts, Internet Governance, and Lessons Learned

Early this month I attended the 3rd Internet Governance Forum in Hyderabad, India. The overall theme of the 4-day meeting was "Internet for All"... Last Friday, I spent a couple of hours in the morning on email before I got cutoff around 10am. I have 2 DSL lines at home through 2 different ISPs, I tried both lines but they were both down. I thought something wrong happened at the local exchange and decided to turn off my computer and enjoy my weekend. The last thing I could have thought about then was that what happened back in January 2008 was happening again in less than a year! more

OneWeb and Intelsat Sign the First Multi-Orbit Broadband Agreement – More to Come

Last October, I reviewed multi-orbit tests and plans of several low Earth orbit (LEO), medium Earth orbit (MEO), and Geostationary (GEO) broadband satellite companies and quoted Neil Masterson, CEO of LEO operator OneWeb as saying, "Interoperability with GEO satellites must happen - it's common sense ... Customers don't care whether it's a LEO satellite or a GEO satellite - all they want is connectivity." more

VDSL Cabinet Consideration for FttN Roll Outs

Australia will be an interesting test market for VDSL. With a new government and the broadband infrastructure company NBN Co basically in agreement, it is most likely that VDSL will be used to bring for example fast broadband to multi-dwelling units (MDUs). It was mainly for political reasons that the previous government stopped NBN Co deploying the VDSL technology in MDUs for this purpose. Whether or not any more VDSL will be deployed beyond that will largely depend on the NBN Co review of its current plan.  more

Emerging Markets Tech Watch 2012

2011 has been a significant year for the technology sector globally. Information technology is touching more people in more ways than ever before. Developed markets will be considering a 2012 in which business innovation, competitiveness, and service differentiation are built on ubiquitous broadband, cloud computing, smarter mobile computing, and an increasing plethora of Internet-connected devices. By contrast, securing the technology future for developing markets demands that attention be placed on more fundamental issues. more

Broadband Usage in 2Q 2025 by US Households: Persistent Demand, Hardware Strain

OpenVault recently published its Broadband Insights Report for the end of the second quarter of 2025. OpenVault is documenting the continued growth in broadband usage by U.S. households. One of the most useful statistics from OpenVault is the average monthly broadband usage per household in gigabytes. Below is the trend in average monthly U.S. download and upload volumes since the first quarter of 2021. more