Broadband

Is 5G Faster than 4G?

Ookla recently tackled this question in one of its research articles. Ookla compared the time it takes to load pages for Facebook, Google, and YouTube on cellphones using 4G LTE networks versus 5G networks. Ookla thinks that page load speed is a great way to measure cellphone experience. The time needed to load a web page is directly impacted by latency, which measures the lag between the time a phone requests a website and that website responds. more

State of Broadband Report 2014

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

How Safe is FttH?

My blog 'What PRISM, credit card hacking and Chromecast have to do with FttH' led to some very interesting discussions all around the world. One of issues that was discussed was that the sheer capacity of FttH will also allow hackers, criminals and others to use that massive capacity for the wrong reasons. Its volume will make it increasingly difficult to police. more

New MANRS Initiative Aims to Improve Security of Internet Routing

How can we work together to improve the security and resilience of the global routing system? That is the question posed by the "Routing Resilience Manifesto" site with the suggested answer launched today of the "Mutually Agreed Norms for Routing Security (MANRS) document, to which a number of network operators have already signed on as participants, including: Comcast, Level 3, NTT, RUNNet, ClaraNet, SURFnet, SpaceNet, KPN and CERNET. more

EU Commissioner Calls on Streaming Services to Switch Streaming Videos From HD to Standard Mode

European Union Internet Market Commissioner Thierry Breton called on streaming services on Thursday, urging them to switch video quality from high definition to standard mode in order to reduce increasing strain on bandwidth during COVID-19 pandemic. Following a phone call with the CEO of Netflix, Reed Hastings, Commissioner Breton, said: "Europe and the whole world are facing an unprecedented situation. more

OneWeb’s Offer to Sell a Share of Their Satellite Internet Service to Russia

OneWeb has a contract to launch Internet-service satellites on Russian-made Soyuz rockets and has a joint venture with Gonets, a Russian satellite operator, as a marketing partner in Russia. However, the Russian government has expressed concerns about security, dragged their feet on spectrum allocation and complained about US sanctions. This led OneWeb to make two concessions. more

New Record Set in Ultra Fast Data Transmission

Scientists led by a team at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have broken a record for data transmission, sending data at 26Tb/s on a single laser beam over 50km. To put this into context, the researchers suggest that this is the equivalent of transferring the contents of 700 DVDs per second, or the entire collection of the Library of Congress in ten seconds.
 more

Public and Private Infrastructure Investment Alternatives

Eric Yuan, CEO of the Zoom teleconferencing service, stated that the average number of daily meeting recipients increased from 10 million in December 2019 to 200 million in March 2020 in a webinar last month. I've been teaching 21 students using Zoom as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the audio and video are smooth, and switching between speakers is seamless. Offhand, I cannot think of any technology that has scaled so well so fast. more

Comcast Xfinity App Argument: Risking Divestiture of Cable or Broadband

This sounds extreme, but Comcast continues to push the boundaries in separation of its broadband service with its cable service. It is walking a thin line between being a broadband provider, offering fast Internet access to millions of subscribers, and treating its Xfinity Xbox 360 App as a priority over customers not having its cable service. Saying the Xbox 360 is just another set-top-box for its own customers is just a complex way of undermining Net Neutrality rules as defined by the FCC upon the companies purchase of NBCU. more

Google Fiber in Havana - Wishful Thinking?

This post is conjecture, but it is informed conjecture... Consider the following: When Google Fiber started in Kansas City, most people assumed that it was a demonstration project, intended to spur investment by the incumbent US Internet service providers (ISPs). Few thought that Google wanted to become a retail ISP. Google Fiber garnered a lot of publicity and Google, began speaking of it as a real, profit-making business. They announced other cities and started laying fiber in some of them. more

The End of Broadband Networks as We Know Them

A group of major telecommunications companies -- Vodafone, BT, Telefonica and Deutsche Telekom -- recently announced something a bit unexpected. In the Open BNG Operator Position Paper, they call for a fundamental, industry-wide change to the way broadband networks are built. Specifically, they advocate for collaboration throughout the telco world, with a convergence around open broadband network gateways (BNGs). more

It’s Official: China Now Has More Broadband Lines than the United States

It was just last year that those of us raising alarms about the massive half-decade market failure in the United States to adequately provision broadband services were facing a misinformation campaign that raw numbers mattered more than percentage rankings. According to this argument, the U.S. broadband market was sound because we had more broadband lines than anyone else. The misinformation brigade got so much attention that public interest groups had to issue reports systematically refuting the PR are marketing hype. more

Unbridled Discretion and Prior Restraint: The Verizon and Comcast Stories

Let's say that providing communications infrastructure is an inherent function of a state. Most people think of the internet as a telephone system, and most people think the telephone companies aren't supposed to choose which calls will go through based on their content. People think that because they think internet access, like telephone access, is a utility -- like electricity conduit, water pipes, etc. -- that has something to do with the government, and the government isn't supposed to discriminate. more

Broadband Giants Stay Neutral on Network Funding

It looks as if the big boys like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast are passing on the stimulus money. The official reason is that they don't need it, that they enough cash on hand to build out their networks on their own. Fair enough. Perhaps the funding should be reserved for those more in need, those that just need a boost to fund a new business model or expand service. But there are probably other reasons. more

A Peek Inside the FCC

I write a lot about the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), but I imagine a lot of folks don't realize the many functions the agency handles. Like any regulatory agency, the FCC staff and Commissioners have been tasked by Congress with a wide range of responsibilities. The public gets to hear from the FCC formally once each month ... more