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Call for Nominations: M3AAWG J. D. Falk Award Seeks Stewards of a Better Online World

Anyone seeking to honor a groundbreaking contribution toward a better online world should submit a nomination for the 2014 M3AAWG J. D. Falk Award. Presented to people whose work on specific projects made the Internet a safer, more collaborative, more inclusive place, the J. D. Falk Award has recognized leaders and pioneers who saw elements of the online experience that needed improvement and took action to fix them.  more

Geely’s LEO Constellation for Mobile Vehicle Connectivity

The Geely Holding Group (GHG) is a private Chinese conglomerate that is highly diversified but best known as an auto manufacturer that envisions itself as a "global mobile technology group." GHG announced this week that it has begun construction of an intelligent satellite production and testing facility that will include modular satellite manufacturing, satellite testing, satellite R&D, and cloud computing centers.

Update Mar 2, 2024:

Geely launched eleven satellites in the same 50-degree inclination plane as the first nine, but there was a considerable delay between the two launches. The first nine were launched in June 2022 and the second 11 were launched in February 2024. The delay may have been caused by a satellite re-design -- The mass of these satellites is 130 kg whereas the first nine satellites had masses of 100 kg.

The launch cadence will have to speed up if they are to reach their goal of beginning service with 72 t satellites next year. more

The Role of Chronic Radio Interoperability Impediments in the Butler, PA Assassination Attempt

There are many inconvenient truths about radio spectrum sharing and transceiver interoperability that require full ventilation and resolution. Spectrum users want exclusive access and - news flash - they do not like to share! Campaign events, like the Trump Bulter, PA rally, require short notice, forced cooperation between and among federal, state, and local law enforcement officers, as well as a variety of other government agencies. more

FCC Approves White Space Devices: The Dawn of the Age of Opportunistic Spectrum Reuse

Yesterday will go down in history as a bellwether moment. Few among us will soon forget the excitement of Obama's election. But there was an equally historic vote yesterday that for geeks, policy analysts, and technologists represents an entirely new trajectory in telecommunications. In essence, the FCC has begun the transition from command-and-control, single-user spectrum licensure to a more distributed system that holds the potential to eliminate the artificial scarcity that prevented widespread access to the public airwaves since 1927. more

Google Showing Signs of Increased Concerns Over Rising Data Privacy Scrutiny

Earlier this year, Google quietly terminated its "Mobile Network Insights" service, which provided wireless carriers globally, information on network performance in various locations. more

Examining the Reality of Convergence

If there is one word in the telecommunications that has suffered from over-abuse for many years now, it's convergence. The term has been liberally applied to each successive generation of communications technology for their supposed ability to solve a myriad of service delivery problems within a single unifying converged carriage and service delivery solution. Unfortunately, the underlying reality has always been markedly different from these wondrous promises, and we continue to see an industry that deploys a plethora of service delivery platforms and an equally diverse collection of associated switching and service delivery technologies. One can't help but wonder at the collective gullibility of an industry that continues to herald the convergent attributes of each new generation of communications technology, while at the same time being forced to admit that previous convergent promises have never been realized. more

Alphabet’s Loon Goes Live With Its Commercial Internet Service in Kenya

Alphabet's Loon on Monday announced that its high-altitude balloons are now providing internet service in Kenya to subscribers of Telkom Kenya.  more

Number of Chinese Internet Users Reaches 829 Million, More Than Double the Population of the US

Latest update from the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) reports the total number of Chinese internet users reached 829 million at the end of 2018. more

Unlimited VoIP Offers Starting to Appear in Africa

VoIP has been banned across most of Africa for a long time, feared by the state-owned telcos as a way for alternative service providers to bypass them with international calls, eroding a very lucrative part of their business. At profit margins of several thousand percent in some cases, it is not surprising that unlicensed operators have sprung up all over the continent, risking huge fines, confiscation of their equipment and even jail terms. more

Apple TV Demolishing Telco and Broadcasting Business Models

The future of broadcasting has been under discussion for close to two decades and, while changes are certainly happening, they are rather slow and therefore new opportunities or threats (depending on where you sit) continue to arise. On the one hand we are now starting to see the more widespread availability of digital TV and this has revealed a clear point of difference between the strategic directions being taken by the telecoms and the broadcasting industries. more

Will 2008 be the WiMAX Year?

There has recently been some good and bad news about WiMAX. On the good news part, an announcement made by the WiMAX Forum this month regarding the launching of the Mobile WiMAX certification program through which vendors can get their IEEE 802.16e-2005 equipment tested and possibly certified... On the bad news part, there was the Sprint-Clearwire breakup after three months of announcing a plan to join forces in building a nationwide WiMAX network in the US. Although it is anticipated that each company would carry on with its own WiMAX plans, analysts believe that the breakup would have negative impact on WiMAX deployment in the US... more

EFF to FCC: ‘Restoring Internet Freedom’ Plan Riddled With Technical Errors and Factual Inaccuracies

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) published a post today pointing out that the FCC continues to ignore the technical parts of a letter sent to it earlier this year by nearly 200 Internet engineers and computer scientists. more

Cisco’s Kevin Shatzkamer Discusses the Future of Mobile Video

Kevin Shatzkamer, Chief Architect for Cisco Mobility, speaks to the mobile research Cisco has developed in helping Mobile Service Providers reach their ROI goals and objectives in projecting an increasingly demand driven market. ... There has been speculation for years that increased demand for mobile video would tax and possibly crash current networks and infrastructures of mobile operators. A predictor may be The World Cup games held in South Africa. more

The Worm and the Wiretap

According to recent news reports, the administration wants new laws to require that all communications systems contain "back doors" in their cryptosystems, ways for law enforcement and intelligence agencies to be able to read messages even though they're encrypted. By chance, there have also been articles on the Stuxnet computer worm, a very sophisticated piece of malware that many people are attributing to an arm of some government. The latter story shows why cryptographic back doors, known generically as "key escrow", are a bad idea. more

Study Reveals U.S. Carriers Throttle Online Video on Their Mobile Networks Even When Not Congested

A study conducted by researchers at Northeastern University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst involving 650,000 tests indicates U.S. carriers are throttling online video on their mobile networks regardless of whether or not those networks are congested. more