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Who Played a Major Role in Advancing the Internet? Nominations Open for 2019 Internet Hall of Fame

Do you know someone who has played a major role in the development and advancement of the Internet? Now is the time to recognize their contribution. Nominate them for the 2019 Internet Hall of Fame. With more than 100 inductees, the Internet Hall of Fame celebrates Internet pioneers and innovators who have pushed the boundaries to bring the Internet to life and make it an essential resource for billions of people today. more

Starlink Comes to Africa - Markets and Competition

SpaceX Starlink Internet service will be available in several African nations in the second quarter of this year, and the price in Nigeria has been announced -- $600 for the "residential" terminal and a monthly fee of $43. Is there a market for Starlink at that price in Nigeria and other Sub-Saharan African nations? The IMF projects a GDP per capita of $2,580 for Nigeria this year (and $1,900 in Sub-Saharan Africa and $2,260 for Africa overall) so the market for individual consumer accounts will be much smaller than in what the IMF refers to as "advanced economies." more

Havana Can Have 5G Before Miami

Compared to Miami, Havana is an Internet desert, but Havana may have 5G wireless connectivity before Miami. 5G architecture, US politics and policy, and the 5G timetable favor Havana. Let's start with 5G architecture. 5G will require many "small cells" because it uses high-frequency radio signals that don't travel as far as 4G signals and are more easily blocked by obstructions like trees and buildings. more

Spectrum Key to Broadband Utility

The explosion in mobile communications in the developing world has created social and economic changes that have exceeded all expectations and predictions -- even those made as recently as five years ago. There are still countries lagging behind, but now is the time to move on to the next stage -- and that means broadband. Already the developed world is showing an enormous appetite for mobile broadband, so the demand is most certainly there. The rapid development of low cost Smartphone, projected to approach $50 soon... more

5G/F5G Cloud Announcements: NFV Game-Changing Confirmations

Over the past few days, Microsoft made two major announcements. One was a "playbook [for] providing a carrier-grade platform for edge and cloud computing to help network operators realize the full potential of 5G technology" using its it Azure cloud data centres. The second announcement was a new platform that enables satellite-based access to those same cloud data centres designated Azure Orbital. Coupled with these announcements was another one by Samsung... more

White Spaces Could Be the Broadcasters Best Hope

For years, the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) fought the White Spaces Coalition and others interested in making US "TV white spaces" available for broadband, Wi-Fi or indeed, any new purpose. When the FCC voted 5-0 to permit license exempt use of TV White Spaces, the industry brought suit in Federal court. And they did this, despite rules in the FCC's decision that are so restrictive that, for now, white spaces devices are doomed to commercial failure. more

Mobile Infrastructure Running Out of Steam

The enormous growth in mobile usage, doubling each year, is set to continue for several years in a row. According to Ericsson, by 2020 mobile operators will need to provide one thousand times the capacity that was required in 2010. Our assessment at BuddeComm is that the mobile industry has already fallen behind in delivering the capacity needed today, let alone coping with the enormous growth ahead; and that this situation will deteriorate before it improves. more

Apple iPhone Apps Store: Refreshing Openness or Walled Garden?

Apple Computer has received high praise for the diversity of applications available for the iPhone. The company shows great willingness to accept third party software innovations. But Apple also solely decides whether to accept and make available any application. Rejected software vendors for the most part do not exist if they do not have shelf space at the Apple store. more

Spam from Mobile Networks? Who Woulda Thought…

Mobile networks aren't usually thought of as sources of spam, but a quick look at some of the resources that track spam reveals they actually are. This is counter intuitive at first glance because when most people think of mobile they think of smartphones, and those aren't known to be sources of spam (at least not yet). What's really going on is PCs connected to mobile networks with air cards, or tethered with a smartphone where it's permissible, are the culprits more

Greece Announces Plans to Install Free Public Wi-Fi Nationwide

Greece's Department of Telecommunications and Post (EETT) has announced plans to install 3000 public Wi-Fi hotspots around the nation beginning next year in both open-air and enclosed public spaces. more

What’s Holding Back NFV Deployments?

Back in early 2012, the media was all over stack wars that reportedly were taking place between Cisco and VMware. This culminated in VMware's Nicira acquisition in July 2012, paving the way for the coming of software-based networking. Four years later, the market still remains in development mode. Many service providers and enterprises are trying to come to grips with Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Software-Defined Networking (SDN). more

IPv6 Basking in the Desert Sun

Tuesday June 29th at the Cisco Live Conference Las Vegas, John Chambers announced their newest product, the Cius tablet aimed at the enterprise market and positioned as a mobility product. That very same day a two hour IPv6 deployment panel, moderated by Cisco's Alain Fiocco, featured Google, Microsoft, Comcast and Tata Communications in front of a room filled to near capacity. The nature of the audience was interesting. Compared to previous years, when asked about their affiliation, the number of hands raised for the category 'enterprise' was significantly higher. more

This Week in the White Spaces

Every once in a while I look in on the white spaces, to see how things are going. You'll recall that the white spaces are unused, non-contiguous ("swiss cheese" ) frequencies between broadcast stations around the county. Commr. McDowell of the FCC has said that initial rules for the white spaces will be released sometime this fall. If the white spaces are made available on an unlicensed basis for use by opportunistic, "smart," low-power mobile devices, entrepreneurial engineers will think of ways to use this wealth of spectrum (300 MHz wide, if fractured) to provide mobile connections to whatever fiber installations are nearest. more

New Research Predicts 1B Mobile Cloud Computing Subscribers by 2014

Over the next five years, the number of mobile cloud computing subscribers worldwide are expected to grow rapidly, "rising from 42.8 million subscribers in 2008, (approximately 1.1% of all mobile subscribers) to just over 998 million in 2014 (nearly 19%)," according to the latest study by ABI Research. "From 2008 through 2010, subscriber numbers will be driven by location-enabled services, particularly navigation and map applications. A total of 60% of the mobile Cloud application subscribers worldwide will use an application enabled by location during these years,” says senior analyst Mark Beccue. more

Making the Wireless World More Web-Friendly

Your wireless carrier (in the U.S., probably AT&T or Verizon Wireless) has a lot of control over the handset you can use and the applications that can run on that device. In fact, wireless carriers routinely ask for (and get) an enormous slice of the revenue from applications that work on their networks, and they force handset manufacturers to jump through all kinds of hoops in order to be allowed to sell devices that can connect to these networks... This has had bad effects on the ecosystem of the wireless world. more