The Washington Post reports that a recent poll conducted shows that 3 out of 5 Americans are unable or unwilling to use an infection-alerting app developed by Google and Apple. About 1 in 6 adults can't use the app because they don't own a smartphone -- with the lowest ownership levels for those 65 and older. People with smartphones evenly split between those willing versus unwilling to use such an app. more
With $72 billion invested in mobile broadband it would be hard to argue that this market is suffering from a lack of investment. More than half of this is taking place in Asia. Over the last two years close to 300 mobile operators in 120 countries have launched mobile broadband networks (using the 3G HSPA technology) and some 70 of these are already planning the next upgrade of their networks using the LTE technology -- the first $5 billion of investment money has been committed to that technology. more
We're just back from Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, where more than 85,000 attendees from over 200 countries gathered to discover what the 1,800 companies present had to showcase. As expected, some of the show's biggest themes focused on the Internet of Things, the mobile cloud, Big Data, 4G LTE and wearable devices... After speaking to a cross-section of service providers, it became clear that many operators are already starting to leverage their investment in existing 4G LTE infrastructure... more
The Chilean Undersecretary of Telecommunications (SUBTEL) has begun a year-long pilot study of SpaceX's Starlink satellite Internet service. I don't know how many test locations they are planning, but the first two have been selected. Last week I discussed the first, the John F. Kennedy school in Sotomó, an isolated town at 41.6° South on a fjord in Chile's Lake Region, and the second will be in Caleta Sierra on the coast about 1,200 miles north of Sotomó. SpaceX is also considering a European pilot study in Georgia and perhaps (hopefully) others. more
It started with a report in the New York Times, citing a study from Arieso, saying that "Top 1% of Mobile Users Consume Half of World's Bandwidth". Arieso said that part of the reason for the increase in download volumes may be Apple's Siri voice feature on the iPhone 4S which allows consumers to dictate to the phone and enter more text and data... Other news outlets picked up the story and lost all perspective. more
In a speech at the Internet Policy Research Initiative at MIT, British intelligence agency GCHQ director Robert Hannigan said Monday that law enforcement and intelligence officials want only targeted ways to stop what he called "abuse of encryption" by ISIS and other terrorists and criminals. more
US Federal Communications Commission is proposing privacy rules that wireless companies claim could hurt their ability to compete with the likes of Facebook and Google. more
A rival tells me how hard it is to compete with Huawei because they manufacture so many products. “We had a good opportunity at one customer. Our software is just right for them. “They wanted to buy a complete system. We bundled our software with $4 million of equipment and bid aggressively at $7 million. Huawei came in with a bid of $4 million for hardware and software combined. They manufacture their own servers at a much lower cost than he could buy servers. more
A lot of rural America continues to hope that low orbit satellite (LEO) service will provide a broadband alternative. It's been a while since I've covered the status of the companies proposing to deploy constellations of satellites for providing broadband. In March, OneWeb filed for Chapter 11 restructuring when it was clear that the company could not raise enough cash to continue the research and development of the satellite product. more
For years I've been hearing how we are losing the broadband battle with China, so I decided to take a look at the current state of broadband in the country. The China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) publishes statistics about the state of broadband in the country, and I used the Statistical Report on Internet Development in China from August 2019 in writing this blog. more
A web-based poll on the Mobile Broadband Genie site had participants 1160 who were asked: "Is your mobile broadband fast enough?" 133 yes; 740 no; 287 don't know. Perceptions of the term "mobile broadband" appear to far exceed what is being delivered. While operators have been competing to offer cross-subsidized laptop and netbook deals with higher usage caps and ever cheaper mobile Internet deals, they seem to have overlooked the quality of the service. more
In the USA the FCC has started the discussion on the next level of telecoms in the wireless market, aimed at making spectrum in bands above 24GHz available for flexible-use of wireless services, including next-generation, or 5G networks and technologies. New technologies such as massive-MIMO are going to make it possible to deliver 'fibre-like' speeds over short distance wireless networks operating in the 24+GHz bands. This will make the technology especially useful for high-speed broadband services in densely populated areas. more
Following the devastating impact of Hurricane Helene on North Carolina, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has approved SpaceX's Starlink to provide direct-to-cell coverage in affected regions. more
"AT&T and Verizon just got a free pass from the FCC to divide up the internet," Colin Lecher reporting in The Verge. more
Everyone knows the $100B/year U.S. security apparatus taps almost the entire Internet. Friendly governments help from Australia to Canada to France. Companies like AT&T, Ericsson, Verizon, and Nokia obviously cooperate. The NSA assumes that China is attempting to do the same and that Huawei, as a Chinese company, will provide assistance. The evidence suggests otherwise. Huawei is the primary opponent of U.S. security. more