Welcome:
Login
|
Sign Up
|
About CircleID
Follow:
|
|
|
I regularly bring this issue forward, similar to the discussion in relation to the structural separation of the fixed networks, which I began just over a decade ago. What we are seeing in the mobile industry is an infrastructure and a spectrum crunch. The amount of spectrum needed to satisfy people's demand from mobile phones, tablets and soon a range of other smart devices is limitless. Mobile carriers are scrambling for spectrum... more
The best engineers on the planet are coming to the same conclusion: a hybrid 4G/WiFi/landline network is the way to meet mobile demand. Folks like John Donovan of AT&T and Masayoshi Son of Softbank in Japan had this vision around 2007-2008. As the iPhone/iPad/Android made the coming demand clear, networks planners around the world evolved similar strategies. more
As far back as 2011 we predicted that Apple would eventually enter the voice market. We indicated at that time that it was just a matter of time -- in the end it took another three years... While it didn't happen at Christmas that year the company is now ready and will use the VoLTE service to enter this market, which will make it possible to replace Telstra with any other mobile operator around the world... he telcos are not ready for this. While they should be seen as the leaders in the voice call market they are too preoccupied with protecting their traditional business and it is companies like Apple and Samsung who are now leading the charge. more
Digital Transformation (DX) is picking up speed. According to a recent announcement by IDC, the market is expected to grow at a Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 17.9% to reach a whopping 321 billion dollars by 2021. In 2018 alone, IDC expects that 326 billion will be spent on transforming how people and things communicate. Based on these numbers, it looks like Digital Transformation has become the real deal. more
When SpaceX announced the price of the Starlink service, Elon Musk said it would be the same everywhere but I wrote that eventually it would be priced to be affordable in different nations. (If you predict enough things, you are bound to get something right). The fixed cost of a satellite Internet constellation is high -- satellites are expensive to make and launch -- but the cost of adding and servicing a new customer is low, and the market is global. more
40%, not 92%-120%. "Data consumption right now is growing 40% a year," John Stankey of AT&T told investors and his CEO Randall Stephenson confirmed on the investor call. That's far less than the 92% predicted by Cisco's VNI model or the FCC's 120% to 2012 and 90% to 2013 figure in the "spectrum crunch" analysis. AT&T is easily a third of the U.S. mobile Internet and growing market share; there's no reason to think the result will be very different when we have data from others. more
About 82% of the Alexa 100 top sites use some form of server-side mobile device detection to serve content on their main website entry point. As you descend from the top 10 to the top 25 and top 100 sites the percentage of sites using server-side detection falls from 100% to 96% to 82%. This is an interesting fact given that all the recent discussion in the blogosphere is of responsive design using client-side techniques such as media queries. more
Neal Stephenson’s foundational cyberpunk novel Snow Crash brought to the public the concept of a metaverse, a virtual reality in which people interact using avatars in a manufactured ecosystem, eschewing the limitations of human existence. More recently, Ready Player One capitalized on that idea and brought it back to prominence with a bestselling novel and subsequent film adaptation. Amid rebranding efforts and seeking a new way forward, Mark Zuckerberg has made it Facebook’s (now Meta Platforms) priority to build a platform that could enable the metaverse to become a mainstream technology with the sort of reach that their social networks and WhatsApp have. more
May become the access answer for many at the end of the road. The icicle dripping dish in the picture is the antenna for Starlink, a satellite-based broadband service from SpaceX -- one of Elon Musk's other companies. It came Saturday, just before the snow arrived here in Stowe, VT. It's heated, so I didn't have to shovel it out, and it's working despite its frozen beard. The pandemic has shown us that it is socially irresponsible to leave any family without broadband access. more
SpaceX has begun the process of securing licenses to operate its Starlink Internet service in the Caribbean. I don't know which nations they are considering, but would advise them to seriously consider Cuba -- Starlink service in Cuba would benefit the Cuban people, SpaceX, and the US. What's in it for Cuba? Fixed home and commercial connectivity in Cuba are limited, slow, and expensive, but they do have shared connectivity... more
Patrick Neighly reports on CommsDay about the Pacific Telecommunications Council 2009 Conference held last week where Vint Cerf was a keynote speaker. From the report: "Historians will view 2009 as a turning point in Internet history, according to Google internet evangelist Vint Cerf. Speaking to PTC'09 attendees, the legendary figure warned the industry to brace for 'significant change' and said Asia was poised to forever change the look and experience of the online landscape. The region boasts 578.5 million surfers with nearly 85% of its population still to come. That influx is likely to combine with the launch of non-Latin-character addresses to reshape the Web into a very different beast." more
Great article by the BBC about email vs. mobile apps in China -- and why email is losing out to the most popular apps. It's important for Westerners such as myself to remember that most of the world did not first interact with the Internet via desktop computer. In most emerging markets, people leapfrogged computers altogether on their way to using mobile apps. more
CAUCE, the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email, has looked back at the notable events of the last decade in our industry. Each year/link in the post explodes to a discrete blog entry with a month-by-month break-out of notable events. more
Mobile operators face soaring data demand. The natural evolution of 2G/3G/4G infrastructure delivers about 2X additional capacity every 24 months. That's a major disconnect! (At least) two solutions are on the table, Femtocells and Wi-Fi offload. Both approaches solve the backhaul issue by using customer or 3rd party links (DSL, DOCSIS, T1/E1, WISP or otherwise)... As a solution for mobile data capacity, Wi-Fi wins, for many reasons. more
Internet all over Egypt has been blocked in an unprecedented revolt. I call on my friend Tarek Kamel, Egypt's Minister of Telecommunication, to overturn this oppressive decision and to unblock the Internet in all Egypt immediately and to join his people in their peaceful revolt. I have known Tarek Kamel for more than a decade and long before he became minister back in the days when he used to say he had no authority and that the decisions were in the hands of his boss and that he was a mere decision-less adviser to then Minister of Telecommunication, Mr. Nazif. more
A World-Renowned Source for Internet Developments. Serving Since 2002.