You can't put the telecom sector into perspective without looking at the performance of the biggest players in the industry. The pandemic has been an interesting year for both big ISPs and telecom vendors. Smaller ISPs should care about big ISP performance for many reasons. For many smaller companies, the big companies are the competition, and the big providers' strength or weakness can foretell stiffened competition or increased opportunity. more
A recent session of the Australian Computer Society (ACS) and the Australian Smart Communities Association (ASCA) masterclass on 5G, featured Dr. Ian Oppenheimer, the NSW Government's Chief Data Scientist and one of the country's most respected experts in radio technology. Ian is also the Chair of the scientific advisory board of the 6G Flagship organization, a global research organization based in Finland. This organization has just published a range of fascinating research papers on 6G. more
OneWeb, which declared bankruptcy in May, has reorganized and emerged from bankruptcy. Bharti Global, an Indian telecommunication conglomerate, and the British government each own 42.2% of the new company, and most of the rest is owned by previous investors SoftBank and Hughes Network Systems. Hughes will continue work on ground infrastructure and marketing and the original joint venture with Airbus, which designs and manufactures OneWeb satellites... more
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
No, not the COVID curve - the curve of U.S. engagement in global industry 5G activities. Let me explain. What is known as 5G actually consists of a broad array of fundamentally revolutionary virtualization platforms that are constantly, collectively developed by industry in several dozen open global bodies. These bodies meet every few weeks, and several score companies around the world process scores to hundreds of input documents to produce many hundreds of effectively mandatory... more
According to an email, Starlink has moved into the second phase of its beta program, nicknamed the "better than nothing beta," which feels a bit like monopoly hubris to me. It may be better than nothing, but it is not as good as the initial beta, which was free. Participants will pay $99 per month for the service and pay $499 for a terminal, including a tripod and WiFi router. I wonder what the difference is between these "beta testers" and "customers." more
The statistics concerning the number of gigabit fiber customers in the US is eye-opening. OpenVault tracks the percentage of customers provisioned at various broadband speeds. At the end of 2019, the company reported that 2.81% of all households in the US were subscribed to gigabit service. By the end of the first quarter of 2020, just after the onset of the pandemic, the percentage of gigabit subscriptions had climbed to 3.75% of total broadband subscribers. more
Apple is coming out with a full range of new 5G iPhones. The phones have been designed to use the full range of new frequencies that the various cellular companies are touting as 5G, up to and including the millimeter wave spectrum offered in center cities by Verizon. In addition to 5G, the phones have new features like a better camera, better ease at using wireless charging, and a lidar scanner. more
When a service is constructed using diverse components, then the way in which service revenues are distributed to the various suppliers of the components of the service can follow a number of quite distinct models. There are various forms of revenue redistribution models where the revenue per transaction is distributed to the various suppliers according to their inputs to support each transaction. more
The web is full of stories of rural areas with no broadband options, and I've spent a lot of time in the last few decades helping rural areas get better broadband. There has not been nearly as much coverage of the huge broadband gap in urban areas. There are a lot of urban homes that can't afford broadband and, in many cases, got bypassed when the telcos and/or cable companies built their networks. more
The Internet is currently full of news articles describing how the FCC will soon be putting to bed the last vestiges of its order a few years ago to eliminate net neutrality rules. The order that is widely being called the net neutrality ruling was a far-reaching change at the FCC that essentially wrote the FCC out of any role in regulating broadband. more
With 5G earmarked as a game-changer for cities, wireless technologies are already widely deployed by leading smart cities, including those here in Australia. However, cities do not want to be locked into proprietary technology solutions, rather seeing themselves as a platform on which many organisations can build infrastructure, applications, and services to benefit all citizens and all local businesses. more
Four Chinese ministries issued the policy document in September, called "Guiding Opinions on Expanding Investment in Strategic Emerging Industries and Cultivating Strengthened New Growth Points and Growth Poles." As you can see below, in this document, 5G was the top recommendation. The National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Science and Technology, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and the Ministry of Finance came together to suggest priorities for the 14th Five-Year Plan. more
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
Cuba's primary connection to the global Internet is through the ALBA-1 undersea cable linking landing points on the south-east shore of the island to Venezuela and Jamaica; however, the bulk of Cuban traffic originates in Havana which is on the north-west coast. Traffic from Havana and other cities in the west travels over a backbone to reach the cable landing points. A landing point near Havana would reduce the load on the backbone... more
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