Telecom

ITU Becomes Trans-Sectoral

Very little was said about telecommunications during the official speeches and forums at ITU Telecom World 2009. The industry is even talking about changing its focus from telecommunications to ICT [United Nations Information and Communication Technologies Task Force], Discussions are now focusing on how ICT can be used to underpin the various socio-economic developments that are taking place. more

Why Small and Medium-Size Operators Should Care About Sustainability

A new resource dedicated to small and medium-sized digital infrastructure providers highlights the benefits of incorporating sustainability into their operations, offers a consolidated list of best practices and recommendations, and shares additional resources to help make practical changes to save time, energy, and money. more

Internet Society Posting Updates from ITU Plenipot 2014 in Busan

If you are, like me, not in Busan, South Korea, for the 2014 ITU Plenipotentiary Conference but are curious about what is going on there, my Internet Society colleagues on our public policy team have been posting regular updates to the Internet Society's blog and to the @ISOCPolicy Twitter account... Given that I work in the technology side of Internet Society's work and don't have the cycles to keep up-to-date with everything going on there in Busan, I've found these updates very helpful in understanding some of the major events happening at the ITU Plenipot 2014. more

Net Neutrality - A Good Step Forward But There Is More to Come

The recent decision taken in the USA makes total sense. It has been ridiculous that the incumbent telecoms operators there could present themselves as ISPs and claim that broadband was a content service rather than telecoms infrastructure - by doing this successfully for 20 years, they have not been subject to a range of telecoms regulations. This in turn has stifled competition, innovation, good quality customer services and the development of fibre optic networks in the USA. more

US Telcos Withdrawing from DSL and Telephony Markets - A Case of Lobbying Power and Poor Regulation

During the last few months the US's main DSL providers AT&T and Verizon have begun retracting from the DSL and landline market in many rural and less commercially viable areas while concentrating on their wireless LTE ambitions. DSL and voice telephony provide relatively low returns, which can be whittled away through network maintenance costs, while LTE promises to deliver proportionately higher profits, based on exorbitant charges by data volume.  more

Can the US Deliver on the President’s ‘Sputnik’ Vision?

In general I think this was another good political speech from the President. However, as we have seen in the past, skilled rhetoric doesn't necessarily give rise to action. If Congress reflects the mood of the American people then the nation is not yet ready to change - or, as the President said, to embark on a new 'Sputnik' vision. The fact that the word 'Internet' was used several times (in absolutely the right context - and often teamed with 'innovation') clearly shows that the President understands the importance of the digital infrastructure. This has not changed since his original campaign in 2008. more

Why 5G Won’t Be Here Tomorrow

I just saw another article yesterday written by a major-city newspaper telling the public that 5G is coming in 2020. I hate to see reporters who have accepted the nonsense being peddled by the carriers without digging a little deeper to find the truth. At some point in the near future, the public will finally realize that the 5G talk has mostly been hype. more

Loon Balloons Restore Internet After a Massive Earthquake Strikes Remote Parts of Peru

On Sunday, when a magnitude 8.0 earthquake struck remote parts of Peru’s Amazon region, at the request of the government of Peru and Telefónica, Alphabet re-directs a group of its Loon balloons to the impacted area to restore Internet access. Within 48 hours, people on the ground had wireless broadband communication, reports Alphabet. more

Somalia’s Extended Internet Outage Results in Millions of Dollars of Loss per Day, Says Government

Somalia's internet connection was finally restored on Monday after weeks of outage due to a severed undersea cable. more

The Perfect, the Good, and the FCC

It has been a busy week in U.S. communications policy, with an FCC meeting adopting important spectrum policy reforms, an FCC complaint about Comcast's approval policies for cable modems, and a dispute between Comcast and Level 3 over fees for Internet backbone traffic. And late last night, it got even more interesting. more

Rebalancing Telco Infrastructure Investments

One of the reasons telecommunications has been so successful for more than 160 years is that it adopted a strategy that resulted in a seamless network all around the world. You can pick up a phone anywhere in the world and, with little or no instruction, make a call to anybody else in the world without worrying what phones and technology they are using on the other end of the line... But during that process the nature of the network operators changed. more

Be Agile or Be Edged Out: “Live” from TM Forum 2017

I like a conference that's "Live". Not just a lively crowd coalescing together to passionately discuss and debate matters of common interests, but more so in the sense of physical presence: things you can feel and touch. In the case of the TM Forum Live! 2017 event, held last week at Nice, France, it's the Catalyst Pavilions where innovative solutions, best practices, and even exploratory experimentations were on full display. Do I mean that for an IT Operation Support Systems (OSS) and Business Support Systems (BSS) trade show, you can touch it? Yep. more

With the New US CTO, Why Not a New OCA: Office of Connectivity Advocacy

We need a positive strategy for assuring connectivity. Instead of trying to fix telecom we should be working to take advantage of what we have and build vital, even if mundane applications like telemedicine and broaden our access to information while empowering communities. By realizing the value in our existing infrastructure and encouraging the creativity we can provide immediate benefits to our economy and our safety. We need a "Connectivity Strategy" with a champion... more

Cable Customers Plummet in 2019

The final numbers are in for 2019 and the largest cable providers collectively lost over 5.9 million customers for the year - a loss of almost 7% of customers. The numbers below come from Leichtman Research Group which compiles these numbers from reports made to investors, except for Cox which is estimated. The numbers reported are for the largest cable providers, and Leichtman estimates that these companies represent 95% of all cable customers in the country. more

US Court Upholds Repeal of Net Neutrality

The DC Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on the last day of September that the FCC had the authority to kill Title II regulation and to repeal net neutrality. However, the ruling wasn't entirely in the FCC's favor. The agency was ordered to look again at how the repeal of Title II regulation affects public safety. In a more important ruling, the courts said that the FCC didn't have the authority to stop states and municipalities from establishing their own rules for net neutrality. more