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Broadband Consumption Continues Explosive Growth

OpenVault Just released its Broadband Industry Report for 4Q 2019 that tracks the way that the US consumes data. The results of the reports are as eye-opening as OpenVault reports for the last few years. OpenVault has been collecting broadband usage for more than ten years. As usual, the OpenVault statistics are a wake-up cry for the industry. more

5G Security – Metrics of the Engaged

This past month on 03-06 March, the global industry sub-group that exists at the center of 5G security met virtually. It is known as SA3 within the 3GPP organization, and it met over a period of five days to deal with some of the most important 5G security requirements. 3GPP is a "partnership" created among all the world's major standards bodies, which over several decades has cooperatively developed and evolved by far the largest and most successful global electronic communications network. more

FCC’s Ignorant Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Bravado

The Federal Communications Commission yesterday released a Report and Order in the matter of its implementation of Ray Baum's Act Section 503 and international call spoofing. The FCC mostly did the right things in the R&O except in one rather extraordinary assertion of legal ignorance and bravado. It asserted unilaterally that it could exercise "extraterritorial jurisdiction that Congress expressly provided in section 503 of the Ray Baum's Act," and it furthermore knew of no "treaty obligation [contravened],...nor other legal barrier...and...are aware of none." more

US Fibre Projects: Go-Aheads Omit the Major Telcos

As the recent Senate vote on gun reform legislation has shown (wherein 42 of the 45 dissenting senators had recently received donations from gun industry lobbyists), getting things done for the good of the people is a hard task where legislation is concerned. It has been thus with the US's broadband infrastructure for years. A number of states have legislated against community broadband networks, often resulting from the lobbying efforts of the main telcos affected. State Legislatures commonly pass bills revoking local decision-making authorities from communities, effectively making them dependent on the dominant cableco and DSL provider. more

The Future of Communications Cross-Subsidies

It used to be so much easier to manage a system of cross subsidies for communications. If a regulator wanted consumer services to be subsidized by businesses, rural to be subsidized by urban, local subsidized by long distance, TV production subsidized by distribution, it could just issue an order to make it so. So let it be written; so let it be done. There were few, if any, other suppliers of those services, so there were limited arbitrage opportunities. more

Google Inks Another Undersea Internet Cable Deal

KDDI, Bharti Airtel, Reliance and Google yesterday signed a letter of intent to build a $400 million subsea cable between India and Japan. The 6-fiber-pair Asia-Pacific Japan Cable will have a design capacity of 17 Tbps -- the highest capacity cable ever planned -- and will be upgradeable to 23 Tbps, the companies said in a joint statement. more

War-Torn Syrian City Aleppo Gets New Fiber Link

The northern Syrian city of Aleppo is one of the key battlegrounds of that country's on-going civil war as well as the epicenter of the European refugee crisis. The most appropriate United States response to events in Aleppo has become a major foreign policy question among the candidates in this year's U.S. presidential election. Experts are now predicting that forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, backed by the Russian military, will take control of rebel-held eastern Aleppo within weeks. more

The Myth of Infinite Bandwidth

Back in the late 1990s I was often asked what I thought would happen if Internet bandwidth was infinite -- what would that change about the Internet itself? Level 3's (LVLT) recent decision to slash prices on its content distribution network and rumors of new multi-terabit cables across the Pacific have me wondering if we are actually getting closer to having infinite bandwidth. But when replying to the infinite bandwidth question I was prone to posing a return question -- what does infinite bandwidth actually mean? more

Post-Disaster Communications Petition

Recently, FCC placed on public review a petition filed by Evslin Consulting and pulver.com. The petition grew out of the experiences felt during a breakdown in communications network caused by Hurricane Katrina. As you may recall, whole communities were evacuated in the Gulf coast and many families were separated because they ended in different cities. Added to the trauma, many of these evacuees found it difficult to contact and communicate with each other. But those who have VoIP service and those who subscribe to premium features on their PSTN lines were better off because their services were able to forward the calls to the new location... more

My Name is Vint Cerf, I’m a Scientist and I am Voting for Barack Obama

Vint Cerf, Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist who is also credited as the co-founder of the Internet, has endorsed U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama in a YouTube video submitted to AVoteForScience channel. In the video, Cerf discusses the importance of Net Neutrality (NN) and the fact that Obama is the candidate that supports NN. The following excerpt is a portion of what Cerf says in the video... more

Net Neutrality Alternative: Effective Interpretation, Oversight and Enforcement of Existing Rules

The US government is proposing broad new regulations for telecommunications and cable internet service providers. The new proposals appear to target specific providers for regulation and government oversight. Specifically, Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey has proposed the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009, or the "Net Neutrality" bill, outlining government policies to impose new governance and restrictions targeting telecommunications and cable providers AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner and Comcast. more

17 Countries to Reach 60% Household Broadband Penetration by 2012, Says New Study

Worldwide consumer broadband connections will grow from 323 million connections in 2007 to 499 million in 2012, according to latest research by Gartner. Worldwide consumer broadband connections penetrated 18 percent of households in 2007, and by 2012, households with a broadband connection are expected to reach 25 percent. Five countries exceeded 60 percent broadband penetration into the home in 2007; and, this is expected to grow to 17 countries by 2012. The five countries with broadband penetration into the home above 60 percent are Canada, Netherlands, Switzerland, South Korea and Hong Kong. more

FCC’s “Commercial Reasonableness” Standard Already a Dismal Failure

T-Mobile filed a petition today making it clear that the FCC's commercial reasonableness standard is a failure. Anyone following net neutrality knows that the FCC is proposing to authorize discrimination and pay-for-priority deals known as fast lanes. The FCC is claiming we need not worry, however, because the FCC can make sure that entrepreneurs and users face only "commercially reasonable" discrimination. more

Internet Society Expresses Concern over Direction of WCIT

In light of final developments during the WCIT meetings, the following statement was released from the CEO and President of Internet Society, Lynn St. Amour on Wednesday, December 12, 2012: "At the conclusion of today's plenary, the Internet Society is concerned about the direction that the ITR'S are taking with regards to the Internet. The Internet Society came to this meeting in the hopes that revisions to the treaty would focus on competition, liberalization, free flow of information and independent regulation..." more

What Will 2021 Have Install for the ICT Industry?

While 2021 will remain a year with lots of uncertainties, at the same time, we can say that the pandemic has not affected the information and communications technology (ICT) industry in any significant way. Yes, there has been a slowdown, for example, in the sale of smartphones. Shortages in both materials and expertise are slowing fiber deployment, and the recovery over 2021 will be slow and uncertain because of the many lockdowns and travel restrictions. more