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This is big... For the upper band C Block, the FCC mandated that any winning licensee have in place "no locking" and "no blocking" provisions conditioning its use of this spectrum: "Licensees offering service on spectrum subject to this section shall not deny, limit, or restrict the ability of their customers to use the devices and applications of their choice on the licensee..." The no-locking, no-blocking requirements were hedged in by substantial limitations... But it's still important... Particularly if Google is the winning bidder, something we may not know for a month or so. more
Satellites make it possible for governments to provide essential services, such as national defense, navigation, and weather forecasting. Private ventures use satellites to offer highly desired services that include video program distribution, telecommunications, and Internet access. The Russian launch of a satellite, with nuclear power and the likely ability to disable satellites, underscores how satellites are quite vulnerable to both natural and manmade ruin. more
On Monday the Wall Street Journal published an article alleging that Google was trying to arrange a "fast lane for its own content" with telecom carriers and contending that Google and Professor Lessig were in the midst of changing their position on network neutrality policy. The WSJ reporters received a lot of flak for the piece -justifiably so. There was no real "news" in this news article. more
While couched in noble terms of promoting competition, innovation and freedom, the FCC soon will combine two initiatives that will enhance the likelihood that Sprint and T-Mobile will stop operating as separate companies within 18 months. In the same manner at the regulatory approval of airline mergers, the FCC will make all sorts of conclusions sorely lacking empirical evidence and common sense. more
Yesterday, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to allow qualified devices to operate on a license-exempt basis in unused portions of TV channels 2-51, spectrum commonly referred to as "TV white spaces." A lot has already been written about this move... But what is missing in these discussions is the bigger picture. more
This month, France Telecom's Lower Indian Ocean Network 2 "LION2" fiber optic cable has been put in service, bringing the total number of cables in East Africa to four. In South Africa it is expecting West Africa Cable System to go live next month. This huge growth in fiber optic cables connecting Africa means that bandwidth costs can go further down but there are many questions for internet service providers, regulators and policy makers... more
As a follow up to Susan Brenner's Networks and Nationalization and my comment there, I will go further in this post and talk about the "cyberwar" and "offense" aspects of her article. I think I made this point elsewhere as well... but before getting into a war, it'd be a brilliant idea to actually know that you can win. Cyberwarfare is the sort of game where you don't really need to be a huge government with the largest standing army in the world and sophisticated weaponry in order to win... more
Julius Genachowski, Obama's nominee to head the FCC, is a friend of Fred Wilson. Fred gives ten reasons why he likes the nominee on his blog. Genachowski was a top technology advisor to Obama during his campaign and reportedly advised the campaign on its superb use of the Internet. He is also a supporter of "net neutrality" although the devil is in the details on that issue. Even though the nominee is a lawyer, he has business experience as a VC, as an Internet executive, and as a board member of various Internet companies -- all good reasons to be hopeful about this very important policy post. That's the good news. The bad news from several days ago... more
Telecoms engineers from all of the major telecoms services and equipment companies around the world agree that FttH is the only future-proof telecommunications technology. So who should we trust - the technology experts or politicians with different agendas? If there had been a division of opinion among these experts it would have been necessary to investigate it; but if they are all in agreement it is safe to follow their advice. more
Contributing to international telecommunications standards, not in the IETF but in a more august and imposing body, the ITU-T, part of the United Nations, was quite an experience. Still called CCITT in those days, it was formal and solemn; everybody was part of and sat with their national delegation, countries were aligned in alphabetical order; nobody spoke out of turn, every word was simultaneously translated in the three official languages of the time and we wore suit and tie. more
Open Source (OS) Management and Orchestrations (MANO) is a European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) initiative that aims to develop a Network Function Virtualization (NFV) MANO software stack, aligned with ETSI NFV. The main goal of MANO is to simplify the onboarding of virtual network components in telco cloud data centers. The initiative has gained impressive momentum among leading Communication Service Providers (CSPs) around the world as part of their NFV programs. more
For the last twenty years, the industry has talked about broadband in cities as a duopoly, meaning there was competition between cable companies and telcos -- competition between cable modem broadband and DSL broadband. Twenty years ago, there was a true duopoly when the speeds on DSL and cable modem were close in capability. The market at that time demonstrated real duopoly behavior. more
As the Department of Commerce considers a policy role for the U.S. government in the Internet of Things (IoT), the Department of State is studying a dynamic and evolving international environment around IoT, including technical, commercial, and economic issues. Governments and intergovernmental organizations across the world are waking up to the potential of IoT, and some are looking to move quickly in a nascent landscape to establish themselves as leaders for IoT globally. In the process, few are reaching out to industry. more
Damage to a single submarine cable has left the entire Red Sea region disconnected from the Internet. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Ethiopia have all suffered from the last week's cut of the so-called Falcon cable. more
I presented at a OECD/BEREC workshop that was held on the 20th June in Brussels, and I'd like to share some personal impressions and opinions from this workshop. The OECD/BEREC workshop was a policy-oriented peering and exchange forum. It was not a conventional operational peering forum where the aim is to introduce potential peers to each other and facilitate peer-based interconnection of network operators, but a workshop that involved both network operators and various national and EU regulators, as well has having inputs from the OECD. more
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