I recently shared the idea that there is a new category of network architecture, the Network of Probabilities. This differs from classical circuits (Network of Promises) or best-effort packet data (Network of Possibilities). I personally believe it's the next revolution in telecoms. What's new is that it provides a trading space for allocating contention between flows, and does this with some novel applied mathematics. more
China continues to add broadband subscribers at a rate of about 30M per year. MIIT puts the January growth at 2.5M to a total of 152.5M. Of those, about 1.5M were DSL. They don't release fiber counts, but Jeff Heynen of Infonetics is reporting tens of millions of lines of fiber gear are in the pipeline. China has been consistently at 2-3M net adds per month. Two key policy moves are likely to maintain or even increase the growth rate. more
Another twenty five years has just zoomed by, and before you know it, it's all on again. The last time the global communications sector did this was at the WATTC in 1988, when "the Internet" was just a relatively obscure experiment in protocol engineering for data communications. At that time the Rather Grand telephone industry bought their respective government representatives... to the Rather Grandly titled "World Administrative Telegraph and Telephone Conference (WATTC) in November 1988 in Melbourne, Australia and resolved to agree to the Rather Grandly titled "International Telecommunication Regulations." more
Canada has made impressive progress in mobile broadband deployment in recent months. This is partly due to operators needing to arrest falls in revenue from mobile voice services by buttressing their data capabilities, as also by the stimulus to the market introduced through the auction of Advanced Wireless Services spectrum in 2008. This auction overhauled the wireless market, introducing a number of smaller players which have added to the competitive mix as well as furthered the development of LTE. more
The year 2012 isn't meant to be apocalyptic, and with a little forethought it won't be, but it is the year in which we will reopen the International Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs). For many companies this will be bad news for reasons that are already well-understood and for new reasons that countries keep piling onto the agenda: a recent favorite from Russia calls for the treaty to govern and regulate all telecommunications services, "existing, emerging, and future." more
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
Some worrying signs are emerging in the USA. During the last decade I have questioned the economic viability of two parallel telecoms infrastructures. When these two network rollouts commenced no issue existed in relation to conflicting interests -- one delivered telephone services, the other broadcasting services. But this all began to change when it became possible to use the HFC network more
It still amazes us that respected industry commentators join liberal politicians in questioning the need for FttH in the wake of the enormous success of mobile broadband. They refer to this phenomenon as proof that people are bypassing their fixed broadband and are now using the smartphones and tablets to obtain most of their broadband access. However, after several years of mobile boom the majority of households are still using the fixed-line networks for calls... 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
NORDUnet, the R&E network connecting the Nordic countries has recently undertaken a brilliant Internet peering strategy that will have global significant ramifications for supporting research and education around the world. NORDUnet is now emerging as one of the world's first "GREN"s -- Global Research and Education Network. NORDUnet is extending their network infrastructure to multiple points of presence throughout the USA and Europe to interconnect to major Internet Exchange Points (IXPs). more
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