-
Topics
-
Blogs
-
News
-
Community
-
Industry
Telecommunication companies need to go beyond just providing bandwidth and look into acquiring Internet destination sites that are heavily trafficked, Sun Chairman Scott McNealy said on Friday. "I have explained to every telco that either you become a destination site, or the destination site will become a telco," McNealy said at a news conference at Sun's Worldwide Education and Research Conference in San Francisco on Wednesday... more»
Having outgrown the capacity of telecom companies to provide bandwidth for its online applications and services, Google is buying part of an undersea cable to carry data to and from Asia. As rumored last year, Google has now announced that it would join with five other telecom companies -- Bharti Airtel, Global Transit, KDDI Corporation, Pacnet, and SingTel -- to invest $300 million in the construction of a 10,000 km submarine cable. more»
Damage to several undersea telecom cables that caused outages across the Middle East and Asia (see CircleID posts Jan 31, 2008 and Feb 07, 2008) could have been an act of sabotage, the International Telecommunication Union said on Monday. "We do not want to preempt the results of ongoing investigations, but we do not rule out that a deliberate act of sabotage caused the damage to the undersea cables over two weeks ago," the UN agency's head of development, Sami al-Murshed, said. more»
Continuing from previous reports, FLAG telecom now reports damages to the FALCON undersea cable that actually occurred on January 23 -- one week before the four publicized cable cuts. experts are now beginning to reveal just how expansive the disruptions have been. The damages of undersea cables FLAG Europe-Asia and SEA-ME-WE 4 about 8.3 km off the coast of Alexandria, Egypt, affected at least 60 million users in India, 12 million in Pakistan, 6 million in Egypt, and 4.7 Million in Saudi Arabia, according to DU telecom Executive Director Mahesh Jaishanker, in a statement to the United Arab Emirates-based Khaleej Times. more»
Tens of millions of internet users across the Middle East and Asia have been left without access to the web after a technical fault cut millions of connections. The outage, which is being blamed on a fault in a single undersea cable, has severely restricted internet access in countries including India, Egypt and Saudi Arabia and left huge numbers of people struggling to get online. more»
After 17 rounds, the 700MHz spectrum auction has finally hit its one of its most closely watched targets: bidding on Block C has surpassed the Federal Communications Commission's mandated $4.638 billion reserve, meaning that the FCC's mandated open access rules will come into play. Bids on the block of spectrum totaled $4.744 billion after Round 17. more»
A recent report released by the Discovery Institute estimates that by 2015, U.S. IP traffic could reach an annual total of one zettabyte (1021 bytes), or one million million billion bytes. From YouTube, IPTV, and high-definition images, to "cloud computing" and ubiquitous mobile cameras, 3D games, virtual worlds, and photorealistic telepresence, the new wave is swelling into an exaflood of Internet and IP traffic. more»
Robert X. Cringely on Popular Mechanics: "Some pundits (that would be me) think Google will bid to win its spectrum block, then will trade that block to Sprint/Nextel for some of that company's 2.5-GHz WiMAX licenses that are far better suited for data. Sprint Nextel, the number three U.S. mobile operator, is conspicuously absent from this week's list of bidders, and its WiMAX strategy is in flux following the recent firing of CEO Gary Forsee, who was a big WiMAX backer..." more»
The auction for rights to a highly valuable swath of the United States' airwaves (700 megahertz auction) will begin on Thursday, January 24th, beginning at 10am and is expected to include multibillion-dollar bids from the nation's two biggest wireless phone companies, Verizon and AT&T, as well as Google. more»
Document detailing the upcoming 700Mhz auction has been released by FCC. The FCC has identified the applicants who are qualified to bid in the 700-MHz band auction, set to begin Jan. 24. The bidding itself, for about 1,200 licenses, will be conducted over the Internet and phone. The approved applicants include some expected names, such as Google (called Google Airwaves in the list), AT&T, Cox Wireless, Qualcomm and Verizon Wireless. But it also includes some less-discussed applicants, such as Chevron USA, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's Vulcan Spectrum Management, and a variety of small-to-midsize companies. more»
The University of San Francisco Intellectual Property Law Bulletin will be hosting "The Toll Roads? The Legal and Political Debate Over Net Neutrality" to be held on January 26, 2008, at the Fromm Institute on the University of San Francisco main campus. The Symposium will be a gathering where the legal community will join together with political scientists, economists, communications experts and students to engage in a day of presentation and discussion of the issues surrounding Network Neutrality (list of panelists). more»
Google announced last Friday that it would apply to bid in the U.S. Federal Communications Commission's auction of 700 megahertz band wireless spectrum. "If it wins, it could build a wireless network for that spectrum on its own, or partner with others to build and operate such a network. Either way, Google could put its brand on millions of mobile devices that use the network." more»
Google made a big splash last week with its new software for cellphones. But that's far from the limit of the Internet giant's wireless ambitions --- which could include running its own mobile network. more»
The European Commission has adopted a raft of proposals that will see Europe's telecommunications infrastructure dramatically shaken up. At the heart of the proposals, which represent the biggest change in telecommunications regulation in five years, is the Commission's desire to see the European telecommunications market made into a more level playing field. The existing framework was set in place by the Commission in 2002. more»
Now that more than 1 billion people use the Internet, international policymakers and computing experts are struggling with how to link the world's other 5 billion to the increasingly crucial network. "Ten years ago, to talk about 1 billion Internet users sounded exaggerated, unthinkable, but now we talk about the next billion," said Markus Kummer, the official heading the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Brazil. "It is clear sooner or later we will reach that number. It is also clear that next billion will be poorer than the first." more»
