With the recent passing of Paul Baran, IFTF is releasing an excerpt of a 1971 report in tribute, entitled "Brief descriptions of potential home information services." The excerpts are from the report titled, Toward a Study of Future Urban High-Capacity Telecommunications Systems, which included a handbook of forecasts for what was then called "broadband telecommunication and information services," later known as the Internet. more»
Google today announced plans to build ultra high-speed broadband service to a selected community in the U.S. as part of its experimental fiber network. In its announcement via a blog post, the company says: "In selecting a city, our goal was to find a location where we could build efficiently, make an impact on the community and develop relationships with local government and community organizations. We've found this in Kansas City. We'll be working closely with local organizations including the Kauffman Foundation, KCNext and the University of Kansas Medical Center to help develop the gigabit applications of the future."
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Cecilia Kang reporting in the Washington Post: "Just weeks after the Federal Communications Commission adopted its first-ever rules aimed at regulating Internet access, Verizon Communications on Thursday filed a federal lawsuit to overturn the controversial order. Verizon argues that the FCC does not have the legal authority to mandate how Internet service providers treat content on their networks." more»
During calendar year 2010, an average of 9.2 million new broadband subscribers signed up for service each month. Subscribers reached 763 million worldwide in 2010 with 179 million in United States. "Total worldwide DSL subscribers will reach 371 million at year-end 2010, fueled primarily by strong demand for DSL service in the Asia/Pacific region," according to In-Stat's latest market intelligence report. "Though this is expected to slowly decrease to 10% by 2014 as the broadband market matures, there are still some substantial gains to be made. The Asia/Pacific region will continue to see very high growth rates, along with Latin America and the Middle East/Africa regions," says Vahid Dejwakh, Industry Analyst. more»
Clint Hepner from Renesys reports: "The US old guard of AT&T, Sprint, Verizon and Qwest are treading water or declining. And as if to highlight that fact, Telecom Italia, Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom (AS5511) all became transit-free during the year. ... [P]roviders with a strong global footprint and a diverse set of offerings are continuing to rise in the rankings. And those organizations with popular content or captive end-users will find themselves increasingly in the driver's seat when it comes to pricing negotiations. When it comes to the Internet, the only constant is change and we can expect more turmoil in 2011 as the market continues its rapid evolution." more»
Royal Pingdom takes a look at real-world connection speeds for people in the top 50 countries on the Internet, i.e. the countries with the most Internet users. This list of countries ranges from China at number 1 with 420 million Internet users, and Denmark at number 50 with 4.75 million Internet users. We've included this ranking within parenthesis next to each country in the charts below for those who want to know. These 50 countries together have more than 1.8 billion Internet users. more»
Farhad Manjoo reporting in Slate: "It's not just Canada. Netflix is swallowing America's bandwidth, too, and it probably won't be long before it comes for the rest of the world. That's one of the headlines from Sandvine's Fall 2010 Global Internet Phenomena Report, an exhaustive look at what people around the world are doing with their Internet lines. According to Sandvine, Netflix accounts for 20 percent of downstream Internet traffic during peak home Internet usage hours in North America." more»
Esther Shein reporting in InformationWeek: "A Boeing Business Jet 737 aircraft has been installed and certified to use eXConnect, the first inflight wireless high-speed broadband service, the world's largest aerospace company and commercial jet manufacturer said this week. Passengers and crew members will be able to use eXConnect for access to real-time content on a laptop, handheld, or other Wi-Fi-enabled device." more»
Paul Budde writes: "Two relatively new mobile market entrants, Mobyland and Centernet, have launched Poland and Eastern Europe's first commercial LTE network. Vendor Huawei provided the equipment for the network, which operates in the 1800MHz frequency band. Both Mobyland and Centernet previously offered GSM services in the frequency band before refarming the spectrum to offer LTE. The operators aim to expand coverage to 20% of the population by 2011 by deploying 700 base stations." more»
Barry Collins reporting in PCPro: "The UK's two biggest ISPs have openly admitted they'd give priority to certain internet apps or services if companies paid them to do so. Speaking at a Westminster eForum on net neutrality, senior executives from BT and TalkTalk said they would be happy to put selected apps into the fast lane, at the expense of their rivals." more»
W. David Gardner reporting in InformationWeek: "The U.S. Commerce department's final American Recovery and Reinvestment Act awards for broadband networks were announced this week. Commerce secretary Gary Locke said that this latest round of grants totaled $206.8 million and that the department has awarded nearly $4 billion of Recovery Act funds for the expansion of broadband." more»
In a unanimous vote today, the FCC has given a green light for the use of "white spaces" in order to deliver broadband connections as super "WiFi". From today's announcement: "The Federal Communications Commission today took steps to free up vacant airwaves between TV channels -- called "white spaces" -- to unleash a host of new technologies, such as "super Wi-Fi," and myriad other diverse applications. This is the first significant block of spectrum made available for unlicensed use in more than 20 years. TV white space spectrum is considered prime real estate because its signals travel well, making it ideally suited for mobile wireless devices." more»
Larry Seltzer writes: Politico? Comcast's PR gets an 'A' for this article, an upbeat tech-lite description of the impending depletion of the IPv4 space and efforts to adopt IPv6. It also seems that the Obama administration is behind this, and that the Federal government has had "remarkable foresight on this issue." I feel better already. more»
ITU Secretary-General, Dr. Hamadoun Touré, has challenged global leaders to ensure that more than half of all the world's people have access to broadband networks by 2015, and make access to high-speed networks a basic civil right. "Broadband will be a game-changer in addressing rising healthcare costs, delivering digital education, empowering marginalized communities, and mitigating climate change." more»
Google has announced the deployment of an experimental broadband network using the TV white spaces. Company says: "This is an exciting new deployment -- the first of its kind for a hospital -- demonstrating the potential of the TV white spaces to improve broadband and spark new applications in healthcare. First responder vehicles, hospital grounds as well as the health department are being equipped with high-speed wireless Internet access. Additionally, the hospital is using the network to manage its outdoor video surveillance system." more»
