Sam Gustin reporting in DailyFanance: "As Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN), Netflix (NFLX) and Google forge ahead with highly publicized new plans to stream high-speed content like movies and TV shows to your living room, smartphone, telecom and cable giants like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast (CMSCA) have been intensely lobbying to maintain control over the broadband pipes they spent billions to build. Comcast is going so far as to buy a rich content factory, NBC Universal, a deal that would create a $35 billion media and delivery juggernaut." more»
Verizon Business has a message to companies still reluctant to migrate their networks to IPv6: You're better off doing it now than later. William Schmidlapp, Verizon Business's product manager for Internet dedicated access services, says that the advent of 4G LTE and WiMAX-based devices will only increase the need to switch over to IPv6, since each of those devices will require its own IP address... more»
Responding to recent controversies over Google-Verizon deal, Richard Whitt, Google's Washington Telecom and Media Counsel writes: "Over the past few days there's been a lot of discussion surrounding our announcement of a policy proposal on network neutrality we put together with Verizon. On balance, we believe this proposal represents real progress on what has become a very contentious issue, and we think it could help move the network neutrality debate forward constructively. We don't expect everyone to agree with every aspect of our proposal, but there has been a number of inaccuracies about it, and we do want to separate fact from fiction." more»
John Poirier reporting in Reuters: "Regulators halted closed-door negotiations about net neutrality rules with phone, cable and Internet companies on Thursday after reports of a side deal between two participants, Verizon Communications Inc and Google Inc, surfaced. ... The collapse means Genachowski may have to decide how to regulate Internet access without further input from the industry. His decision will likely be challenged in court..." more»
Grant Gross of IDG News reports: "Between 14 million and 24 million U.S. residents don't have access to broadband service, and deployment isn't happening fast enough, a report from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission concluded. Broadband isn't being rolled out to unserved areas in a timely manner, and immediate prospects for deployment to U.S. residents without service are 'bleak,' the FCC said in the broadband deployment report, released Tuesday..." more»
CNN reports: Finland has become the first country in the world to make broadband internet access a legal right for all citizens. The legislation, which came into effect Thursday, forces telecom operators to provide a reasonably priced broadband connection with a downstream rate of at least one megabit per second (mbs) to every permanent residence and office, the Finnish government said in a statement... more»
Cecilia Kang reporting in the Washington Post: "The Obama administration announced Monday that it will double the amount of airwaves available for mobile broadband to meet the demands of smartphones and other wireless gadgets expected to explode in popularity. Over the next decade, President Obama pledged to make available 500 megahertz of radiowaves for high-speed wireless carriers..." more»
Gemma Daley reporting in BusinessWeek: "Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has struck an A$11 billion ($9.5 billion) deal with Telstra Corp., removing a lingering obstacle to the creation of the government's national broadband network. State-owned NBN Co., building the network to provide high-speed Internet access, will get access to Telstra's infrastructure..." more»
Ryan Singel reporting in Wired: "The FCC began in earnest Thursday to assert its primacy on how the internet will be governed, crafting rules that will have a long-term impact on the devices, services and apps we'll be able to use on broadband. The agency, which regulates the nation's communications services, is scrambling to find solid legal ground to keep an eye on broadband providers..." more»
International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a United Nations agency on information and communication technologies (ICT), reaffirmed its goal on Tuesday to provide broadband internet access for half the world's population by 2015. "The number of Internet users has more than doubled since 2003, when the World Summit on the Information Society first met, and today more than 25 per cent of the world's population is using the Internet," says Sami Al Basheer Al Morshid, Director of ITU's Telecommunication Development Bureau. more»
Germany's top criminal court ruled Wednesday that Internet users need to secure their private wireless connections by password to prevent unauthorized people from using their Web access to illegally download data. Internet users can be fined up to euro100 ($126) if a third party takes advantage of their unprotected WLAN connection to illegally download music or other files... more»
The FCC released a report yesterday that identifies a total cost of $23.5 billion to bring broadband of at least 4 Mb/s to unserved territories. That is if you use DSL and fixed wireless to accomplish the task. If you were to go with FTTH, the cost jumps to $62 billion. more»
Jared Newman reporting in PC World: "Wounded from a court decision that stopped the government from regulating Internet service providers, the Federal Communications Commission has announced a new way to gain some control over the broadband industry. The proposal would let the FCC treat Internet transmissions like telephone communications, entailing more oversight, but would prevent government control over Web services, applications and e-commerce sites." more»
At a recent shareholders' meeting in Stockholm, Ericsson's CEO has reaffirmed company's vision of having 50 billion internet-connected devices by 2020: "Today we already see laptops and advanced handsets connected, but in the future everything that will benefit from being connected will be connected." As an example of connected devices, a research engineer showed real life mobile health applications and how heart monitoring can be done remotely over mobile networks. more»
Leading Internet content distribution service provider, Akamai, has announced that its global network is now serving as much as 3.45 Terabits per second (Tbps) of content per day. "The traffic peak of 3.45 Tbps is roughly equivalent to the capacity needed to download the entire printed contents of the U.S. Library of Congress in less than a minute," says the company. Paul Sagan, Akamai's President and CEO, says increasing demand for high definition video streaming is a key factor in these recent delivery milestones. more»
