The Wall Street Journal reported that AT&T saw wireless networks about to drown under a deluge of data. To see YouTube content uploaded form an iPhone or Slingbox rerouting a favourite television program to your smart phone gives mobile network operators the shivers. Skype over 3G in the meantime gives sleepless nights, not because of surging megabyte floods but due to nightmares of considerable voice and roaming revenues washing away. Not easy to plan and engineer "managed transitions" under those circumstances. more
Susan Crawford, special assistant to the president for science, technology and innovation policy and a member of the National Economic Council, is reported to be favorably inclined towards a U.S. network much like Australia's recently announced $33B broadband plan. Of course, the U.S. is some 15 times bigger than Australia, and that'd make the price tag closer to $500B by straight multiplication. But the U.S. would get a fiber network done right... more
I gave a talk yesterday at Northwestern called A DNS in the Air. My idea is that, in order to scale, the emerging wireless Internet needs something analogous to the domain name system (DNS) -- the infrastructure that allows you to reach sites across the Net. Billions of mobile phones, and even more billions of connected sensors and other wireless devices will completely overwhelm our current spectrum management regime. AT&T Wireless estimates we will need between 250 and 600 TIMES the current wireless capacity in 2018, less than a decade from now. more
Listen for half a minute to a demo of a high-bit-rate codec and you expect they will transform our industry. The difference is like a CD with great headphones versus a little transistor radio. Suddenly, you realize just how awful the sound is on your regular telephone. Who wouldn't want their call to sound dramatically better was my first reaction. When Thomson and some of the cable folks discussed plans, I was enthusiastic. Years later, nearly no one is taking advantage... more
As someone closely involved with the Australian National Broadband Network (NBN) and many other fibre plans around the globe, I would like to provide an inside picture of the revolutionary developments that are taking place in the Australian broadband market. Australia's national broadband network will be an FttH-based open wholesale network -- a network that will connect (not pass) 90% of all Australians to fibre, with the remaining 10% of the population being linked to that network through technologies that are capable of delivering equivalent services. more
Across the Internet, yesterday, Google users twittered, blogged and emailed that Google search and mail were not usable. And, yesterday afternoon, on Google’s official blog, Urs Hoelzle reported that Google “direct[ed] some […] web traffic through Asia”... Even though Google is very well-connected to a diverse set of other networks, two of these relationships predominate. It is through these relationships that much of the Internet reaches Google... more
Picture this: the still state-owned (51% of shares) Belgian incumbent telecom and Internet operator, Belgacom, is not a dominant player on the ISP market, according to the Brussels appeals court... It is obvious to every inhabitant of Belgium that the incumbent is everywhere. It owns all the copper pairs to homes and a good deal of the fibre. No single Internet or telephony operator can get into the business without transiting through the Belgacom network at some stage. more
BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones must be hoping that his near neighbours don’t decide they want a larger family. He recently spent ages setting up a high-speed wireless network at home, documenting the whole tortuous process on the BBC Technology blog, but all his hard work could apparently be ruined by a single baby listener in the neighbourhood... more
FttH networks had begun to arrive well before the financial crisis hit, but surprisingly it is the crisis itself that is now driving fibre beyond its first stage. This first stage was basically a continuation of the 100-year-old vertically-integrated telephone business model. This saw more of the same delivered at higher speeds and higher costs, and there was only a limited market that was willing to pay a premium for such a FttH service... more
I've been fascinated by the recent announcement that Australia is spending $31 billion USD to upgrade its broadband. With all the excitement and fuss over the broadband stimulus funding in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, it may seem strange to be claiming that the $7.2 billion is a pitifully small amount -- but let me bring this home for you... more