According to a report by research firm, TeleGeography, the price of wholesale internet access (IP transit) continues to decline but varies considerably around the world. From today's report: "IP transit prices in Asia remain far higher than in the US and Europe. Prices for GigE ports in major Asian cities in Q2 2008 ranged from USD30 per Mbps month in Seoul to USD45 per Mbps per month in Tokyo. IP transit service in Latin America is even more expensive, with median GigE port prices ranging from USD73 per month in Buenos Aires to USD86 per month in Santiago." more
In a major win for the public interest, the Broadband Data Improvement Act passed the Senate (on September 26th) and the House (on September 29th). Due to amendments, it now goes back to the Senate for final approval (should be pro-forma) before it lands on George Bush's desk. With the United States falling further and further behind a host of other countries, the question on many people's minds (including the folks over at Point-Topic who created this graphic) is, "Why is this happening?" more
It was just last year that those of us raising alarms about the massive half-decade market failure in the United States to adequately provision broadband services were facing a misinformation campaign that raw numbers mattered more than percentage rankings. According to this argument, the U.S. broadband market was sound because we had more broadband lines than anyone else. The misinformation brigade got so much attention that public interest groups had to issue reports systematically refuting the PR are marketing hype. more
The European Commission has just published a communication which describes the broad lines of its Internet policy in the coming years. Vint Cerf, on the Google Public Policy blog sees this as a very interesting vision. Indeed, it closely links the issue of openness of the Internet to several obvious and not-so-obvious factors. more
Recent reports indicate that China has now surpassed the U.S. and is becoming the number one broadband country in the world. According to data analysis by market research firm Point Topic, both the U.S. and China had about 78 million broadband lines at the end of August; however China is growing twice as fast. Point Topic says that when broadband use initially surged in China, some experts predicted the country would overtake the U.S. in 2006. However the U.S. speeded up in the number of broadband lines and growth in China leveled off. For 18 months the two countries were more or less even with similar numbers of lines added in each quarter until the first quarter of this year. more
Worldwide subscriptions to internet Protocol television (IPTV) services are on pace to reach 19.6 million subscribers in 2008, a 64.1 per cent increase from 12 million subscribers in 2007, according to research company, Gartner, Inc. Worldwide IPTV revenue is projected to total $4.5 billion in 2008, a 93.5 per cent increase from 2007 revenue of $2.3 billion. In 2008, 1.1 per cent of households worldwide will be subscribers of IPTV. By the end of 2012, Gartner forecasts worldwide household penetration of IPTV will be 2.8 per cent, while worldwide IPTV revenue is expected to total $19 billion in 2012. more
Google Inc. and T-Mobile USA today unveiled the highly anticipated smart-phone G1, the first in the industry to be based on Android, Google's operating system for mobile phones. Currently available for T-Mobile customers only, the T-Mobile G1 combines full touch-screen functionality and a QWERTY keyboard with a mobile Web experience that includes popular Google services such as Google Maps Street View, Gmail, YouTube and others. The T-Mobile G1 is also the first phone to provide access to Android Market, where customers can find and download unique applications to expand and personalize their phone to fit their lifestyle. more
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and other government agencies today on behalf of AT&T customers to stop the alleged illegal, unconstitutional, and ongoing dragnet surveillance of their communications and communications records. The five individual plaintiffs are also suing President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Cheney's chief of staff David Addington, former Attorney General and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and other individuals who have ordered or participated in the domestic surveillance. more
Today a senior McCain advisor, Doug Holtz-Eakin, proudly held up a Blackberry and declared: "You're looking at the miracle that John McCain helped create." Bloggers on all sides of the partisan divide are having a field day with this -- suggest that the McCain campaign is out of touch, desperate, or trying to top the trouble VP Al Gore got into, when he was falsely accused of claiming to have invented the Internet... more
A team of Scientists in Pisa, Italy are reported to have set a new world record in wireless data transmission speed. Italian researchers from Sant'Anna University along with the Japanese Waseda University and the National Institute of Information and communication technology in Tokyo, for the "first time in the history of telecommunications" achieved throughput speeds of above 1.2 Terabits per second. Previous record, set in Korea, had been160 Gigabits per second. more
A recent quarterly report titled "State of the Internet" has been released by Akamai providing Internet statistics on the origin of Internet attack traffic, network outages and broadband connectivity levels around the world. According to the report, during the first quarter of 2008, attack traffic originated from 125 unique countries around the world. China and the United States were the two largest traffic sources, accounting for some 30% of traffic in total. The top 10 countries were the source of approximately three quarters (75%) of the attacks measured. Other observations include... more
The WiMAX Forum has released an Interactive Deployment Database, providing a resource of more than 300 WiMAX deployments across the world. Available for public use, this tool includes detailed information on each of the operators, stage and type of deployment, as well as spectrum utilized. The database is planned to be updated quarterly with the latest information. more
The following is most of the generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) strings applied for in the 2000 and 2003 applications. Some are two, and even one character ASCII strings. Some have since been approved, or disapproved (which of course means nothing in the 2008 round). It is a universe of 180 strings. Enjoy. more
According to new data from TeleGeography research group, international Internet traffic grew 53% between mid-2007 and mid-2008, down from 61% the preceding year. Traffic growth between the US and Latin America was especially fast, surging 112%. In contrast, traffic on internet backbones between major cities in the relatively more mature US market rose a modest 47%. For the second consecutive year, according to the study, total international Internet capacity grew faster than total Internet traffic, leading to lower utilization levels on many internet backbones. Between 2007 and 2008, average traffic utilization levels decreased from 31% to 29%... more
Last week American Airlines launched their Aircell wireless Internet access on a limited number of flights. It didn't take long before a few folks tried to make voice and video calls (in violation of Aircell's terms-of-service according to their PR folks), and it didn't take long before someone figured a way around their voice/video blocking efforts. more
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