GigaOM

• Come on Baby Light my Fire: FireFox that is!
• Politics of WiFi in Redwood City: Chris Nolan writes in EWeek about WiFi and how technology is reshaping the politics of Redwood City. “Back in 1999 … it was a dusty little out-of-the way county seat with a few tech companies looking for cheap office space…Today, Redwood City is the site of Scott Peterson’s murder trial and a line of nice-ish lunch joints line Broadway. My buddies at MessageCast have their offices there. So does CivicSpace Labs, the non-profit Andy Rappaport is backing.”
• The Next One Billion: Business Week has caught on the idea of the next billion tech users are not going to be in the US or in the developed world. It is a radical idea, but the next big pot of gold in China, India, and Brazil.
• Fiber Diet is Bad for Bells: Wired magazine on why Baby Bells and Cable companies hate small towns building their own fiber infrastructure.

Show me the money, however little it may be: Small business owners looking for investors would do better with their time than to seek venture capital. According to a study by Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, of the $18.2 billion in venture capital invested in 2003, only $304 million was invested in seed- or start-up-stage companies, the lowest level since 1980.[Inc Magazine]

• More More More: Cisco seeks to boost market share in key markets by five percentage points, plans to flood the market, quality is something they can’t guarantee as yet. Trading up is another option, if you know what I mean. Wink! Wink!
• Yahoo’s Curious Music Plans: John Borland takes a critical and smart look at Yahoo’s musical plans, and springs a surprise: despite buying Music Match for $160 million, Yahoo is building its own music player. Huh!

Over on VoIPDaily, I posted this item about VoicePulse carrying nearly 20 Million VoIP Minutes Using IAX2 Protocol. IAX2 stands for the Inter-Asterisk Exchange (IAX) protocol. It is used as a primary protocol for Asterisk, the open source PBX developed by Digium. IAX is used on Voice-over-IP networks much like the widely known SIP protocol. “Although the amount of traffic we carry using IAX is small compared to SIP,” said Ravi Sakaria, VoicePulse’s President and CEO. In his opinion, this is a significant milestone because it shows that IAX can be used in carrier class networks. Wanting to know more about IAX, I pinged Ravi, and asked him if IAX was a better option than SIP, and if yes why? His reply, “Our feeling is not that one protocol is better than the other in *all* cases (keep in mind the fact that IAX still accounts for a small percentage of the total traffic we transport), but rather that IAX has benefits in certain circumstances.” And the reasons for this are as follows:

• IAX handles Network Address Translation at the protocol layer so it’s much easier to configure on residential connections (SIP requires using STUN, keepalives, or some other workaround not built into the protocol).
• IAX is well suited for trunks carrying many simultaneous calls because it multiplexes the signaling for all these separate calls into one stream.  The result is that the bandwidth required is reduced significantly. 
• IAX is the native protocol of Asterisk, so it’s very easy for people who want to use this free, open-source PBX software to use it.

• 8X8 shares surge after distro deal
• VoicePulse: 20 Million Minutes Using IAX2
• Packet8 VoIP Now Available At Ingram Micro, Navarre
• Comcast Adopting AT&T For VoIP?

Sure it took a long time, but it did happen. The broadband penetration is growing at speed which makes everything else look puny. (okay take wireless adoption out of the equation.) Point Topic reports that globally broadband lines have galloped past 123 million. The number of broadband lines worldwide increased by almost 55% to over 123 million in the 12 months to 30 June 2004. DSL lines increased by over 30 million, or 66%, to 78 million. Cable modem and other broadband lines increased by nearly 13 million, or 39%, to 45 million. One big feature of the market in the last year is the growth of broadband services over fibre, so called ‘Fibre-to-the-building’, FTTB, or FTTx to cover all the options. The FTTx share of ‘other broadband’ lines accounted for 9 million lines by 30 June, or 7.3%. Other technologies, mainly fixed wireless access and satellite, accounted for less than 0.3% of the total.

Some good news for USA which is still the world’s biggest broadband country, with over 29 million lines. China as growing faster but still 10 million lines behind. Growth in Japan is starting to level off and Korea is already almost static in total broadband numbers. Germany, Canada and France are all very close together with about 5.1 million lines each while the UK is about 750,000 lines behind, but growing faster. Italy has now overtaken Taiwan to be ninth out of the top ten, so the world’s top nine broadband countries are now the top seven economies plus China and South Korea. On the flip side, when taken broadband lines per 100 people, South Korea tops the charts, Hong Kong is next and well US is nowhere in sight.

So what does this all mean? Well for starters all those things Rafat talks about on his blog - content - is now a viable market. Add to that VoIP, IPTV and other emerging technologies, I think the market is now big enough to support innovation. So friends… go forth and innovate.

San Diego, Phoenix and Detroit are the top three broadband enabled cities in the United States, according to Nielsen-Net Ratings. The results are surprising. The so called technology and commercial hubs are pretty low down in the list: New York is #4, San Francisco is #8 and Boston rounds off the top ten. Baltimore led all United States cities in terms of narrowband connections, with 50 percent of the homes there connected to the Internet via narrowband. I guess it is to do with the total size of the city, and also the demographics of the city. I am pretty sure, people in San Francisco and New York who desire a broadband connection already have it. The study also does not take into account the free Wi-Fi connections, because if it did I think all the tech-and-money hubs will be way up in the ranking.

Just when you think that the worst is over at WorldCon, here comes another does of bad news: SEC is investigating the creditors committee and has subpoenaed members of committee in the bankruptcy case of the former WorldCom. The Wall Street Journal reports that SEC has asked for documents “relating to members’ dealings as well as information they reviewed about WorldCom’s health and prospects, according to documents filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.” The news of investigation first surfaced when “the committee asked for MCI to pay for fees that arise from the SEC probe. MCI on Wednesday responded to that request, saying it shouldn’t have to pick up the tab.” The SEC’s action is unusual. “You’ve got to figure that this is something significant because the SEC is usually so hands-off when it comes to bankruptcy cases,” Bill Rochelle, a bankruptcy lawyer with Fulbright & Jaworski LLP told the Associated Press.

Anyway SEC is also looking for communications between the committee and its advisers, consultants, accountants and WorldCom. These buggers have made off like bandits from the WorldCon bankruptcy. Weil Gotshal & Manges has billed $39.8m for work as chief debtor’s counsel on the MCI bankruptcy. Others roosting on WorldCon miseries include Jenner & Block ($21.7m), and Kirkpatrick & Lockhart ($18m.) In comparison, two accountancy giants KPMG and Deloitte & Touche, which claimed a combined $314.4m in fees. What is more distressing is that SEC is looking for documents relating to company’s business, and financial prospects. I have long suspected that MCI is currently painting a smilie face on a harsh reality. There is still a price war going on in the bandwidth business, the voice market is in a free fall, UNE-P has killed the local business and long distance is dead. What are the prospects for MCI? Ask AT&T. I just am just simply disgusted by this whole system: the small guys are the one who are continuously getting screwed and nobody, and I mean nobody is really doing anything. Bernie Ebbers is still living large somewhere.

There are three things you can count on in life: taxes, death and baby bells being sore losers. RCR Wireless News reports that “Verizon Wireless has sent a blistering letter to the Federal Communications Commission charging that the FCC is illegally negotiating with Nextel Communications Inc. regarding a key portion of the FCC’s plan to solve public-safety interference in the 800 MHz band.” Verizon says that FCC met secretly with Nextel while negotiating the big spectrum swap. VZ is presenting an analyst note from investment house, Legg Mason as evidence. Apparently, “an investor note released by Legg Mason Sept. 9, which reportedly says Nextel is attempting to reduce its payment by $600 million to $700 million.”