GigaOM

Ready for a little Friday humor? Well there’s this British carrier called BT that’s spending £10 billion ($17 billion) to build out an all-IP network that would handle the massive influx of converged data, voice and video traffic coming over the next few years on one network. They’ve been trashed and mocked, as so many visionaries often are, but they’ve kept on building, with the goal of finishing the network by 2011. Only they apparently didn’t build it to talk to the next-generation protocols, which is like spending £10 billion for a machine that translates spoken Latin. Continue »

Today, Qwest Communications launches an Internet portal that allows users to access and see what’s happening on their home phones. Dubbed qHome, the service allows users to see who’s calling their home phone, listen to voicemail, forward messages, manage their contacts and place a phone call, all from the Internet. Users of Windows Live Messenger can also tweak their settings to get an Instant Message when someone calls their home phone.

For those of you who still have land lines, this is kind of a nifty feature that gives a little more control and access to a home phone without having to dial in for messages. Unfortunately, the service only works right now in Colorado and will be rolled out to the rest of Qwest’s customers later this year. More limits include the need for a customer to have both a Qwest land line with Caller ID and VoiceMail and DSL package as well as Windows Live, q.com, msn.com or hotmail account. This isn’t going to convince people to sign up for a land line, but it might keep those who are considering a rival cable or VoIP service happy with Qwest.

Today marks the formal launch of Sprint’s Xohm network, and celebrants are gathered in Baltimore to show off their new WiMAX-enabled gadgets. But after chatting with an executive from Lenovo, I wonder just how open Sprint’s network will be, and how that lack of true openness might slow the adoption of WiMAX.

Lenovo is on hand showing of its five laptops designed for Sprint’s WiMAX network, including the super-sleek x300 that competes with the MacBook Air. David Critchley, worldwide segment manager with Lenovo, said the x300 was supposed to launch last spring with WiMAX inside, but Sprint’s delays nixed that plan. Critchley expected that Lenovo would have the most WiMAX enabled products ready to launch today, in part because it had been preparing for WiMAX for so long, enabling it to get hardware ready in time for testing. He called Sprint’s testing pipeline “narrow,” and expected others to only have one or two devices ready for launch. Continue »

While I worry about buying gadgets there are plenty of people out there worried about buying far more important things like food and gas, which means that TV offerings such as those from AT&T, Comcast and Verizon might see the effects of the struggling economy. Daniel Amir, a director and semiconductor analyst at Lazard Capital Markets, seems to think so. In a note on IPTV chip maker Sigma Designs, he maintained a hold on the stock, citing a European slowdown in IPTV growth and fears that AT&T’s IPTV deployments will slow. Continue »

The recent bill dedicated to improving the nation’s broadband profile has passed the Senate — albeit with a few changes to render it less problematic for telecom companies. The modified version of the Broadband Data Improvement Act that is now before President Bush is aimed at gathering better data on actual broadband speeds offered to citizens, but is pretty weak when it comes to gathering detailed competition and broadband penetration data. Continue »

Sure it’s not like back in the early 2000s, when those crooks from Enron were driving the prices of bandwidth down into the ground, but even today prices on Internet bandwidth continue to fall. If you are a consumer, however, there’s a good chance you’re wondering what I’m talking about — after all, broadband service providers like Comcast and Time Warner are talking about putting the meter on the bandwidth they serve up to residential subscribers.

What I’m talking about is wholesale Internet bandwidth that is sold to Internet services providers (ISPs) and content companies like Yahoo and Google. This is called IP Transit and it is sold at a rate of “per megabit per second per month” and often requires a monthly bandwidth commitment. Cogent Communications, Level 3 Communications, Tata Communications, Global Crossing and AT&T are some of the more well-known IP Transit providers.

Today research firm Telegeography came out with a report that shows the price of wholesale Internet access (IP transit), while varied around the globe, are still in decline. Here are some facts. Continue »