I’d hoped that today’s announcement of Google’s phone would be another iPhone-like bomb set to disrupt wireless carriers and bring a future of affordable, open and ubiquitous mobile connectivity to pass. It isn’t. I suggest two ways for the search giant to help bring that about. Read more »
About a year after China issued 3G licenses to its three national carriers iSuppli predicts wireless data revenue in the country will rise to $19.3 billion in 2009, up from $16.3 billion in 2008. It’s a big opportunity for device makers, app companies and the carriers. Read more »
Wi-Fi was hot last year and it’s only getting hotter in 2010 as the availability of personal hotspots such as the Mi-Fi and the rise of the Direct Wi-Fi standard mean that putting a Wi-Fi chip in anything makes the device more useful. Read more »
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Almost a year after Nortel filed for bankruptcy, we take a look at what’s left of the 114-year-old company that began as Northern Electric and Manufacturing to sell telephones to Canadians. All that remains are some patents and an IP phone joint venture with LG. Read more »
The copper landline is dying, and AT&T has suggested some regulatory changes to speed the death along. What it doesn’t address is what an all-IP future means for the almost 20 percent who rely exclusively on a landline or the 33 percent without broadband. Read more »
Time Warner Cable and News Corp.’s fight over retransmission fees for broadcast channels brings up hard questions on the business model of providing over-the-air television. Honest answers to those questions could lead the way for the FCC to repurpose broadcasters’ spectrum for mobile broadband. Read more »
The heads of British Sky Broadcasting and Carphone Warehouse, two smaller British ISPs, so far aren’t impressed with BT’s planned fiber-to-the-cabinet network because it isn’t flexible enough, nor is it future-proof. Is this a sign that copper has no place in broadband networks any longer? Read more »
Toktumi CEO Peter Sisson talks about how he’s managed to grow despite launching the wrong product initially and Google’s entry into his market. He also highlights how he plans to take his hosted telephone system to the next level by going mobile. Read more »
The government is spending $7.2 billion to bring broadband to underserved and unserved Americans as part of the stimulus bill. However, the first grant allocations raise several questions about missing data, missing money and whether or not the government can spend the money before its deadline. Read more »
As power shifts between content owners and cable providers, content owners are gaining ground since they have a second pipe into homes. But cable still has the audiences and cachet with advertisers. So if Time Warner Cable and News Corp. continue their fight, both will lose. Read more »
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Live tweets and news are now showing up on Google, if our recent search for”Iranian Cyber Army” is any indication. Google appears to alternate between tweets and news in a box in the upper half of its search results. Read more »
Verizon yesterday said it tested a fiber technology that delivered 10 Gbps downstream over its FiOS network and 2.4 Gbps in upload speeds. It smoked its current speeds using Huawei gear and a forthcoming standard called XG-PON. Read more »
While the web is moving to video from text and is increasingly becoming more personal, we’re still viewing it on a flat screen — sometimes two or three flat screens. What if we could also interact with what we’re looking at, and in 3-D? Read more »
The NVCA today released predictions for the coming year that appear to embody the kind of cognitive dissonance one sees in a person with Stockholm Syndrome. The surveyed members of the NVCA predict a smaller industry but remain unusually optimistic about investment dollars and staffing levels. Read more »
The Federal Trade Commission today sued Intel, claiming it abused its market power and cut competitors out of the marketplace — not merely with regard to rival AMD, but also as the graphics market heats up. Nvidia must be thrilled. Read more »
MIT’s Media Lab today showed off a thin LCD screen that can respond to both touch and gestures. They call it a bidirectional screen, or BiDiScreen for short. The tech on display uses LCDs with built-in optics and new algorithms to allow for gesture control. Read more »
After losses and drama, more than $100 million in outside funding and a $500 million valuation, reports say London-based Spinvox could be bought for a mere $150 million by Nuance Communications, as Nuance tries to consolidate its leadership position in speech and voice recognition services. Read more »
Amazon, with its Spot Instances service announced today, is bringing dynamic pricing to the cloud by allowing customers to bid for compute cycles. The move helps Amazon boost margins by ensuring unused capacity doesn’t sit idle, and may even help it charge more for urgent jobs. Read more »
Blade server and containerized data center startup Verari Systems is shutting down today, according to reports. This has me wondering what the fates have in store for other specialty hardware players such as BLADE Networks or Liquid Computing. Read more »
The Apple-Nokia patent fight continues today, with Apple countersuing Nokia. This fight isn’t just about Nokia’s waning market share, however, but a symptom of how convergence is changing the mobile landscape. Read more »
Have you ever wanted to make or receive a phone call while diving? If so, SkyMall has the gadget for you: an underwater cell phone. But for $1,790? And would this thing actually work? Read more »
Google is making its second underwater cable investment, an effort to link parts of Asia Pacific and add up to 23 Tbps of bandwidth capacity to the region. The construction is part of a boom in submarine cables fueled by broadband demand. Read more »
Mobile operators are overwhelmed by data usage on their networks, but rightly fear that implementing restrictions could lead to widespread public dissent. Instead of beating bandwidth hogs with a stick, perhaps they can offer a carrot to get them to take it easy on the network. Read more »
Service providers appear ready to rebel against content companies, in particular against the cost involved with providing an end subscriber 500 channels of television as part of a pay-TV package. Among them is Gustavo Prilick, CEO of the small cable provider Broadstripe. Read more »
The Wireless Gigabit Ethernet Alliance today came out with its first version of a standard designed to send video wirelessly around the home at transmission rates of 7 gigabits per second, or 10 times faster than what you can do using the fastest Wi-Fi out today. Read more »
The TM Forum, a standards organization that’s active in the service provider community, is developing standards for cloud best practices and interoperability — a move that could move cloud providers out of the realm of offering cheap infrastructure for startups and into providing enterprise-class services. Read more »
Carriers are rapidly losing their power in today’s mobile ecosystem. To stay relevant they will have to become more agile, learn to share and use their cash to move ahead rather than play a waiting game hoping the Googles and Apples of the world will fail. Read more »
Gear6 is bringing memcached to the Amazon cloud which gives it the trifecta of service options for customers– an appliance, a downloadable software option and a cloud option. Read more »
Intel will rethink the market for its Larrabee chip, once destined to be a graphics processor. Does its failure to make an x86-based GPU mean that it’s reaching the limits of x86 computing as we take our devices to extremes on the low and high end? Read more »
New devices, app stores and rising mobile broadband usage continue are changing the way consumers and businesses interact with the cellular infrastructure and even the Internet. This is causing power to shift from the carriers to other players — something carriers are unable to admit. Read more »
Sweden’s telecommunications regulatory agency took a look at innovation and openness on broadband networks and found that the government should have a role in providing fiber — and that the country needs more spectrum. Read more »
Comcast and GE said today they plan to merge Comcast’s entertainment properties with GE’s NBC Universal to create a joint venture valued at $37.25 billion — a smart move by Comcast as it seeks to control the future of television on the web. Read more »
Alcatel-Lucent is introducing software and services to enable it to be the bridge between carriers and applications developers. Its hope is to help open up the proprietary telecommunications world to apps companies while helping carriers make money off their pipes. Read more »
The FCC is prepping for a future without the circuit-switched network that currently handles most of the calls in this country, as we transition to an all-IP communications network. This transition requires regulatory reform, but will also enable new services that meld voice, video and data. Read more »
Feel the holiday spirit. AT&T and Verizon Wireless today agreed to dismiss two different of lawsuits between the carriers, including AT&T’s suit regarding Verizon’s “There’s a Map for That” campaign. Read more »
Comcast today said it’s kicked off a broadband meter trial that will measure how much data a household consumers over its cable modem, something we’ve asked for since Comcast made clear its 250 GB-per-month cap on data downloads. Read more »
Clearwire has opened retail stores in 10 U.S. cities as part of pushing its Clear WiMAX service to the masses. However, given how few WiMax-capable devices there are right now, the retail environment must seem pretty empty. Read more »
Samsung today announced volume production of its latest Flash memory chips that will lead to faster, cheaper memory in a variety of consumer products. It starts with 8 GB microSD cards. Read more »
Waterloo, Iowa will soon offer the fastest broadband in the nation with 105 Mbps service provided by Mediacomm, a cable provider. Sure, the fast speeds are somewhat of a gimmick, but we hope it’s a gimmick that can turn into reality. Read more »
Data so far shows that online spending and visits to online retailers are up this holiday season, but has the spending and traffic hit a peak ahead of Cyber Monday? If so, does it render Black Friday and Cyber Monday moot as indicators for holiday spending? Read more »
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