Get ready for the next generation of fiber to the home, which will deliver 10 Gbps downlink and 2.5 Gbps uplink shared across 32 homes. Verizon will announce next year that it has achieved these results in its labs, a huge improvement over the 2.5 Gbps down and 1.2 Gbps up the company is currently deploying. But get ready to dig deeper into your wallet, too, because even if the demand for broadband isn’t breaking the Internet, it’s surely forcing ISPs to rethink how they charge for such a valuable service — even Verizon. Continue »

Motorola and Verizon, thanks to their $100 million marketing efforts, are going to sell some 600,000 Droids during the fourth quarter of 2009, according to Mark McKechnie of Broadpoint AmTech, a boutique research firm. He had initially expected about 200,000 device sales following the launch, but he has upped his forecast: Motorola should sell another 200,000 Droids by Black Friday and 150,000-200,000 during the remainder of the holiday season. This would bring the total to some 600,000 Droids for 2009. Continue »

If you read the reviews, it becomes obvious that I am part of a small minority of folks who haven’t been blown away by the new Droid, a Google Android OS-based smartphone made by Motorola that Verizon Wireless launched Nov. 5 in the U.S. All the accolades are actually turning into smashing sales for the Droid, according to data collected by Flurry, a San Francisco-based mobile analytics company. How big are the sales? (Find out below the fold.) Continue »

Verizon may be joining the ranks of Internet service providers that send subscribers who illegally download or upload music files notices on behalf of the Recording Industry of America, according to sources who spoke with CNet. Verizon has not responded to my questions on this issue, but the CNet story says the letters will only notify subscribers that they may have erred; it will not threaten them with disconnection. We covered this trend last March when AT&T began experimenting with these letters: Continue »

  Several Internet service providers in the U.S. and around the world (including a large Chinese ISP) are currently implementing P4P technologies on their networks to help alleviate congestion caused by peer-to-peer files, and they will soon be joined by other ISPs doing the same. Indeed, P4P efforts that were showcased in August 2008 are taking on more relevance as broadband demand escalates and the FCC tries to regulate the principles by which carriers can deal with congestion on their networks. Continue »

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past several weeks, you’ve no doubt been bombarded with the heavy marketing surrounding the new Droid smartphone. Today, TheAppleBlog has a good analysis of the first weekend of sales for the Droid — in which 100,000 units moved — compared with the weekend openings of the iPhone, the iPhone 3G, the iPhone 3GS, and the Palm Pre. In short, the Droid did well, but nowhere near the iPhone releases. The numbers are collected in the chart below. Check Stacey’s thoughts from earlier today as well as TheAppleBlog’s analysis here.

The floundering economy hasn’t kept consumers from spending on mobile data, according to the latest quarterly report on the wireless industry from Chetan Sharma, one of our GigaOM Pro analysts. U.S. data service revenues grew 27 percent year-over-year in the third quarter, Sharma reported, with Verizon Wireless and AT&T accounting for 80 percent of the rise, underscoring what I wrote last week about how the rich carriers are getting richer. Given the investment needed to build out new networks, and the incredible growth in data, both the smaller carriers and U.S. regulators should mind the growing gap between those that are raking in the wireless data dough and those that are not. Continue »