Everywhere from the White House to the local White Castle, people are heavily promoting broadband as an antidote to economic woes. But what if a local economy is so bad even broadband doesn’t look like it will help? A recent event offers some clues. Read more »
Too slow, America. While Congress and the FCC have spent forever deciding what to do with white spaces on the spectrum, the English city of Cambridge has gone ahead and rolled out the first active city-wide network. Read more »
As government strives to keep up with the broadband age, the Senate held a hearing covering the future of television, but midway through I realized that the Senate has it all wrong. The future of TV isn’t found in deregulation, it’s found on the Internet. Read more »
The slow death march of DSL continues!. Last week, Verizon reported a loss of about 89,000 DSL connections, but increased demand for faster FiOS Internet. Today, numbers from AT&T follow the same trend. Read more »
Vodafone, the world’s largest mobile group, is buying its fellow British firm Cable & Wireless Worldwide to — making a huge payday for chief executive Gavin Darby, who only joined at Christmas… after quitting Vodafone. Read more »
A project out of Georgia Tech University using the OpenFlow protocol could change the way consumers control their home network — or the way ISPs meter customers. In this video interview Nick Feamster of Georgia Tech explains the project and where people can download it. Read more »
Smartphone sales surged both in the U.S. and worldwide, carriers struggled to cope with the ever-increasing consumption of mobile data, and the fight for spectrum remained front and center in the first quarter. Our latest quarterly wrap-up analyzes these trends and more. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The stereotype of Russia as a haven of copyright infringement could be a thing of the past, after officials in Moscow said they were considering holding internet providers liable for illegal filesharing that takes place on their networks. Read more »
A new study predicts $200 bills for the pay-TV portion of your cable bill by 2020. Here’s how the cable companies are using both a carrot and a stick to keep pay TV necessary in an IP age. Can government or consumers stop them? Read more »
When it comes to broadband we spend a lot of time talking about how much data we can transfer quickly but applications from video chat to gaming require a different type of network speed. If latency doesn’t matter to you yet, it soon will. Read more »
For those concerned that Cox would begin charging customers overage fees, after reading a news story last night, you can put those fears to rest. A spokesman says the ISP’s broadband meter contained an error and it has no current plans to add overage fees. Read more »
Comcast said content streamed over Microsoft’s Xbox won’t count against a user’s 250 GB usage cap, prompting outrage. But the reality of the situation is that the way Comcast is delivering its content over the Xbox means it’s in the right. Did net neutrality fail? Read more »
Vectoring, a technology that eliminates crosstalk on a DSL line can boost speeds on existing copper to up to 100 Mbps. And apparently service providers are interested in testing it out, according to Telebyte, which launched the first gear capable of testing how vectored lines perform. Read more »
Barry Diller’s latest investment in media disruption hasn’t even launched yet and it’s already in court. That’s part of the appeal of Aereo… Read more at paidContent »
Deutsche Telekom’s T-Labs researchers have successfully demonstrated a 512 Gbps transmission over a single fiber channel — more than quadrupling the maximum bit-rate possible on today’s backbone networks. Read more »
Notable about all the places that offer free WiFi in London is a requirement to accept the terms and conditions – and, in almost all cases… Read more at paidContent »
Like some hideous policy monster that won’t go away, network neutrality will hit headlines again. Verizon and Metro PCS, the two operators that sued the FCC last year over its rules forbidding ISPs from discriminating against traffic on their networks, won a victory on Thursday. Read more »
Time Warner Cable is implementing a new pricing plan in certain areas of Texas. It gives customers a break on their broadband bill if they agree to a limited plan. This is nice, because it lowers the cost of broadband, but it’s also a lousy deal. Read more »
Martin Geddes thinks the telecom industry has reached its peak. As he explains, telecom is like the railroad business at the height of the railroad barons. It has acquired its maximum share of the economy, and the only way now is down. Read more »
Several companies and nonprofit organizations filed their opposition to Verizon’s planned $4 billion buy of spectrum owned by the cable companies on Wednesday. But this isn’t an industry fight. This is a fight that should involve everyone from consumers to Internet companies. Read more »
Google has filed applications for a satellite farm and a video franchise license, suggesting it’s serious about rolling out pay TV services in its fiber-to-the-home markets. But what’s that mean for the future of TV, as Google attacks that market? Read more »
Tablets represent the next evolution in the advancement of mobile computing, and by 2015 or 2016, the tablet will begin to replace the laptop and the desktop operating systems market will begin to level off or perhaps decline. Our latest forecast examines these trends in detail. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Regressive, telco industry-influenced state legislators are at it again, trying to kill communities’ right to determine their own broadband futures. Anti-community broadband bills are rearing their ugly heads in several states. Can SOPA-style protests help? Read more »
The Netflix streaming app is now available on over 800 different devices, which is nearly double the number of devices that the app was on only six months ago. Yet for all that growth, Netflix is suddenly looking vulnerable in mobile video as new competitors with ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Consumer applications have driven the rapid take up of faster broadband services in the U.S. in the last decade. But as Google and others build gigabit networks to see what can be done with them, it’s time to bring businesses back into the innovation cycle. Read more »
The country’s largest mobile operator and largest cable provider bringing their “quadruple play” service to San Francisco and the Bay Area, jointly marketing Comcast residential TV and broadband and Verizon mobile service. In the process, they’re poking a needle in the eye of mutual enemy AT&T. Read more »
If you’re like many of us, you’re already thinking over some New Year’s resolutions that will make you a better “you” in 2012. But how are the tech industries’ thought leaders approaching the new year? We asked 12 of them for their resolutions. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Did you know that Bulgaria has the highest level of broadband adoption, at 96 percent? Or that the average connection speed in South Korea is 16.7 Mbps versus the global average connection speed of 2.7 Mbps? Some findings from Akamai’s latest “State of the Internet” report. Read more »
Macworld | iWorld had some fantastic products. Ignoring anything that wasn’t actually shipping, since so many products never actually make it to market , here are my top picks from the show. They include most iDevice companions, but also one product any Mac user wil love. Read more »
If Green Bay, Wis. with a population of 105,000 can raise $70 million to re-hab its football field by selling $250 stock shares, There must be a community in America that can raise up to $3 million for a broadband network. Here’s how it might work. Read more »
The Wi-Fi Alliance, the keepers of the Wi-Fi brand, have come out swinging against the characterization of white spaces broadband as Super Wi-Fi. The Alliance issued a press release Friday saying it likes the tech, but the name will lead to “substantial user confusion.” Read more »
Could Apple spend its $100 billion in cash to create a virtual cable operator to compete with Comcast and the like? Sure. But it would have a really hard time offering a competitively priced service and building a profitable business out of it. Read more »
The sky is falling again in cellular land, and this time Siri is to blame. At least that’s the assessment form this opinion article in the Washington Post this morning claiming Siri’s piggy ways will destroy our cellular networks. But this assessment is wrong. Read more »
A set of quarterly results today from AT&T (NYSE: T) that underscored some of the aftershocks the carrier is feeling in the wake of its fail… Read more at paidContent »
New Hanover County in North Carolina became the first county in the United States to deploy a Super Wi-Fi network, but the real question is will it also be the last? The technology is not as healthy as the pomp and circumstance surrounding the launch indicates. Read more »
From 1990s through 2011, DSL, a broadband technology, had a strong run at large phone companies in America. Now it is falling behind cable broadband and fiber. The latest data from Verizon, AT&T and Time Warner Cable points to its declining fortunes. Read more »
When people think about ditching their cable or satellite subscriptions in favor of one of the growing number of internet-connected set-top… Read more at paidContent »
If Verizon has to visit a copper customer more than twice to repair the line, the communications company plans to just switch the customer over to fiber, said an executive on the company’s annual financial results call Tuesday. Read more »
In the summer of 2009, I found myself invited to a small party in an old bourgeois apartment with breathtaking views of the Champ-de-Mars an… Read more at paidContent »
Super Bowl 46 is around the corner, and Verizon is taking huge steps to ensure the mobile broadband flows as fast the beer at Lucas Oil Stadium. Here’s a video look at the effort, which includes a 600 antenna Wi-Fi system for up to 28,000 people. Read more »
