A report shows that by 2018, the traditional phone system is going to be reaching less than 6 percent of U.S. residents. It’s perhaps time to rethink the very notion of what a phone is and what defines the classic phone network. Read More »
Tech
As we’ve noted, the rise of LTE opens up the potential for wireless carriers to court wireline broadband subscribers. Well, even with the limitations of wireless, the comparison is valid, at least for now, according to Deutsche Bank, which studied the latest 4G offerings. Read More »
Copper, thanks to new generation DSL technologies is staying competitive with fiber and cable broadband. Today, a new breakthrough shows that it will only be a matter of time before DSL broadband crosses the 800 Mbps threshold. For now lets’s settle for 100 Mbps DSL. Read More »
Huawei, the telecom gear maker, today said it has achieved speeds of 700 Mbps over DSL using a prototype shown in Hong Kong: the fastest DSL we’ve seen. Earlier this year, Alcatel-Lucent showed off 300 Mbps over DSL that could travel for one kilometer. Read More »
Cable and telephone companies added a scant 336,000 net broadband subscriptions during the second quarter, according to the Leichtman Research Group: the lowest amount in the nine years that the analyst firm has tracked such additions. Telcos were the big losers as cable tromped DSL. Read More »
US telcos are phone companies in name. They have been losing their grip on the voice business. And now they are even starting to lose their traction in the broadband business as well. Q2 will see firstever quarterly decline in broadband subscribers at large telcos. Read More »
AT&T is deploying pair bonding throughout its DSL network as a means to bring U-Verse to more subscribers in 122 of its markets in 22 states. But before anyone gets excited, the upgrade will not boost speeds and will be about three years late. Wheee! Read More »
Thanks to furious broadband growth in China, a resurgent US and new Asian markets, the world is close to having half a billion broadband subscribers. That represents 8.4 percent of the worldwide population penetration and a household penetration of 30.8 percent. A full breakdown by the … Read More »
Best Buy will merge its Speakeasy DSL business with Covad and Megapath, creating a managed service local exchange carrier, and sounding the death knell for independent DSL providers. It’ll get a minority stake in the combined company, which to me is a euphemism for fire sale. Read More »
Some 80 percent of respondents don’t know the actual broadband speed to their homes, an FCC broadband survey finds. To educate and gather more data, the agency is looking for 10,000 volunteers to use a hardware box for speed testing. Will you join the broadband army? Read More »
Just when you think it is time to say goodbye to the old copper infrastructure, someone comes up with new technology to give it a new lease on life. Now Bell Labs, using software and new gear, is pushing DSL speeds to 300 Mbps. Read More »
The FCC released data today detailing the spread of high speed Internet across the nation through the end of 2008, including a map. So why are we spending $350 million to create such a map in the broadband stimulus bill? Because the FCC map is worthless. Read More »
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