Sandvine report confirms: video makes bandwidth hogs of us all
Video has long been the driving force behind our growth in broadband traffic. The latest Sandvine report shows us that’s still the case and offers clues on how ISPs may cope. Read more »
Netflix launches global ISP speed index website
Google Fiber is the world’s fastest ISP… for Netflix viewing, anyway: Netflix is now aggregating all of its ISP speed data on one website. Read more »
Should you be worried about the new “six strikes” anti-piracy rules? Yes and no
A new system of warnings for users who download copyrighted content is being rolled out by some of the biggest internet service providers in the United States. Is it something you should be concerned about? That depends. Read more »
Say it with me now. Data caps are about profits, not recovering fixed costs
The cable industry has tweaked its justification for capping broadband, but a report from the Open Technology Institute is having none of it. Read more »
Funambol gets $5.75M to fuel mobile carriers’ cloud services
photo: Flickr / getinet
Funambol’s first round of funding in four years comes just as mobile operators are mounting a challenge against the cloud storage services offered by Google, Microsoft and Apple. Funambol provides a white-label cross-platform service, which several of the big carriers have already tapped. Read more »
Anonymous takes on Indian government, Bollywood
As promised, hactivist group Anonymous organized demonstrations on Saturday in 16 cities throughout India, protesting the governments Internet laws and the ISPs’ blocking of popular file-sharing sites. Protesters donned Guy Fawkes masks and amassed at cricket grounds and other outdoor landmarks from Chennai to Delhi. Read more »
How mobile networks are policing the web — badly
Mounting evidence suggests Europe’s mobile operators are becoming increasingly censorious, thanks to haphazard adult content filters that are applied to millions of users. The result? De facto, unregulated censorship that screens out thousands of legitimate websites, including GigaOM. Read more »
Subscriber Content
Netflix plays the net neutrality card
There is real long-term danger to Netflix lurking in the FCC’s current net neutrality rules, but it lies in the rules’ failure to regulate those parts of the Internet the consumer doesn’t see, like peering agreements between last-mile ISPs and content distribution networks (CDNs). While Netflix ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Carriers must prepare for the flood of online video
It’s no secret that we’re watching more online videos. What’s not so well understood is just how dramatically this consumption will soon increase — and the pain that is going to inflict on Internet service providers. Alon Maor, the CEO of Qwilt, offers his solution. Read more »
Cool idea: Communal broadband
A Boston company called NetBlazr wants to offer businesses free access to a communal broadband network if a user pays for about $300 in equipment and then turns over the management of that gear to NetBlazr so it can continue building the network. Read more »
If you can’t trust your ISP, who can you trust?
ISPs have been exposed as hijacking the search traffic that some of their customers have tried to type into Yahoo and Bing search engines, and now the backlash begins. Now companies involved in the scheme has been hit with a lawsuit and may face Congress. Read more »
Apparently, small ISPs and rural telcos love Google Apps
Google Apps might not have many takers amongst the big boys of business, but the company is finding success with small and rural telecoms and Internet service providers, which, in turn, are offering Google Apps to their customers. Read more »
Blah, blah, blah … something about IPv6
The efforts to convert corporations to the next-generation Internet addressing scheme are falling on deaf ears. According to Ovum, a mere 3 percent of web traffic is IPv6-enabled and enterprises either aren’t convinced of the need to switch, or think they already have. Read more »
Europe’s ISPs hold faster broadband hostage
As the EU looks at delivering faster broadband across its member states, a report by the chief executives of Alcatel-Lucent, Deutsche Telekom and Vivendi are asking that the EU allow ISPs to charge content providers for pushing bits across their pipes. Read more »
Netflix: Is it broadband’s cash cow or data hog?
Netflix may have become the new face of evil for wireline Internet service providers as they seek to impose caps or tiers on subscribers. But it also looks like Netflix is willing to play the part of consumer advocate, countering myths ISPs perpetrate around broadband scarcity. Read more »
Future of TV According to Netflix’s Reed Hastings
EXCLUSIVE: Reed Hastings, chief executive officer and founder of online video company Netflix, has a pretty clear idea of what the future of video looks like. It needs high-speed fiber broadband, it involves sensors and it is all about click-and-watch on-demand Internet video. Read more »
German Rights Holders Go After 300,000 P2P Users Per Month
German content owners have been busy pursuing alleged infringers: Local ISPs have to hand out around 300,000 names and addresses of file sharers caught in the act every month, according to data from a German industry association. Will we see similar numbers in the U.S. soon? Read more »
Netflix: ISPs Kill Web Freedom, Suck All Profits
Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix won’t take the ISPs attacks against his business any longer. He released a report showing that heavy bandwidth users incur a cost of 1 penny or less per gigabyte over a last-mile network — far less than ISPs are charging. Read more »
France To Internet: G8 Will Talk To You, For a Price
Later this month France is hosting a summit of political leaders and Internet thinkers. But now it seems that senior industry leaders are being asked to pay up for their chance to dictate the conversation and swap numbers with powerful governments. Read more »
Forget P2P. Now ISPs Really Hate Netflix
Netflix has become the new scapegoat for Internet Service Providers eager to cap, tier or otherwise make broadband more expensive for their customers in the guise of chastising bandwidth hogs. Data out from startup Mu Dynamics drives the streaming site’s pariah status home. Read more »
Kansas City, Kansas, Gets Google Fiber
Google has chosen Kansas City, Kansas for its 1 Gigabit fiber-to-the-home network it announced last February, disappointing the hundreds of other towns that sent in applications in the hopes of getting their own Google-funded superfast network. Read more »
Will Content Streaming Make ISPs Rich?
Two announcements on Monday night illustrated the yin and yang of the streaming market. Amazon announced a cloud storage drive and cloud music service, and Netflix said it would have to degrade the quality of video streams in response to bandwidth caps. Read more »
IBM’s Cloud Effort Shifts from Workloads to Industries
IBM today released its latest cloud offering –- a mix of consulting services, gear and a management platform aimed at communications service providers — with France Telecom and Shanghai Telecom named in the release as pilot customers. It’s part of a shift in strategy for Big Blue. Read more »
Got a Need for Internet Speed? Move to Vancouver
If you find you just can’t get a fast enough Internet connection, you might want to look for an apartment in Vancouver, British Columbia — a local ISP there named Novus says it will soon launch the continent’s fastest Internet service, offering 200 megabits per second. Read more »
House Committee: ISPs Must Block Scam Sites
[qi:066] Internet service providers may become legally responsible for scam web sites and spam that passes over their lines if a new piece of legislation, the Investor Protection Act, gets turned into law. The act, which passed through the House Financial Services Committee today, requires ISPs […] Read more »
