Could distributed computing hold the future for scaling out the internet and meeting our increasing demands for broadband? The CEO of BitTorrent argues it does have a place in next generation architectures. Read more »
Skype is the largest international voice provider in the world, and this year saw it continue to steal minutes away from carriers. Skype calls accounted for 167 billion minutes in 2012. Read more »
Given his recent remarks suggesting frustration at the strictures of working in a large telco, it is not surprising to see Obermann go. His successor has wide knowledge of the German giant, though, and is apparently keen to emulate Obermann’s entrepreneurial streak. Read more »
Deutsche Telekom’s move into the browser-based games publishing business may vaguely gel with its broadband offerings, but it’s hard to see it as a viable replacement for the firm’s fading traditional businesses Read more »
You might think Deutsche Telekom CEO Rene Obermann, the man at the very top of T-Mobile, enjoyed life in a big corporation. On the contrary, he says: big companies are slow and need partners who can be nimble on their behalf… just as long as they’re not too disruptive. Read more »
Cable continues to crush telcos when it comes to stealing broadband customers, according to data out from the Leichtman Research Group. The analyst firm noted that the U.S. market added 1.3 million new subscribers for a total of nearly 80 million subscriptions. Read more »
After just three months of operation, France’s disruptive Free Mobile — which has upset the market with an innovative and controversial offering — has won 2.6 million subscribers, an unprecedented number for a new European launch. Read more »
The FCC’s plan to take the funding program that provides telephone service to rural areas and upgrade it for the 21st century will soon become law, as universal service fund reform hits the Federal Register. Here’s what the plan means for consumers, telcos and innovation. Read more »
Frontier Communications is trying to find new ways to provide value to subscribers and is rolling out one of the most comprehensive video portals online. With TumTiki, Frontier is bringing together more than 700,000 video assets from a combination of traditional broadcast TV and online sources. Read more »
Sometimes tech trends end up disrupting huge industries, like when the idea of Skype and free web calls, collided with the phone companies. However, sometimes tech ideas have all the makings of these kind of disruptions but ultimately end up flaming out. Here’s why: Read more »
Big data and Platform-as-a-Service offerings highlighted the second quarter, suggesting that we can expect to see a shift in enterprise IT practices around application development and analytics very soon. On the PaaS front, we saw new projects like DotCloud and Cloud Foundry gain incredible momentum in just a few short months. The big-data activity ranged from major new Hadoop vendors to heavy investment in flash storage that will speed the serving of data to processing engines. In other areas, we saw an uptick in cloud-computing plans from large vendors, OpenStack continued to mature and pick up both contributors and users, and Facebook caught our eye by launching an open-source project around the designs for its specialized servers and data centers. Additional companies mentioned in this report include VMware, Salesforce.com, IBM, Heroku and Calxeda. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Twitter is using a service provided by a telco spin out to access telco APIs for its new photo service. As part of this move it–and other developers– may have found a crucial key to making money for themselves and even for telecommunications providers. Read more »
Skype, the web’s telephone and video chat pioneer, has seen a lot since its inception eight years ago. But it’s real legacy is its people. The well-connected network of alums reads like a Silicon Valley who’s who. Read more »
GE plans to help consumers achieve what it calls a “Net Zero” home — as in zero utility bills — by bringing together certain innovative technologies. Why are similar innovations not taking place in telecom? Why are there no carriers touting net zero phone bills? Read more »
About 37 percent of the carbon footprint of the entire information and communication technology sector (ICT) in 2007 was due to the energy consumption of telecom infrastructure and devices, according to the Climate Group (14 percent came from data centers, and 49 percent came from PCs […] Read more »
