There’s two ways to look at the story that many of the country’s biggest ISPs have refused government stimulus money for broadband infrastructure investment. One, the ISPs patently don’t need the money, and are more than capable of delivering broadband to as many Americans as possible with their own capital. Two, the ISPs could use the money, but they’d prefer not to accept it lest they be beholden to all sorts of government-imposed restrictions, one of which relates to net neutrality. → Read More
By 2013, annual global IP traffic will reach two-thirds of a zettabyte, according to a new forecast of IP traffic issued by Cisco today. What is a zettabyte? It is a trillion gigabytes, dummy. (I had to look that up too). And that number represents more than a fivefold increase in IP traffic from today. (See the forecast in the tables below).
What is driving this growth is video. Cisco forecasts that 90 percent of consumer IP traffic (which makes up the majority of total IP traffic) will be video in 2013. Cisco also predicts that mobile data traffic will also be overtaken by video, reaching 64 percent of total mobile IP traffic by 2013. Part of this might be wishful thinking on Cisco’s part, which needs broadband usage growth to continue apace in order to sell its networking gear. But part of it is also the fact that these numbers are based on the percentage of bits traveling over those broadband pipes, and it doesn’t take a lot of fat video files to fill those up. → Read More
From downloading videos and high-resolution photos, to online gaming and chatting with friends over instant-messengers, the mobile broadband networks of today are strong – but they’re starting to feel ancient. Today, AT&T clarified their plans to upgrade their network to deliver considerably faster mobile broadband speeds by way of HSPA (High Speed Packet Access). HSPA roll outs will begin later this year, firing up in full sometime in 2011. → Read More
Never have I been happier to be a Cablevision subscriber. The New York area company will offer the fastest broadband in the United States starting next month. Top speed is said to be 101 megabits per second downsteam, and 15 megabits per second upstream. My [private high-def BitTorrent site whose name I've removed] account is jumping for joy. → Read More
How fast is your broadband Internet connection? (Do you even have a broadband Internet connection?) A quick trip to Speedtest.net shows that I’m on a 13mbps/1.7mbps connection. That’s not bad, but in places like Japan, where you can buy a 150 mbps for $60 per month, little kids playing Quake would laugh at my puny connection speed. See, in other parts of the world, for any number of reasons, broadband speeds make American broadband speeds look like pure garbage. → Read More
A disheartening report in the Orlando Sentinel finds that some people are switching from broadband to dial-up in order to save money. Sad but true, it seems. Those who are switching are “not the iPod crowd,” according to NetZero CEO Mark Goldstein, but mostly people from older generations who use the internet for very basic e-mail and light web surfing. → Read More
Digital Britain. Broadband everywhere. You’re going down with a billion in the bank. All popular phrases coming out of the UK today, some of which the Government is working toward making a reality. Up first, making broadband as ubiquitous as television. Oh, and eliminating music piracy. Like that’ll ever happen. → Read More
I knew I lived here for a reason! Seattle has moved to the top of Forbes’ annual “most-wired” American cities list, displacing Atlanta (of all places) and further cementing its unofficial title of Most Awesome. → Read More
The Asus EeePC 901 will come with built-in 3.75G networking when it’s released next month. Asus swears up and down that the addition of 3.75G won’t adversely affect battery life, which it claims stands at 7.5 hours. We shall see. On paper, 3.75G is as fast as 7.2Mbps down and 2 Mbps up. Your real world speeds may vary. She’s based on that Intel Atom platform. You have your choice of 16GB or 20GB solid state drives, along with 1GB of RAM. Anecdote: At a café two days ago, some chain smoking businessman—everyone smokes here in Barcelona—was using an Asus netbook. Blew my mind, almost. → Read More
New York City wants to provide its residents with affordable broadband Internet access, but doesn’t think a municipal Wi-Fi network is the way to go. (Those haven’t done too well, remember.) To that end it’s hired some fancy-sounding consultancy, Diamond Management and Technology Consultants, to help come up with an Internet plan. Companies being linked with the job include Time Warner, Cablevision and Verizon. Asked why it doesn’t want to go the Wi-Fi route, a city official said plainly, “We don’t think municipal Wi-Fi will succeed.” The moral of the story is, New York wants to provide Internet access to its residents, a priority being placed on low-income ones, but doesn’t particularly care to use Wi-Fi to get the job done. → Read More
Cuba is set to get broadband internet access in the year 2010 and you can sure as hell bet that CrunchGear will more than happy to provide Cubans everywhere with half-cocked news and reviews that may or may not pertain to the world of technology. Apparently, some documents have been leaked (site is currently down, unfortunately) detailing an undersea cable to be stretched between Cuba and Venezuela as a workaround to that pesky trade embargo that Uncle Sam’s handed down to our friends off the southern tip of Florida. Speaking of Florida, it’d be a lot easier and cheaper to stretch a cable from there to Cuba but, again, they’re in cahoots with the Soviets and they like communism and we don’t trade with communist countries except for China, Vietnam, and most of the others. According to InformationWeek, “the Cuban government has estimated a Havana-Florida cable would cost $500,000” and it’s unknown how much the way-longer cable from Venezuela will cost. The leaked documents say that the new cable will be able to handle data, video, and VoIP services, though. You’ll recall that personal computers came to Cuba earlier this year along with cell phones. So things are looking up! → Read More
Flickr’d AT&T is the latest company to consider plans to charge heavy downloaders more than casual downloaders, crippling not only pirates but stifling legitimate innovation in the process. That’s what a spokesperson told the AP, though no specific plans have been announced as yet. Even worse, this is DSL we’re talking about. We’re used to cable providers huffing and puffing about bandwidth hogs destroying the neighborhood’s capacity, but DSL? That’s a first (I think). Time to get a Sweden-based seedbox. → Read More
Flickr’d Don’t look now, but the FCC, in an unusually egalitarian move, may require the winner of an upcoming spectrum auction to give away free, wireless Internet access. A June 12 meeting will determine the rules of an upcoming auction, with one of the bandied-about provisions being that the winner must provide at least 50 percent of the country (well, the population) with free, wireless broadband within five year of winning the auction. Within 10 years, 95 percent of the country would have to be covered in wireless broadband. There’s precedent for this type of thinking. M2Z Networks offered to give away wireless broadband two years ago in exchange for spectrum; it was to give the FCC 5 percent of its advertising earnings as part of the deal. The FCC balked, saying that it couldn’t dole out spectrum without having a proper auction. So because of a technicality, we’re still without nationwide, wireless broadband. Note that Google‘s been linked with wireless broadband schemes in days past, both for real and for a laugh. → Read More
Your friendly cable company may soon be carrying the SlingModem, a combination SlingBox and DOCSIS 2.0-certified cable modem. Basically, you’d only have to connect one coax cable to the box and you’d get your internet access, plus you’d be able to sling the cable signal right out of the gate. Sounds cool, I guess. SlingModem is one of Sling Media’s newest place-shifting devices, combining a DOCSIS 2.0-certified cable modem with the award-winning and innovative features of the Slingbox™. Cable subscribers can use the device as a traditional DOCSIS cable modem that includes the added benefit of built-in Slingbox functionality. By connecting SlingModem directly to a coax cable input or set-top box, subscribers can receive live or recorded television on any Internet-connected device. SlingModem is easily installed through a single coaxial cable, eliminating the need for additional home networking connections. The box will be branded and sold directly to cable providers by Echostar, who bought Sling Media last year. Pricing and availability are unknown, but more details should emerge at the Cable Show in New Orleans May 18-20. Full press release after the jump. → Read More
Normally when you think of fiber and sewers, a different, smellier thing comes to mind than broadband internet access. Hay-oh! Thank you, I’ll be here all week. Bournemouth, UK, which is full of old people — Pem Charnley of EcoWorldly says that a common joke is “that the shop windows are all fitted with bi-focals to allow passers-by to ascertain what lies within” — will be running fiber-optic cabling through the town’s sewer system instead of digging shallow trenches in the ground. That’s not a bad idea at all and I’m wondering why this hasn’t been done before or if it has, in fact, been done in other places. It’d make the system much easier to maintain. via Newlaunches → Read More
Cablevision, a regional ISP here in the north-east, will roll outwireless broadband coverage over the next two years. Unlike Comcast and Time Warner’s similar Clearwire venture, which uses WiMax, Cablevision’s uses Wi-Fi. Wonderful. The good news for current Cablevision subscribers is that the service will be free when it launches; non-subscribers will be able to get the Wi-Fi service totally independent of regular broadband. No word on how Cablevision plans to implement Wi-Fi on such a large scale. Rumors suggest Batman will be involved in some capacity. → Read More
Comcast doesn’t like its customers. Well, not all of them, especially those who actually take advantage of the massive amounts of bandwidth it makes available, and is preparing to penalize those of you (or of us) that download tons of content. Rumors from Broadband Reports, the excellent connectivity ratings site, show that Comcast might be considering 250GB per month caps on individual lines. That really isn’t a lot of data, especially if you work from home and use your connection to download docs or other files from your work servers. Comcast is already on the hook for arbitrarily sending out “dude, you’re downloading too much” letters to customers, but this is just getting silly. If as an ISP it’s going to offer unlimited bandwidth, it needs to truly be unlimited, or else we’re going back to the 25MB a month AOL stuff from the mid ’90s. → Read More
This company is advertising a hardware add-on that will multiply your outgoing bandwidth by 10-30x. I’m not sure how much of this is real, how much is PR, and how much is pure snake oil. Check the technology section. They say the speed increase is due to “bypassing the limitations of the TCP protocol.” I’m not sure what they mean by that and that’s about as technical as the article gets. Apparently it’s a one-sided thing, too — only the sender needs the FastSoft box to accelerate the transfer. Now, in real life, transfer speed generally finds itself limited by the provider’s upstream or in the user’s downstream. I have a 30Mbps downstream but I rarely download faster than 300KB/s or so, though I know technically my end is capable of far more. It kind of makes me sound like an entitled child, but really, why are so many sites stuck in 1999? 40KB/s when I’m downloading a 700MB game demo? Hell no! Buy one of these things already! → Read More
Ubiquitous broadband is a lofty goal, the idea of the “digital divide” is indeed an important one to consider, and Rep. Anna G. Eshoo from California’s got a novel idea on how to deliver it: wirelessly and free. Disappointed that none of the winners of the recent 700MHz auction were going to offer a similar for-profit solution, Eshoo feels it’s time for the government to step in. She’s introduced legislation, the Wireless Internet Nationwide for Families Act, that would call for the FCC to hold another auction for another spectrum, and winners would have to make wireless, no-cost broadband access on the frequency, and include an open architecture for device manufacturers and make sure it’s smut-free. A tall order. There’s coincidentally a company in California, M2Z, that has a plan already for just such an offering. We’re sure they’re not related at all. If this bill passes, it means a nationwide network of wireless braodband, but the bill faces an uphill batter against the telecom and cable lobbies. We’re for it: more Internet access is good for everyone. → Read More
San Francisco, CA
