September 2007
September 18, 2007
Virgin UK offers 50MBPS DOCSIS 3 service for $65 / month.
While US cable companies are “testing” DOCSIS, the UK is joining a growing list of countries that are throttling past the US in the availability and quality of next generation broadband access. Already offering their customers 20MBPS access, Virgin Media’s growing number of DOCSIS 3 deployments are increasing their download speeds by a factor of 2.5. Productivity gains alone give a huge advantage to economies with higher speed access, spur innovation, and create boundless new opportunities.
Filed under Comcast, DOCSIS, Time Warner by admin
September 17, 2007
Sprint offers VOIP at home for wireless customers in Denver and Minneapolis
Offering a $15 to $30 a month service that could easily be done by the user with existing hardware in an open network, Sprint joins T-Mobile in bilking consumers for doing VOIP over thier own Wifi connection at home. Of course an open network and hardware would also make it possible to do anywhere on any open Wifi connection, but that’s not in the business model.
According to a report in Wired, downloads in excess of 90GB / month are considered excessive, and may result in shut down of a users account. That number is extrapolated from a Game Daily quote:
GameDaily quotes Charlie Douglas, a spokesperson for Comcast Corporation, who says that Comcast’s definition of “excessive use” is any customer who “downloads the equivalent of 30,000 songs, 250,000 pictures or 13 million emails in a month.”
Cheers to Comcast for giving their customers a cryptic clue as to how much “unlimited access” is permissible. I think it would make for sense to say you can download up to 90GB per month at XYZ speed, and have some industry standard ,measure of how that is actually benchmarked. All ISP’s should come clean on the limits of their “unlimited” plans and let consumer in the open marketplace decide who’s pipe they will use. Then again, the Cable / Telco duopoly hates open marketplaces, competiton and full disclosure. That’s why we need a viable Third Pipe.
September 15, 2007
Cincinatti’s Muni Wifi project grinds to a halt
The bottom line is no big city wide project will happen at the expense of a for profit company without some commitment from the city itself as an anchor client. While I’m not convinced muni Wifi needs a big company or a city commitment to make it happen, the problem with a commercial enterprise giving everything away for free makes it pretty darn hard to stay in business.
Civitium, a Georgia company that has worked for Chicago, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, among others, was hired to advise local officials. According to the company’s blog, “capital-constrained muni WiFi operators have shifted their business models to require revenue commitments from local governments recently, as a condition for agreeing to build Wi-Fi networks.”
Filed under Municipalities, Wifi by admin
September 14, 2007
Verizon goes to court to change 700MHz open access rules
Almost seeming unwilling to concede the “most evil duopoly player” title to the AT&T death star, Verizon has resorted to using the courts to change the open access rules on the soon to be autioned 700MHz “D” block.
Never mind the fact that open access advocates got only half of what they wanted - they wanted and did not get open access to service providers as well as the open access to devices. Being unhappy with the compromise the FCC declared, Darth Verizon is now petitioning the courts to reverse the open device rules. If the are successful, it will be the END of any opportunity to have a viable third pipe on the 700Mhz band.
To keep the dark side from winning, it is essential all Americans write their elected representatives. Most of them are technically clueless (as are most judges) so it’s important to let them know how important open access is.
Filed under Courts, Uncategorized, Verizon, Wireless by admin
September 13, 2007
Silicon Valley Muni Wifi deployment running out of gas
Here’s another example of a Municipal Wifi project faltering because of size, politics and too many divergent interests. With 4 vendors and a loose confederation of 40 communities, the plan was flawed fro the beginning. My advice - break it up into 40 community projects. Not all of them will see completion, but there will be more working Wifi in a shorter time at a lower cost.
Filed under Uncategorized by admin
Qosera, a start up metro ethernet equipment maker (article on Gigaom, and article on Unstrung) and Matisse an optical burst switching start up (article on Gigaom) have garnered serious investment from big venture capitalists.
While I doubt we are on our way to a new fiber infrastructure bubble, it is obvious that the big money is betting on backbone upgrades. I’m betting the upgrades will be happening sooner rather than later, with lots of competition. Now about that last mile………..
Filed under Uncategorized by admin
September 11, 2007
Muni Wifi that is working in three cities, and is reborn in San Francisco (sort of)
More proof for my theory that smaller is better when you want to get a Muni Wifi project done.
I was reading an article in Eweek discussing the grass roots effort with Google’s funding and Maraki hardware to build a community operated mesh network. As far as I can tell, no one asked the city for permission for proceed.
Meraki is now distributing its wireless mesh repeaters to individuals in San Francisco, some of whom will feed the network by sharing a portion of their available bandwidth. Meraki’s mesh model looks interesting and looks like it has the potential to deliver to the city the free, open-ended wireless network we seek, leaving San Francisco’s local government free to train its attention and its dollars on longer-term broadband goals—such as extending fiber as broadly through the city as possible.
On side bar I saw a link this article that is more telling.
In Providence, R.I., Greenville, N.C., and Riverside, Calif., the powers that be figured out that they needed to make municipal wireless a viable proposition for the company that’s doing the wireless work. In the case of Providence, it was easy because the municipal wireless network was built for the city to support city services. In both Greenville and Riverside, the cities agreed to play a role in using—and paying to use—the network.
I am beginning to wonder why there is so little press about successful Wifi deployments and so much about the tragedies. Could it be that the successful deployments are in “fly over country” for most of the big tech media? After all, with so many tech writers based in San Francisco, it must be driving them crazy that so many “tech backwater” cities have succeeded where their home city has failed.
Filed under Municipalities, Wifi by admin
September 10, 2007
Is Steve Jobs really planning to bid on 700 MHz spectrum?
Or is he just postioning to cut an even sweeter deal with AT&T or another wireless carrier? There’s a “credible rumor” making the rounds (AP article) that Apple is exploring bidding on spectrum. I really do not see how this would benefit them. Their current arrangement with AT&T gives them a big chunk of every monthly Iphone service bill, and Jobs gets to blame the AT&T “evil deathstar” for all of the woes suffered by Iphone users (many of these woes DESIGNED IN BY APPLE). Sounds like a good bluff to me. We’ll be watching to see if Mr Jobs really shows up at the 700 MHz circus to walk the high wire.
Filed under 700 mHz by admin
Never mind the fact the the average Wifi device emits less electro magnetic radiation than the average fluorescent light or small household appliance, the junk science crowd wants you to live in fear of your router. This time it’s the German Environment Ministry warning citizens to limit use of a broad range of low power wireless devices, with Wifi prominently on the list.
The Environment Ministry recommended that people should keep their exposure to radiation from Wi-Fi “as low as possible” by choosing “conventional wired connections”. It added that it is “actively informing people about possibilities for reducing personal exposure”.
OK, now to protect yourself, be sure to put on your tin foil hats and boxers before visiting Starbucks!:-)
article on The Independent
Filed under Legislation / Regulation, Wifi, Wireless by admin
