It was presumed that with fiber, dark or not, that the use of satellite would be phased out for most of the First World. It seemed a logical idea with fiber to every home and backbones in the Tb range that orbital links would dwindle. But that is not proving true. There are still enough folks even in the hinterlands of the first world that need these services –
Eutelsat says that its KA-SAT multi-spotbeam satellite – which was built for the company by Astrium – is the world’s most powerful spotbeam satellite. Ten ground stations using ViaSat’s SurfBeam 2 technology have 82 narrow spotbeams aimed at them in a configuration that’s claimed to be capable of handling a total throughput of 70Gbps. The broadband internet by satellite service is being offered to consumers and business users via Tooway, operated by Skylogic.
The bird was launched last year and went into service this month. More are planned in Africa, South America, etc.
Lest you think my cohort is sniffing glue in Time Warner’s metering plan is back, perish the thought. The rates he is quoting are actually high. Here’s in fact is a real life example –
In the U.S., if you want a 50- to 100-Mbps connection, it is going to cost you plenty: about $105 with a triple play plan. On the other side of the planet, however, you can buy a 1 Gbps broadband connection for $20 a month, as long as you sign-up for a 24-month triple play contract with Hong Kong Broadband Network Limited, a division of local Internet service provider, City Telecom.
The same company had launched 100 Mbps to the home back in 2005. In February 2010, you could buy the 1 Gbps connection for $215 a month. According to the Akamai State of the Internet report, at the end of 2010, Hong Kong was the fastest place in the world when ranked by average peak connection speeds of 37.9 Mbps.
The reason it can offer at such low prices is the low cost of passing each home with fiber — it’s about $200 per home. Hong King is an extremely dense environment, and that lowers the cost of the network buildout. At present, HKBN has about a million homes passed for its fiber network and is on target to hit 2 million homes passed by end of 2011.
In the U.S., there are a few pockets that will or do have access to
low cost1 Gbps fiber connectivity — the cities of Chattanooga, Tenn. and Kansas City, Kan., for example. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings in an interview with GigaOM said that fiber is the key to future Internet innovation.
Now I will grant, Hong Kong is a high density area, so that favors the providers as far as mile cost per household, but not at the rates being quoted. in the article above. New York, Chicago, Boston have some of the same urban densities in sections.
The point is, the consumer is not being fairly served by either the carriers or the FCC. We are being taken and we should not take it.
If you thought that the BSA is just an anti-piracy group, think again. The big software backed non-profit that regularly runs “bust the boss and get a big reward” advertisements is also actively targeting open standards. As more of us discover we can work just as effectively with Open Source software, big software has increasingly resorted to using the courts to kill free alternatives.
The EC has moved much more aggressively that the US in supporting open standards like the Open Document Format. Unlike file formats created by commercial software makers, no one owns open formats, making them easier to implement by rival programs. Open standards help insure interoperability aiding rather than limiting economic growth and prosperity.
In its letter, the BSA argues that “[I]f the EU adopts a preference for royalty/patent-free specifications, this undermines the incentives that firms have to contribute leading-edge innovations to standardization – resulting in less innovative European specifications, and less competitive European products.”
In its letter, the BSA argues that “[I]f the EU adopts a preference for royalty/patent-free specifications, this undermines the incentives that firms have to contribute leading-edge innovations to standardization – resulting in less innovative European specifications, and less competitive European products.”
Actually this reflects a gross misconception of standards, their role and their working.
- Zero-royalty licensing conditions do not prevent patented technologies to be included in standards. Rather the contributor is required to avoid imposing running royalties on implementations.
- The single most successful technology platform on Earth, the Internet, is built on standards that have been made fully available under zero-royalty licensing conditions. Indeed the W3C, the standard setting organization (SSO) that governs the Internet standards has through consensus adopted a zero-royalty “IPR policy”, where royalty bearing technologies are allowed to be contributed only on a very exceptional base. Rather than stifling inventive activity, as the BSA claims, this has turned the Internet into a hotbed of innovation. Indeed, it is the very nature of standards that they stabilise a platform on top of which competitors can create innovative and interoperable solutions1.
- Contrary to the BSA’s claim, zero-royalty patent licensing policies open up participation in software standard-setting to the widest possible group of market players and implementers. As a result, software standards coming out of standard-setting organisations with zero-royalty patent licensing policies such as the W3C have been widely adopted, with the HTML standard only being the most prominent example.
From a broader policy perspective, it is also questionable that innovators, who are already receiving an incentive through a patent, would need to be further incentivised by having that patent included in a standard. A patent does not equal a right to a guaranteed revenue stream. (fsfe)
Unlike aggressively trying to insure businesses monitor and inventory commercial software on their systems to insure collection of licensing fees, this is a looks like a much more transparent attempt at a shakedown.
It’s an essential function of governmental bodies to establish open standards. Open standards are commonplace in society, with things like transportation, communication and the Internet dependent upon them. Commercial vendors are free to implement them in their offerings without any penalty. They are also free to not adopt them at their own peril.
Sorry BSA, but this writer thinks you’ve piled it a bit too high to pass muster this time.
While the FCC busily tries to take greater control of the Internet, it’s important to remember that is is the agency most responsible for creating the broadband duopoly in the first place. The US backbone continues to expand and it remains the envy of the world. Unfortunately, the unwashed masses who pay for duopoly internet connections continue to be shackled to outdated, artificially scarce last mile bandwidth. We have been sold out by our elected elites and the bureaucrats they oversee. Even Russia has more last mile competition and it is getting continued improvement as a result. In fact the average Russian just edged past the average American in real world bandwidth. Don’t believe me? Look at the graph.
It’s time to take control of our broadband and do it locally. The feds who got us into this mess to begin with are only going to ask for more control and more money. As long as so much control remains centered in Washington DC, nothing will improve unless you’re a telco or cable guy.
With the FCC’s broadband baseline set at a paltry 4MBPS, Europe’s recently announced 30MBPS standard should be sounding alarms. There’s much more to the story than just the minimum acceptable broadband speed arbitrarily set by bureaucrats. The back story is competition and the role it plays.
European broadband has been lead by healthy competition in the most unlikely of places like France and the UK. That open market that includes last mile line sharing for competition has raised the standard urban connections to some of the world’s most robust at some of the world’s lowest prices. Competition has forced the old school telcos to upgrade infrastructure and streamline operations. New networks cost considerably less to run. And ….. we hear no whining about the need to recover investment in decades old infrastructure.
With the sea change that has made free and accessible information and media the fuel of economic development critical to economic security, broadband competition should be a top priority. At the risk of bending Third Pipe editorial policy on political posts, I have a question for the Obama administration: While you are so eager to emulate all failed aspects of European socialism, why do you shy away from emulating what the Europeans are doing well?
The grand master plan for European broadband is out, and one target leaves the United States in the digital dust—a goal of 30 Mbps “or above” for all Europeans by 2020. So says the European Commission’s Digital Agenda for Europe, which also wants 50 percent of EU households subscribed to links of 100Mbps or more by that year.
….Needless to say, Europe isn’t jealously comparing itself to the United States, high-speed Internet-wise. Here our supposedly bold and fearless Federal Communications Commission thinks it’s cool by setting a pokey universal broadband goal of 4Mbps, sans fiber, which the agency says costs too much. (ARS Technica)
Right now, finding open access Wifi may be easier in the UK than it is here on the other side of the pond. From businesses like the famous Wimpy to educational institutions public places often offer a public connection.
Unfortunately, it appears that American politicians aren’t the only ones who have been bought by the telecom and entertainment industries. A new law proposed for the UK would end public Wifi to “protect copyrighted material”.
The U.K. government will not exempt universities, libraries, and small businesses providing open Wi-Fi services from its Digital Economy Bill copyright crackdown, according to official advice released earlier this week.
This would leave many organizations open to the same penalties for copyright infringement as individual subscribers, potentially including disconnection from the Internet, leading legal experts to say it will become impossible for small businesses and the like to offer Wi-Fi access. (Cnet)
Anyone who has actually used a shared public Wifi connection knows that the idea of downloading a movie from it is laughable, and and uploading one impossible. I think that this is more about forcing people to pay for access away from home than protecting copyright.
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