So when Google said its fiber communities project would be an experiment in open access, they apparently meant it. This week, at a fiber conference in Lousiana (FiberFete), Minnie Ingersoll, Google’s product manager for alternative access (editor’s note: interesting title) opened the door for incubment telcos and cableops to hop on whatever fiber-to-the-home network Google ends up building. Ingersoll is part of the team reviewing the tidal wave of RFPs that flowed in from local communities hoping to partner with Google on a local fiber net. (more…)
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Archive for the ‘All Stories’ Category
What is the ‘Internet of things’?
OK, so maybe the telecom industry isn’t the best at naming things. If nothing else, we’re heavy on the acronyms, right?
But lately you may have seen the phrase ‘Internet of things’ bandied about. What does it mean?
Turns out it’s just a better (or should we say alternative) way to describe what the telecom industry typically calls machine-to-machine, or M2M, communications. That’s smart vehicles, appliances, industrial devices and other machines (ie, not persons) talking to one another and exchanging information to perform better and in a more “aware” fashion. (more…)
Sliced up, mobile operators could see slim piece of online music pie
Music remains one of the killer apps online – and increasingly in the mobile sphere as well. The challenge is making the economics work. Pandora, which runs one of the original recommendation-based streaming online “radio stations,” and whose mobile apps are some of the most popular around, shared some business details that show a significant top line – but also the challenges in making money given current royalty structures. Pandora head Tim Westergren disclosed Pandora had 2009 revenues of $50 million, representing by his contention about 44% of the “Internet radio market.”
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Is Google essentially turning itself into a mega-CDN?
By increasing its use of direct peering and deploying its own caching servers at more than 100 public Internet exchanges and 56 private peering facilities, Google appears to be increasingly building what amounts to it own content distribution network (CDN). The search giant distributes massive amounts of content, largely from its YouTube video property but to and fro from other services and applications as well. Its entire business is built around leveraging economies of scale, and on the demand side it has focused on owning and innovating in areas including energy and bandwidth consumption to turn the balance in its favor. Proof of its greater use of peering and caching comes from Arbor Networks’ latest analysis of Internet trends.
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Sides line up as FCC looks to re-allocate valuable spectrum
A crucial side-battle in this week’s release of the National Broadband Plan – and likely a long, drawn out one at that – is the tussle over whether existing spectrum currently allocated to TV broadcasters should be dedicated to broadband services. We weighed in when this plan was first floated (see: Spectrum: Public trust or cash cow?) Now that the FCC has released its formal plan, it’s worth revisiting. The FCC is proposing that the government cutback the portion of spectrum allocated to broadcasters by about 40%, including calls to “reclaim” about 120Mhz of spectrum from broadcasters over the next five years and redirect it to mobile broadband deployment.
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The strange story of Android vs. Droid vs. Nexus One
Some seemingly contradictory bits of news today: Android devices are seemingly selling like gangbusters, with the first 74 days (what an odd number) of sales of phones running Google’s Android OS outgunning the sale of Apple iPhones over the same introductory period. So all is well in the land of “goog-phones,” then, right? Not so fast. Sales of Nexus One, the Android device that Google is selling directly have, it appears, tanked. So what’s the story here? (more…)
Buzz mounts on eve of National Broadband Plan unveiling
With expectations
mounting for weeks now, the FCC tomorrow is slated to lift the veil on its National Broadband Plan – and the press is in fine form with rumor and speculation about its contents. Not that Connected Planet isn’t on the rumor bus as well (see: One Day Before the National Broadband Plan – Six Questions Still Unanswered ). So what is the word on the street when it comes to the NBP? Obviously, questions about what’s in it, but also concerns about it favoring incumbents (or not) and larger worries that the words on a page won’t be enough to drive the investment the U.S. needs in broadband.
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TeliaSonera’s LTE milestone: Peak network speeds top 100 Mb/s
Sweden’s TeliaSonera said today its LTE network in Stockholm will soon be upgraded to reach “practical” speeds of 80 Mb/s and up to the highest “theoretical” speed possible of 100 Mb/s. With 3G networks topping out in the single digits, and even the proposed speeds of many 4G networks still hovering in the teens, Telia’s play at delivering true broadband wireless is worth noting. (more…)
SXSW and the great location wars
As the hipsters descended on Austin, Texas last weekend for South by Southwest (the event, by the way, that “made” Twitter a few years ago, much attention turned to location-based services. By some reports, more than a dozen new location-based-style services are launching at the show. Are location-based services the next big thing in mobile? (more…)
Veraz latest kid/vendor on the block
Count Veraz Networks as is the latest, “smallish” IMS/NGN vendor to look to get acquired. As part of its recent Q4 earnings call, the company said it had retained an investment banking firm to pursue the old “strategic alternative” route. Veraz is the latest in a line of smaller vendors going the buy-out route in recent days. (more…)