The state of the Internet in California is mediocre, according to Akamai

28 December 2013 by Steve Blum
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California is only middle of the pack when it comes to high speed broadband adoption, at least as measured by Akamai in its most recent State of the Internet report, for the second quarter of 2013. Of the broadband connections made to Akamai’s content delivery network from IP addresses in California, 23.2% were at speeds of 10 Mbps or better, ranking our state 20th in the country.

Top of the chart was Massachusetts at 41.9%; Arkansas came last at 4.1%.… More

Bell Labs goes looking for lost mojo

27 December 2013 by Steve Blum
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First we’ll invent Unix, then we’ll figure out what to do with it.

When Silicon Valley was just pear orchards and a junior university, and a google was an obscure bit of math trivia, the wellspring of geek creativity was a continent away. Bell Labs sprawled across several campuses in northern New Jersey, filled with scientists and engineers who were paid to come up with interesting ideas and novel technology. Not necessarily marketable products, although it was correctly assumed that profits would follow somehow.… More

Mobile payment innovators will benefit as banks run scared

26 December 2013 by Steve Blum
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Actually, it was invented in Russia.

Top of my list for the most influential people of 2013 in technology are the cyber thieves who stole the details of 40 million credit and debit cards from the Target chain of stores. Thanks to them, mobile payment and near field communications technology – e.g. chips in credit cards – might finally take off in the U.S. as fossilised payment processing companies are jolted into embracing entrepreneurial creativity. As I wrote last year…

“Mobile payments is like waiting for Godot,” said Omar Javaid, managing director of BBO Global, speaking at a recent What’s Hot (and What’s Not) in Mobility 2012 forum in Mountain View.

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Cyber security needs a breath of fresh thinking from pulp fiction

25 December 2013 by Steve Blum
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Don’t take a space axe to a Q-beam fight.

“The bad guys are very good”, said Dan Schulman, a group president with American Express, as he talked about the biggest problem he faces in maintaining security for a global credit card company. He was speaking at the MobileCon tradeshow in San Jose earlier this year, but his words could have been lifted from the pages of vintage science fiction.

Edward E. Smith – Doc Smith – started writing what would become the Lensman series of novels in 1934.… More

Happy holidays

24 December 2013 by Steve Blum

A year full of blogging.

I set up this blog five years ago, after spending a long Saturday at the first Freelance Camp in Santa Cruz, in August 2008. Last year I decided it was time to get serious about it or move on to something else. To find out which, I set a goal of one post a day for the month of December 2012, figuring it would either burn me out on blogging or make it routine part of my business.… More

CPUC finds a legal way to treat ISPs as regulated phone companies


CPUC sends a Schat across incumbents’ bow.

Buried in last week’s California Public Utilities Commission consent agenda was a resolution granting a certificate of public convenience and necessity (CPCN) to Schat Communications, an independent Internet servicer provider based in Bishop, on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada. Schat applied for the CPCN in order to qualify for California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) grants for two proposed last mile projects in Mono and Inyo Counties.… More

CPUC pushes open access to subsidised middle mile fiber

22 December 2013 by Steve Blum
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Access only by fiber or snowmobile.

Once again, the California Public Utilities Commission has set an expectation that publicly subsidised middle mile fiber should be available on a wholesale basis. To gain approval for a $1.8 million subsidy for a fiber to the home system in a remote area of Madera County, Ponderosa Telephone Company agreed to sell access to the fiber backhaul line that will feed it. According to a CPUC staff presentation to commissioners…

Ponderosa has affirmed that wholesale access to the network will be provided in the project area.

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Kim gets gamed, because the Internet never forgets

21 December 2013 by Steve Blum
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Supreme Leader, we have immutable faith in your shining mastery of Pong.

In Rudyard Kipling’s novel Kim, a teenage boy is trained to be a spy with a memory game. He’s given a brief glimpse of some items, and then has to describe what he remembers. Over the course of many rounds, his powers of observation and memory grow. It’s called Kim’s game.

But as North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is finding out, the Internet gives everyone a Kiplingesque memory.… More

Aussies jump in with Utopia FTTH bid

20 December 2013 by Steve Blum
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Spends just as well as a greenback.

Utopia’s saviour appears to be an Australian investment company, Macquarie Capital Group, that specialises in large public sector projects, including fiber optic networks. According to a story in the Salt Lake City Tribune, Macquarie is starting out with a feasibility study…

The goal, according to a senior Macquarie executive, would be to develop a private-public partnership with any of the UTOPIA cities that wanted to participate, with Macquarie paying to build out the municipal Internet grid and then running it under a 30-year revenue-sharing contract.

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CPUC approves $1.8 million for "fiber to the vacation cabin"

19 December 2013 by Steve Blum
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No phone, no water, no power, no people. But wicked fast email.

“I’m a big supporter of fiber to the home, but fiber to the vacation cabin is a different thing”, said commissioner Michel Florio as he argued against giving a $1.8 million grant to the Ponderosa Telephone Company to build broadband infrastructure in a remote area of Madera County. His fellow commissioners did not agree, though, and the project was approved on a 4 to 1 vote.… More