Tylt battery pack ready to stuff a well-heeled stocking

28 November 2013 by Steve Blum
, ,

Tylt Powerplant doubles up.

One of the bennies of going to events like Pepcom’s Holiday Spectacular is that people give you free stuff to review. I walked out with a Tylt Powerplant rechargeable battery pack, a simple device which turned out to perform pretty much as claimed.

About the size of a computer mouse, it stores enough juice to recharge a mobile phone, at least once and probably a couple of times depending on the size of your battery.… More

Mobile broadband test results speeding back to the FCC

27 November 2013 by Steve Blum
, , , , ,

The FCC’s mobile broadband speed test app for Android is a hit. In its first two days, it was downloaded and installed on 30,000 devices. It’s been out now for two weeks, and its getting a 4.4 out of 5 rating on the Google Play store.

Those first two days produced 40,000 reports from all over the country. The FCC says that all 50 states and all the major carriers are represented in the data received so far.… More

Web resource turns a four day weekend into five

26 November 2013 by Steve Blum
, ,

Hitting the road Wednesday morning turns this long Thanksgivukkah weekend into a short, 5-day week’s vacation. To help you and your co-workers make the great escape, TDA_Boulder, a small Colorado ad agency, has built a perfect online resource: the Happy Hour Virus.


You’re free. As in speech. And maybe soon as in beer!

You can select from three different screens that will make your computer look like it’s so dead that you have no choice but to duck out the door.… More

FTTH lucrative for new home builders in Loma Linda, but too costly for city-financed retrofits

25 November 2013 by Steve Blum
, , ,


Colored areas are on the FTTH roadmap. Click for larger version.

The small southern California city of Loma Linda is a company town. Its major business is health care, with five major medical facilities and as many hospital beds as homes, they say with maybe a touch of exaggeration. The bandwidth consumed by the medical sector made building a municipal dark fiber network an economic development slam dunk for the city. It then successfully took the next step of selling Internet bandwidth to homes and businesses.… More

New in-flight mobile phone rules could inspire airlines to catch fliers with honey, not vinegar

24 November 2013 by Steve Blum
, ,

Have you ever been in a federal prison, Joey?

With the possible exception of screaming children, I can’t think of anything I’d like less on an airplane than a cabin full of loud and one-sided mobile phone conversations. Even bringing back smoking would be preferable: at least that section of the plane used to be relatively child free. Allowing in-flight mobile phone calls would push the U.S. airline experience from miserable to pure hellish.

That said, Tom Wheeler is correct when he said last week “modern technologies can deliver mobile services in the air safely and reliably, and the time is right to review our outdated and restrictive rules”.… More

Santa Cruz looks at turning steel rails into glass pipes

23 November 2013 by Steve Blum
, , , ,

It moves even faster underground.

Santa Cruz County has 32-mile long rail line, stretching from Davenport on the north coast, south through Santa Cruz, Watsonville and connecting to a major north-south route in Pajaro, just over the Monterey County line. It’s now owned by the Regional Transportation Commission, which plans to keep using it for rail transportation and add a parallel bike and pedestrian trail. And now, maybe, a fiber optic backbone.

Creating a Santa Cruz rail-trail-fiber corridor was one of dozens of ideas floated at Civinomicon in Santa Cruz this weekend, and it gained traction with both local officials and the more than one hundred people that turned out for the three day civic hackathon.… More

LA lands in the middle of global ranking of broadband's effect on local society

22 November 2013 by Steve Blum
, , ,

A picture is worth a thousand numbers.

Los Angeles ranks 11th out of 31 major metropolitan areas around the world in Ericsson’s 2013 City Index, behind 8th-ranked New York, barely ahead of of 12th-ranked Miami, the only other U.S. cities rated, and beats Seoul at number 13. The index compares cities on the basis of the level of information and communication technology (ICT) maturity and the contribution that ICT makes to the local economy, environment and social equity.… More

Google's free white space database could preempt paid competition and boost market

21 November 2013 by Steve Blum
, , ,

Room for broadband in the television space.

White space spectrum is finally moving out of the lab and toward commercial deployments. Google has opened up its database of usable U.S. white space frequencies to all comers, at no charge. The technology is far from standardised yet, but with free access to the data necessary to make it work, that process can get started.

The idea behind white space spectrum is that frequencies allocated for broadcast television service are not fully used.… More

Ponderosa broadband subsidy proposal ducks middle mile responsibilities

20 November 2013 by Steve Blum
, , , , ,

Quacks like a middle mile project.

A draft resolution approving a $1 million California Advanced Services Fund grant for a DSL upgrade in the small mountain community of Cressman in Fresno County was posted on the California Public Utilities Commission website yesterday. Proposed by Ponderosa Telephone Company, the project has middle mile fiber and a middle mile price tag, but doesn’t offer middle mile access.

The cost per household is $8,900, making it the second most costly project so far in the current round of CASF subsidy applications.… More

Rural broadband alternatives remain under the radar in farm bill negotiatons

19 November 2013 by Steve Blum
, , , ,

The cloaking device seems to be working.

Rural development subsidies, including broadband construction programs, do not seem to be among the hot button issues as the debate in Washington continues over the trillion-dollar farm and welfare package known as the farm bill.

There are major differences between the broadband subsidies approved earlier this year by the republican controlled house and the democrat controlled senate. The house version more or less continues the current program, maintaining the focus on loans and keeping it at $25 million per year.… More