Longmont voters will decide whether to back FTTH with their electric bills

3 August 2013 by Steve Blum
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Putting broadband bonds on the meter.

As Google Fiber takes the reins in Provo, Utah, the city council in Longmont, Colorado is heading to the ballot box to, essentially, ask voters if they want to follow the same path. At least as far as using city electric bills as collateral.

The Longmont council voted in May to move ahead with plans to build a fiber-to-the-home system, leveraging an existing – and successful – municipal dark fiber business.… More

New season, new FCC

2 August 2013 by Steve Blum
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I’m not saying Mike O’Rielly looks anything like this, but really, Bill O’Reilly does.

The Federal Communications Commission should be up to full strength by September. President Obama rubber stamped the recommendation of U.S. senate republicans and appointed Mike O’Rielly to take the empty GOP seat on the commission. He’s likely to walk hand in hand through the senate confirmation process with another Washington insider, Tom Wheeler, Obama’s pick for FCC chair.

Wheeler is a former cable and mobile phone industry lobbyist who has been involved in venture capital pursuits lately, at least when he’s not busy raising money for presidential campaigns.… More

California lawmakers have a chance to reconsider cable lobby's big lie

1 August 2013 by Steve Blum
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Even Comcast doesn’t believe 1.5 Mbps is enough.

The effort to resurrect a proposal to add $90 million to the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) and allow independent ISPs and cities to apply for grants is gathering steam. The California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF) has published a white paper that’s aimed at debunking one of the more outrageous bits of misinformation spread by cable lobbyists as they derailed the bill in an assembly committee last month.… More

Google accused of asking fiber subscribers to use common sense

31 July 2013 by Steve Blum
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A server and a thin mint.

When you go to an all-you-can-eat buffet, you don’t expect to be able to fill up an ice chest with lasagne to bring home for a neighborhood block party. Most people accept that common sense puts limits on what are otherwise unlimited offers.

Google is taking heat in a Wired commentary piece by Ryan Singel for telling fiber customers in Kansas City…

Your Google Fiber account is for your use and the reasonable use of your guests.

… More

AT&T boosts Uverse speeds for some Californians

30 July 2013 by Steve Blum
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High potential for an earthquake. Broadband, not so much.

California and Nevada are the next stops on AT&T’s deployment of its pair-bonded VDSL2 Uverse upgrade. The company announced the roll out of 45 Mbps service here in a carefully worded press release, and also held out the eventual prospect of delivering up to 100 Mbps to homes and businesses via copper wires.

It’s part of a plan announced last fall to focus on upgrading “high potential” cities and neighborhoods to maximum speed levels that are on a par with what cable companies claim to provide.… More

Diversify and conquer


Amazonian elephant coming up from behind.

There were three global technology elephants left standing at the close of the Consumer Electronics Show in January – Samsung, Google and Apple. Microsoft was last seen rumbling toward the elephant’s graveyard and the two likeliest candidates to replace it, Amazon and Facebook, were still shy of the necessary bulk.

Recent days have shown why Samsung and Google will rule the herd for a long time to come.

Google has so many market-default services that it’s accounting for 25% of daily Internet traffic, with 60% of the world’s devices touching it every day.… More

Slow broadband a drag on Seattle mayor's re-election campaign


I’ll have what she’s having.

Seattle mayor Mike McGinn is running for re-election and the editorial page of the Seattle Times, which has never particularly cared for him, is homing in on his failure to build fiber to every home and business in the city…

With a campaign pledge of broadband Internet for all, Mike McGinn promised big, delivered small, and hopes voters won’t notice the difference.

KUOW-FM, Seattle’s University of Washington-owned NPR powerhouse, reached a similar conclusion, although in a better researched and more nuanced way…

When Mike McGinn ran for mayor in 2009, he campaigned on the promise of high-speed internet for all of Seattle.

… More

Lawless governments can break Gilmore's Law

27 July 2013 by Steve Blum
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“The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it,” said Internet pioneer and activist John Gilmore in 1993. A real world test, though, shows there are limits to that law.


Syrian government stops traffic completely, cable cut only slows Egypt. Source: Akamai.

Buried deep in Akamai’s latest State of the Internet report are some interesting stats showing how world events, including the war in Syria and submarine cable cuts, affect Internet traffic. The former resulted in Internet censorship at a brute force level, the latter involved physical damage to infrastructure.… More

Aereo making retransmission negotiations more entertaining

26 July 2013 by Steve Blum
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Oh, baby, you are so talented. And they are so dumb.

Time-Warner Cable is threatening to shoot its own business model as it wrestles with CBS over permission to carry local television stations in New York and other major markets. Thanks to a law passed by the U.S. congress in 1992 with massive amounts of campaign contributions cogent policy research from cable, satellite and, crucially, broadcasting lobbyists, cable systems have to get permission to carry a local TV station, which means agreeing to and paying a price.… More

Intel selling heavy metal thunder to a lightning fast market

25 July 2013 by Steve Blum
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The next industry standard.

After playing with an Atom-powered smart phone at CES this year and hearing execs talk up Android, I saw glimmers of hope that Intel was finally coming to grips with the mobile world. It seems I had it backwards: the mobile world is tightening its grip on Intel’s corporate throat.

Long the dominant player in PC and big server processors, Intel is all but shut out of smart phones and tablets, a billion unit market, and has no presence at all in the machine-to-machine space, which could be five or ten times that size in the next handful of years.… More