Bills to extend CASF introduced in California legislature

24 February 2013 by Steve Blum
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Pork is in the eye of the beholder.

Two bills proposing three changes to the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) made it into the legislative sausage grinder by Friday’s deadline. The changes could be good or bad, depending on your point of view.

Senator Alex Padilla, a Democrat representing the San Fernando Valley, introduced SB740, which would 1. add $100 million to the fund and allow five more years to collect it, and 2.… More

Tizen ready to replace Samsung's Bada OS

23 February 2013 by Steve Blum
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Doesn’t take long to browse the Bada store.

Bada is Samsung’s in-house operating system for low cost smartphones, but its days might be numbered. Tizen 2.0 has been released to developers, with a consumer version likely to be available on phones in the fall.

This Linux-based, open source operating system is also backed by Samsung, along with other major technology players. And that’s the key difference. The burden is distributed across many companies and individual developers who, for one reason or another, invest their time in developing Tizen source code and writing apps to run on it.… More

AT&T fails to offload traffic to WiFi

22 February 2013 by Steve Blum
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AT&T must’ve hired the same guy who invented premium lifeboat pricing on the Titanic.

AT&T’s public WiFi network is not the offload destination of choice for its smart phone customers, according to usage data from January 2013. Instead, customers prefer to log onto randomly available hotspots where ever they might be – home, work or in a pub.

In the U.S., only 3% of a typical smart phone user’s WiFi traffic goes via a WiFi access point managed by his or her’s primary mobile carrier.… More

More unlicensed spectrum on the way

21 February 2013 by Steve Blum
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Super-sized WiFi too.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) took a big step towards fulfilling a promise that Chairman Julius Genachowski made at CES in Las Vegas last month. Yesterday, commissioners voted unanimously to start the process of opening up 195 MHz of spectrum in the 5 GHz range to unlicensed uses such as WiFi. (H/T to UCSC’s Jim Warner for tipping me off).

“WiFi congestion is a very real and growing problem,” Genachowski said. “Like licensed spectrum, demand for unlicensed spectrum threatens to outpace supply.… More

Broadband speed matters, so does quality, quantity and cost

Tube in the 1000 Watt standby transmitter for CKCI 1350 AM Parksville. (now gone and replaced by CIBH 88.5 FM) This was once the standby transmitter for CKEG 1350 AM Nanaimo.
Copper costs pennies, glass even less.

There’s more to measuring bandwidth than simple speed. The number of bits per second a customer can send and receive is the defining characteristic of most services. But to be meaningfully compared with alternatives, solutions – particularly satellite-based ones – also have to be evaluated on other metrics such as data caps, variability, capacity limits, latency and reliability.

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) did not explicitly make that distinction when they relaunched the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) infrastructure grant and loan program last year, and extended eligibility to include qualified satellite companies.… More

Dell's consumer business plummets

19 February 2013 by Steve Blum
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Apple delivers the buzz in Dell’s zone.

Dell’s fourth quarter 2012 financial results show a rapidly deteriorating presence in the consumer sector specifically and personal devices generally. Released this afternoon after Wall Street trading had closed for the day, the figures show a 24% decline in Dell’s consumer business and an overall decline of 20% in desktop and mobile device sales.

On the plus side, Dell says its networking sales are up 42%, its enterprise services business grew 6% and it’s seeing better PC results from large accounts – those numbers only dropped 7%.… More

New hope for New Zealand telecoms competition

18 February 2013 by Steve Blum
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Fortunately, there are better ways to spend your time in New Zealand.

New Zealand is a relatively costly place to do Internet-related business. There’s only one underseas cable linking it to the outside world, the Southern Cross, which goes from Australia to California via New Zealand.

That’s two paths in and out of the country, but one owner. It’s not a competitive market. According to Market Clarity, an Australian telecoms research company, Kiwis pay 5.8 times more than Aussies for a gigabyte .… More

Legislative push for more money, fewer restrictions for CASF


Do you think this would cover it?

A last minute push is on at the state capitol to put more money in the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) and open up eligibility. The deadline for new legislation is this Friday, 22 February 2013. The California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF) and other broadband advocates are working with two key lawmakers – Senator Alex Padilla and Assemblyman Steven Bradford – to get a bill introduced by then.

Two goals are in sight: lifting the $225 million cap on CASF funding – maybe by an additional $100 million – and allowing a wider range of companies and organizations to apply for broadband infrastructure subsidies.… More

WiFi has huge role in mobile capacity management

16 February 2013 by Steve Blum
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There’s a reason Cisco bought Meraki.

Four times as much traffic goes via WiFi as on mobile data connections, when users’ Android smart phones and tablets have the capability to do both. A recent mobile data study by Cisco showed that, worldwide, the average Android owner sent 55.4 MB of data on WiFi connections and only 13.9 MB via mobile data networks on the average day in December 2012.

Cisco’s conclusion is that tablet and smart phone customers are using WiFi as a way of “staying within the limits of their cellular data plans”.… More

Mobile data caps starting to shift costs to heavier users

15 February 2013 by Steve Blum
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The whales don’t stand out as much anymore.

Three years ago, unlimited data plans accounted for 81% of monthly mobile subscriptions worldwide. Now, only 45% are unlimited, according to research conducted by Cisco.

With or without monthly caps, the growth in mobile data traffic is booming, but Cisco’s white papers shows a change in usage patterns corresponding to this business model shift.

Unlimited plans still generate more traffic per user, with an average of 1.3 GB per month versus 922 MB for tiered subscribers.… More