broadband

Fixed, mobile North American broadband speeds will more than double by 2023, Cisco study says

20 March 2020 by Steve Blum
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Cisco forecast 2018 2023

More and more people around the world will have access to faster and faster broadband connections, with speeds for fixed and mobile service doubling and tripling by 2023, due in large part to increased global deployment of fiber to the premise and 5G technology, according to a white paper recently published by Cisco. Although North America will continue to beat world broadband speed averages, the U.S. will not be among the leaders in advanced infrastructure deployment.… More

4K is the video, and consequently broadband, standard in 2020

11 March 2020 by Steve Blum
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Samsung booth ces 8jan2020

Fears that Internet routers and switches will melt under an onslaught of 8K-enabled cord cutters can be put aside for a few years, according to projections released by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). But the number of U.S. households with 4K screens will continue to grow rapidly, and that will be problematic enough for broadband service providers: 25 Mbps download speeds will be the minimum needed to serve the typical U.S. home.

8K is a big screen technology.… More

Caltrans floats “Dig Smart” ideas to put more broadband conduit in the ground

10 March 2020 by Steve Blum
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California’s department of transportation, AKA Caltrans, is a step closer to actively collaborating with broadband service providers and local governments to put more conduit in California’s thousands of miles of state highways and make it available. It published a Dig Smart white paper that summarises “dig once” policies that have already been adopted by cities and other states. Those policies are intended to ease the way for telecoms companies to install conduit when road construction or utility excavation projects happen, and to encourage them to take advantage of the opportunity.… More

Apple’s rumored move to ARM-based Macs aims for a world of continuous connectivity

28 February 2020 by Steve Blum
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Technological tipping points are easy see in the rearview mirror – do you remember what the world was like before the iPhone? – but hard to spot in advance. One might be on the way. A well respected analyst, Ming-Chi Kuo, who works for TF Securities, predicts that Apple will start using ARM-based chips it designs and makes itself in Macintosh computers.

According to a story on Apple Insider by Malcom Owen…

Kuo forecasts that Apple will be using a 5-nanometer process at the core of its new products 12 to 18 months’ time.

… More

FCC asks for limited net neutrality comments, but Rosenworcel says “make noise”

21 February 2020 by Steve Blum
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The Federal Communications Commission will tweak its network neutrality rules, such as they are, to answer objections made by the federal appeals court based in Washington, D.C. last year. That court – aka the D.C. circuit – largely upheld the FCC’s 2017 repeal of network neutrality rules, but sent a few bits back to the agency for more work and threw out a blanket preemption of state and local regulations.

In a notice issued earlier this week, the FCC asked for comments on the public safety, lifeline and pole attachment issues flagged by the D.C.… More

Pai offers net neutrality rules custom made for AT&T’s, Comcast’s business models

16 January 2020 by Steve Blum
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Pai shapiro 1 ces 7jan2020

Ajit Pai’s three-year delayed debut at CES as Federal Communications Commission chair last week was a friendly, and at times lighthearted, conversation with Gary Shapiro, the CEO of the Consumer Technology Association, which produces the show. Pai used the opportunity to float what he seems to thinks are consensus network neutrality rules. What he’s really proposing is to cement major ISPs and mobile carriers’ monopoly model business plans into federal law.

Shapiro led off by asking Pai about the FCC’s decision to scrap network neutrality rules two years ago.… More

Newsom’s broadband budget language doesn’t translate to infrastructure

13 January 2020 by Steve Blum
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San benito pole route 13apr2019

Broadband references are sprinkled into California governor Gavin Newsom’s state budget proposal but, taken at face value, he’s focused on shifting money from hard capital infrastructure projects to soft programs and annual operating budgets.

Although tagged as an infrastructure investment in Newsom’s budget summary, his “Broadband for All” initiative is about operations, comprising four elements: mapping, education spending, “optimising” existing resources and “prioritising connectivity across executive actions and policies”.

The California Public Utilities Commission already has a fine mapping program, which Newsom wisely intends to expand.… More

5G adoption begins a slow ramp up in the U.S. in 2020

7 January 2020 by Steve Blum
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Cta 5g projections 5jan2020

Source: CTA

Mobile 5G broadband service adoption starts to grow in the U.S. in 2020, but it won’t be a breakout year. A couple of near term 5G market predictions were offered at CES in Las Vegas over the past couple of days, by the show’s organiser, the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) and by Qualcomm, which is the mobile industry’s primary chipmaker. Taken together (and at face value), the picture that emerges is of a global 5G market that 1.… More

Some people aren’t buying the false data big ISPs sold to the FCC

27 December 2019 by Steve Blum
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Microsoft oregon analysis 5dec2018

The Federal Communications Commission’s broadband testing program evolved from a engineering-driven performance assessment when it was launched in 2012 to a marketing tool for monopoly model Internet service providers. That’s partly the result of the FCC republican majority embracing a role as a cheerleader for big telecoms companies, but it also reflects tensions in the program that date back to when it began under a democrat-majority commission.

Jim Warner, who recently retired from a long career as the network engineer for the University of California, Santa Cruz and still chairs the Central Coast Broadband Consortium’s technical expert group, helped design the FCC’s program, along with several others from the academic side of the house as well as industry representatives.… More

FCC allows big ISPs to add performance enhancing juice to speed tests, WSJ says

19 December 2019 by Steve Blum
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Syringe

The fast, reliable broadband service claims endorsed by the Federal Communications Commission are based on test data that’s been doctored by California’s monopoly model Internet service providers, according to a Wall Street Journal article Shalini Ramachandran, Lillian Rizzo and Drew FitzGerald (h/t to Jim Warner for sending me the link).

Annual speed measurements taken to evaluate U.S. broadband service are “juiced” by AT&T, Comcast, Charter Communications and others, who know ahead of time where the tests are run and afterwards lobby the FCC to suppress bad results and hype good ones, the story says…

[AT&T] pushed the Federal Communications Commission to omit unflattering data on its DSL internet service…

In the end, the DSL data was left out of the report released late last year, to the chagrin of some agency officials.

… More