Cisco's rumored sale of Linksys suggests we may have problem with innovation and profit at the edge of our Internet, and that could be critical to the evolution of many Internet-delivered services.
The recent launch of the EchoStar XVII satellite has the potential to increase broadband satellite communications' top speed from megabits to gigabits of bandwidth. Hughes Network Systems plans to test its high-speed satellite broadband services this summer and roll them out this fall.
Telcos and cable companies seem to be engaging in a speed war, pushing access up to 300Mbit/s. Does this mean our Internet is getting better? No, it means that the operators are thinking of ways to use the capacity outside the Internet.
With the advent of low-cost Web cameras and broadband network connections, home security systems have become a hot business. In addition to traditional security suppliers, like ADT, the market is attracting telcos, cable companies, and energy providers, thereby creating an area of increasing competition.
There's a lot of debate on whether ceding control of the Internet to the ITU/UN is bad for the Internet. Whether that's really true depends on just how much of the "control" we yield and what we do to balance the Internet as an innovation platform and as a service platform.
Watching TV is not healthy for you, according to conventional wisdom. Well, that may soon change. Comcast and United Healthcare are now delivering diabetes prevention videos on-demand to high-risk patients. The partnership illustrates how healthcare may be delivered in the future.
Verizon has made the Xbox into a basic set-top box, so does that mean streaming video will replace TV after all? That's complicated. It turns out there are three different video models and three different futures for them.
Netflix lost more customers than the Street expected, because people are upset about price increases, but are users inevitably facing even higher costs for streaming video in the future? The portal players are in a squeeze, and consumers will likely pay in the end.
Executives always want to be in touch with the office. In response, airlines have been offering individuals broadband links. In fact, market research firm In-Stat expects revenue from such services to reach $1.5 billion in 2015. So, broadband has taken wings.
Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz has been removed, and the question is whether the company can succeed under ANY leadership. It has two problems: its Internet startup culture and its unwillingness to take advantage of potential partnerships with telcos and cable companies.
Over 20 percent of Verizon's workforce is on strike, thanks to the company's efforts to make up for reduced wireline revenues by reducing the value of wireline union jobs. Given Verizon's current profitability, it's time for management to find a better solution.
While technically elegant, WiMax technology has had trouble gaining market traction, especially in the US. Sprint's recent decision to support LTE represents another blow to its emergence as a mainstream wireless technology.
Free wireless is like tap water in Europe and Asia. Why is the US so far behind? Because of a near-religious commitment to non-government interference in markets, America lacks basic wireless infrastructure and will pay the price competitively.
Maybe Google+ will be competitive and maybe it won't, but it's likely to introduce video calling and OTT communications as a replacement for standard telephony. There will be major consequences to this, and we don't have an FCC or political framework capable of coping.
Amazon's upcoming tablet may not be a technical revolution over the iPad, but it might be a business model revolution that pushes Apple toward a subsidize-tablet-with-service approach. That might bring a major change to the tablet market.
Initiatives like Internet2 continue to advance rapid broadband in the US, but the country still lags behind others. It's time for industry to join government in investing to further innovation and economic growth.
Comcast's deal with Skype for on-TV videoconferencing seems illogical on its face: It encourages the worst kind of traffic for cable broadband providers. So could they have a deeper strategy to monetize this, one that might test neutrality rules yet again?
One ripple effect from the rise in tablet adoption is rising broadband usage. Tablet users are much more likely than laptop, smartphone, or netbook users to demand broadband connections. Carriers need to be prepared for the data deluge.
Everything about US broadband policy is inconsistent, deceitful, or both, and we're at risk of having our services get even worse relative to the rest of the world if we don't make people accountable for their data and their choices.
HP became the latest vendor to drop its hat in the broadband networking ring. The company has begun bundling network services with some of its laptops, but it seems like a weird strategy.
A trip to South America shows me that third-world nations depend totally on mobile broadband because it's too expensive to drive wireline to all. Might we in the First World also be confronted with that issue?
Congress isn't going to kill net neutrality, but we may face usage pricing or other changes. The best strategy for all would be to encourage ISPs to offer some of the services that OTT competitors now lead in, so they get a piece of the content pie.
OK, the iPad 2 is out and it's neat. What will it do to the market, including the tablet plans of other players, and how will the new tablet space affect mobile broadband in general? Hmmmmm...
We all express desire for fast broadband, but uptake of top-tier services is so small, and prices per bit so low, that it seems neither consumers nor providers actually want it. Maybe we need to rethink what we do with broadband and ease our expectations for speed.
The explosive growth in Internet traffic is forcing ISPs to increase their access investments without generating new revenue. They'll need to either raise prices or make the OTT players like Google or Netflix pay.
CES is all about wireless gadgets, but big tech conferences, ironically, often run out of wireless capacity. Attendees may witness first-hand the wireless problem created by our video appetites as they browse new gadgets that increase consumption.
AT&T is buying spectrum from Qualcomm, and the fact that it's happening only now suggests that mobile services and profit models aren't as easy to predict as we thought.
Worldwide broadband policy may be shaped by a war of wizards, with the "Wizard of Oz" in Australia pushing a nationalized broadband plan, and the "Wizard of Washington" in the FCC pushing a plan to declare broadband a telecommunications service. The default course, meanwhile, is usage pricing.
The gap between smart grid end points and Internet connections recently narrowed, as energy companies will soon begin using WiFi connections to collect usage data.
Customer interest in mobile video transmissions is growing. However, there is not enough bandwidth now to support rich exchanges – a shortcoming that could stymie movement to applications like mobile videoconferencing.
Fox, as part of an ongoing dispute, recently blocked some Cablevision customers' access to some Web content. If this is a net neutrality violation we need to re-frame our whole notion of what neutrality is, and if it's not then we need to ask if our vision has any value at all.
The video calling trend, spearheaded by Cisco, may lead to troubling collisions with broadband pricing trends and even potentially with net neutrality.
DSL has been bypassed by new higher-speed networking options. In response, Alcatel-Lucent and Huawei have devised techniques to give the technology a needed boost.
The iPhone has created a new form of the 80/20 rule, according to AT&T, which claims only 3% of iPhone users generate 40% of wireless traffic. But is that really a justification for usage caps and pricing tiers? What did AT&T think was going to happen with the iPhone pricing plan, and are they shoveling something else at us now that we're hooked?
What does a $0.62 refund check from a service provider mean? It could mean that, unlike Google, Amazon, and Apple, telcos aren't ready to use what they know about their customers to sell better, more personalized services.
Comparing Internet services is tough because service providers price and market their services based on a best-case scenario connection that most consumers will never enjoy.
Cellular operators, netbook manufacturers, and, of course, techies, have been eagerly awaiting a hands-on experience with Nokia's new netbook, the Booklet 3G. Reiter's got his hands on one, and tells you whether it's worth the wait.
The FCC is throwing money at rural broadband empowerment, but it's dealing with the wrong problem. The real issue is how we get users who could get broadband but choose to reject it to change their minds. The answer lies with mobile technology – but it may surprise you!
China is investing heavily in fiber to the premises to propel itself into the world broadband Internet first division. What's it deploying, and what's it going to do with all that bandwidth?
Verizon is making a big noise about making its wireless network open, but how will we measure if they've been successful? Do we count devices? Applications? Or just take their word for it?
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M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
