Broadband

DOCSIS 3.0 pushes U.S. broadband speed wars

Cablevision is planning to launch a 101/15 Mbps DOCSIS 3.0 broadband service, which would be the fastest available in the U.S., at a price of $99 per month. The service will launch in NYC suburbs,...

FCC’s national broadband plan: Inquiry process begins

The FCC has issued a Notice of Inquirymon developing a national broadband plan as required by Congress.

The NOI seeks comment on how to achieve universal access, how to...

Government-sponsored broadband: Hard track record to overcome

You’d think that municipal and state governments in the U.S. were drinking too much Fosters. Many of them are looking actively at applying for some of the broadband stimulus dollars to create government networks for their citizens, following the same model as Australia but on a smaller...

Cable access caps to stratify broadband users

Cable companies are increasingly interested in bandwidth caps, traffic management or both. Charter has joined the group, and now most of the major U.S. cable operators are in some stage of trial or deployment.

The trend is a critical problem for online growth, and yet it is also the...

FCC could enter cable bandwidth management fray

Comcast has, as we had predicted, asserted to the FCC that its voice service is not carried over the Internet or Internet access infrastructure, and is therefore neither subject to their traffic management policies nor to the FCC’s four principles of net neutrality.

They’re right, of...

Broadband stimulus: No credible link to economic recovery

The Economist has weighed in on the question of broadband stimulus and reaches many conclusions congruent with our own. There is, in our view, no credible indication that a major broadband stimulus would actually stimulate the economy, and there is a major risk that it would change the...

The Internet access traffic management flap, net neutrality and reality

Google is releasing a set of tools from its Measurement Lab that are intended to help consumers figure out if their ISPs are doing them wrong with traffic management. The new tools capitalize on the flap created by the Comcast-FCC war on bandwidth management policies.

At the same time,...

On Verizon’s and Tier One revenue…concerns beyond the economy

Verizon wasn’t able to match analyst estimates for growth in Q1, but the company’s wireless unit increased revenues by 12%, even while subscriber growth slowed and losses increased slightly.

In the wireline area, Verizon continued to lose both business and residential fixed lines to...

New report looks at broadband stimulus policy differences

The dust has all but settled on the broadband stimulus, which is clearly now going to be directed at a modest expansion of broadband to underserved areas. The bill has no money for broader stimulation of broadband deployment of any sort, and the only measure it contains that might impact the...

Obama broadband stimulus plan: Reality vs. industry dreams

The broadband stimulus plan, part of Obama’s broader economic stimulus, appears to be all but a done deal, but the value of the package falls far short of what some had hoped.

As currently proposed, the initiative would be focused on rural and underserved areas and would likely come...