Broadband

Slower U.S. service provider revenue expected; unclear on spending

Wall Street is now expecting the U.S. telcos to face much slower growth in 2009, with revenues barely up over 2008, and has thus revised the stock price targets for giants AT&T and Verizon. We agree that at the revenue level, there will be few bright spots for service...

FCC policies under Obama Administration

January 2 2009: An Xchange Magazine interview of Democratic FCC commissioner Adelstein may offer some insight into what an Obama FCC would do. Adelstein does not sound like he favors returning to a wholesale/unbundled age (not that it would likely pass muster with the...

The Obama FCC: Activist group?

December 29 2008 regarding the Obama FCC. The Obama administration may be nearing the naming of its FCC choices, and some names are (again) circulating, including Julius Genachowski, a venture capitalist, and Blair Levin, a former FCC chief of staff. Adelstein and Copps, the...

AT&T’s “business U-verse”: Focus on data

AT&T is launching a business service on U-verse, but the service focuses on data delivery rather than on video. The new offering will offer users 18 Mbps download speed and the option for static IP addresses to allow businesses to host their own sites or provide services on the web via their...

Australia nixes Telstra broadband bid

In a decision whose short-sightedness was worthy of U.S. process, the Australian government disqualified its national carrier Telstra from bidding on an enormous and controversial program to provide more universal broadband access in Australia. There have been political fights between Telstra...

Global broadband to become universal service?

Worldwide broadband subscribers have reportedly passed the 400 million mark, and some telco planners are now seriously looking at broadband as their “dialtone” service in both wireline and wireless—but beyond 2011.

The decision to move to a universal broadband delivery would...

Tellabs to de-emphasize access business

Tellabs reported a large restructuring loss and plans to de-emphasize its access business to focus on more profitable sectors. Access is a problematic space for equipment vendors because the carriers are putting enormous pricing pressure on access technology since they are not able to profit...

WiMax needs “lifestyle” purpose to make it

At WiMAX World, panelists sparred with attendees over questions of when WiMAX would become more than another access technology, and this is what we believe the major question is for WiMAX. If the technology is simply another way to get on the Internet from a phone or PC, it is threatened by...

Comcast traffic management: Sign of the future?

Comcast’s response to the FCC on its traffic management policies seems to promise a future where operators may be moving to metered capacity or to pay-for-excess plans like those already adopted elsewhere. The network operators who provide broadband access to the Internet have, for years,...

AOL profits way down; Time to sell

Time-Warner’s AOL unit saw profits fall by 26%, and has been in talks to split and sell off AOL to boost the parent company’s financials. The drop in AOL’s fortunes came not because of a shift from an access model to an ad model per se, but because of the shift to broadband...