News and other note worthy events
Yellow Springs residents consider investing in a municipal fiber network for high speed telecommunications.
Saturday morning, residents of Yellow Springs gather in the Morgan Building next to the high school to talk about a municipal fiber optic network. The Miami Valley Educational Computer Association (MVECA) is hosting a Fiber Forum from 9am to 1pm followed by lunch and small group roundtable discussions. Continue reading
AUSTIN, April 27, 2015 – Raising funds to build high-speed internet infrastructure through municipal debt financing is finally becoming a reality, according to a panel of financiers and broadband builders speaking earlier this month here at the Broadband Communities Summit.
Members of the panel, “Municipal Debt Financing and Public-Private Partnerships,” surveyed the landscape of typical municipal bond financing — traditionally used to build transportation infrastructure — and discussed how it applies in the broadband space. Continue reading
As telecoms trade groups file briefs in Federal courts, objecting to the FCC’s classification of ISPs at “common carriers,” (as they did with the railroads, long ago, when Rockefeller was hustling the lines to screw his competitors), Google pointed out that all Net Neutrality means is the right for all content to be served equally slowly.
Milo Medin, a VP at Google Fiber, highlighted some of the ways in which policy could improve access to abundant broadband. His comments were reported on Fierce Telecom. Continue reading
I am delighted to read articles like this even if they do not get every detail right. What the author is advocating is open-access fiber infrastructure not “dark fiber.” In a sense I’m mincing words because the two are essentially the same but the author is implying that the consumer could do something with that fiber when actually a service provider needs to add electronics to it so the customer could interface to the network. Also “dark fiber” alone does not guarantee low latency. It is the network elements that have a greater impact on latency. Still I am glad to see people talking about increasing residential competition instead of adding regulation to keep the status quo.
With broadband speeds newly defined as starting at 25 Mbps, as opposed to the archaic 4 Mbps definition, what happens if you now no longer have residential broadband? And what do you do if, to add insult to injury, your ISP ups its prices? Continue reading
Google Fiber, which is working on providing a broadband alternative in a dozen U.S. cities, has filed a business registration with the Colorado secretary of state.
But the California company denies that any Colorado cities are on its shortlist for expansion. Continue reading
The FCC acknowledges that all packets are not equal, and that some can benefit from a little prioritization over other packets that are not time sensitive. OTT providers can take advantage and benefit from this fact to deliver a quality of service equivalent to the incumbent providers.
Online television is taking off in a major way, and now some of the biggest providers are looking for assurances that they can keep delivering their content reliably. According toThe Wall Street Journal, HBO, Showtime, and Sony have all been speaking with internet providers, including Comcast, about the possibility of being treated as “specialized services,” separating them out from other internet traffic and essentially giving them a fast lane to consumers. Though fast lanes are explicitly prohibited under the FCC‘s new net neutrality rules, these fast lanes actually fall in a strange gray area that’s yet to be explored. Continue reading
Opponents of new regulations from the Federal Communications Commission are warning that the agency will inadvertently ruin the future of TV.
In comments filed to the FCC this week, industry and advocacy groups warned that the plan would unnecessarily interfere with the free market and stunt the growth of a nascent service. Continue reading
