Category: News

News and other note worthy events

Florida (MA) Approves First Step For Broadband System

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By Kathy Keeser

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FLORIDA, Mass. — Voters on Wednesday night approved the establishment of a municipal lighting plant, taking the first step in the development of a cooperative broadband system.

About 30 voters took time out to decide four articles at Wednesday’s special town meeting, deciding on school repairs, broadband and wind projects.

The first two articles gave town approval to the continuance of repairs to Gabriel Abbott Memorial School, including to the roof and to the water main. Both warrants quickly passed 28-0.

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American Tower Joins Rural Cellular Association

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Rahul Gaitonde, Deputy Editor, BroadbandBreakfast.com

WASHINGTON March 10, 2011 – American Tower, the Boston-based wireless and broadcast infrastructure company, announced Thursday it had joined the Rural Cellular Association.

“American Tower is glad to join RCA, and we support their mission — advocacy for rural and regional wireless carriers,” said American Tower’s Steven Marshall, Executive Vice President and President, U.S. Tower Division through a statement.

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Elblag Connects Municipal Sites Via Cisco Borderless Network Infrastructure

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WEBWIRE – Thursday, March 10, 2011

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Polish City Builds a Network Platform to Deliver New and Enhanced Services to Residents and Visitors

ELBLAG, Poland – – Cisco today announced that the city of Elblag has chosen the Cisco® Borderless Network solution to build a municipal broadband network. Elblag is a port city in northern Poland with more than 120,000 inhabitants and access to the Baltic Sea.

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Cisco Study Shows Wireless Data Use Rising Faster Than Expected

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Nate Hakken, Reporter, BroadbandBreakfast.com

John Chambers, Cisco...

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WASHINGTON, March 7, 2011 – A study to track and forecast trends in the global mobile network that was released by Cisco Systems last month shows that mobile internet traffic is rising faster than expected.

The white paper study, which was focused mobile video networking, showed strong data about the world mobile network as a whole. For example, mobile network data traffic almost tripled from 2009 to 2010.  The data attributed most of the growth to smartphone adaptation worldwide. The average amount of traffic per smartphone in 2010 was 79 MB per month, up from 35 MB per month in 2009. The rise in the newly popular tablet format also made strong inroads to mobile data traffic with a healthy 405 MB per month.

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Raleigh City Council adopts resolution against limiting municipal broadband

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Yesterday, Raleigh City Council passed a resolution opposing legislation under consideration by the North Carolina General Assembly that would limit or eliminate local governments’ ability to provide high-speed Internet and other broadband services to their citizens. The proposed legislation, House Bill 129 and Senate Bill 87, are known as Level Playing Field/Local Government Competition.

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Slow Internet Could Drive Away Nearly Two-Thirds of Student Residents

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Dormitory at Pusan National University's Mirya...

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HOUSTON – Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of students would consider relocating if Internet speeds in their apartment didn’t meet expectations. This finding, from a survey by J Turner Research, confirms that access to fast Internet speeds is no longer an amenity in student housing – it is now an expectation. And it’s not hard to understand why – 56 percent of students said they spend between three and five hours a day on the Internet, and another 16 percent said they spend five to six hours a day online.

A majority (53 percent) of the 10,000 student respondents said the Internet connections in their apartments were slower than at their college or university; however, their satisfaction levels with Internet speeds remain high, with 43 percent of respondents ranking their satisfaction at a 7 or above, based on a scale of 0-10.

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VDSL additions to quadruple by 2014

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The number of new subscribers to VDSL-based broadband services will almost quadruple by 2014 as more competitors start to ramp up their support for the technology, according to reports from IHS iSuppli.

The number of new annual VDSL subscriber additions worldwide are expected to grow to 60.1mn in 2014, up from just 15.6mn in 2009.  A total of 23.3mn new VDSL subscribers were added in 2010, according to the report.

“The telco broadband market is undergoing a seismic shift,” said Lee Ratliff, senior analyst for broadband and digital home at IHS.  “Newer technologies such as VDSL and Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) have begun to emerge, while interest is waning within the industry for traditional broadband technologies like cable and asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL).”

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