Category: News

News and other note worthy events

Salisbury, NC to launch municipal FTTH service next month

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After AT&T (NYSE: T) and Time Warner Cable(NYSE: TWC-WI)–two of North Carolina’s largest service providers–failed to get necessary state legislative support to stop municipal broadband from getting off the ground, Salisbury, N.C. will now begin offering residential Fiber to the Home services beginning this November.

One of the attractive elements about the Salisbury’s “Fibrant” service set is the price. According to the intial pricing list, subscribers could buy a symmetrical 15 Mbps data tier for $45 a month, while a symmetrical 25 Mbps tier will cost $65 a month.

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Lyfe Communications reaches TV broadcast agreement with UTOPIA

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OCTOBER 19, 2010 — Lyfe Communications, Inc. (OTCBB: LYFE) Connected Lyfe, provider of converged network services, says it has reached an agreement to acquire television broadcast rights from the Utah Telecommunications Open Infrastructure Agency (UTOPIA). The company’s television service includes local and basic cable network channels, a premium or extended channel package, and individual add on channel packages.

UTOPIA provides open access fiber to the home (FTTH) infrastructure to 16 communities in Utah.

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HickoryTech Achieves 10,000 Digital TV Subscribers Milestone

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MANKATO, Minn. – Oct. 18, 2010 – HickoryTech Corporation (Nasdaq: HTCO) announced today it has surpassed 10,000 Digital TV subscribers. This milestone demonstrates HickoryTech’s long-term commitment and success in growing its broadband services throughout southern Minnesota.   “We’re proud of our broadband expansion and excited to reach this Digital TV milestone,” said Damon Dutz, president of HickoryTech’s Consumer and Network Solutions Division. “On behalf of our entire HickoryTech team, we appreciate the loyalty of our customers and are committed to providing competitive broadband services and outstanding local support to our neighbors and friends in the communities we serve.”

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GAO Report Sees Tough Implementation of National Broadband Plan

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BroadbandBreakfast.com Staff, BroadbandBreakfast.com

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WASHINGTON, October 13, 2010 – The United States plans to take actions to promote broadband similar to other nations, but achieving those goals will be challenging, says a new government report.

The Government Accountability Office looked at the plan offered by the Federal Communications Commission and how it reflects the experiences of leading countries on the issue. It found that the United States has a tough road ahead.

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Consumers Willing to Upgrade, but Slow to Embrace Super-Fast Technology

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The reason that consumers are not willing to pay for super high-speed services at the moment is because they do not have a need to utilize all of the bandwidth for the high price.  As more content is delivered over the Internet and prices come down, then demand will grow.  This finding is not really surprising.  It is a typical technology adoption process.  Broadband investment is decreasing because the incumbents have cherry picked the most densely populated areas that will produce an ROI within their corporate requirements.  There are still huge parts of the country that have limited access to broadband.  Allowing governments to enter into public/private partnerships to build last-mile infrastructure will spur investment into broadband networks in the rest of the nation.

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Rahul Gaitonde, Deputy Editor, BroadbandBreakfast.com

WASHINGTON, October 5, 2010 – Consumers are willing to pay a large amount to upgrade their internet access speeds from slow to fast, but are more reluctant to upgrade from fast to super-fast, according to a research paper discussed at the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference last week.

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Gathering to explore ‘digital divide’

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Charlotte summit today will discuss how N.C. have-nots lack needed broadband.

By Eric Frazier
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When Pete Pruitt asked Comcast Cable how much it would cost to get high-speed internet service at his Caswell County home, officials told him they’d need to run fiber lines to his street, a mile-long artery that 12 families call home.

Cost: a one-time fee of $48,000.

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Access Bandwidth Bottleneck Drives Innovation for Online Video Delivery

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South Korean Digital Mobile Television.
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Adaptive bit rate streaming, content caching, and other techniques are great ways to improve the quality of real-time services, but they all fail when they eventually encounter congestion.  These techniques need to be combined with quality of service markings to ensure that real-time traffic is prioritized before non-real-time traffic like common web browsing.  Once differentiated services are offered, consumers will have a true choice of content providers from traditional voice and video distributors.

Philip Hunter, Reporter, BroadbandBreakfast.com

LONDON, October 1, 2010 – With online video now the main cause of internet bottlenecks and consumer frustration over poor performance, new ways are emerging to provide better picture quality within limited bandwidth under the banner of Adaptive Bit Rate Streaming.

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