Tag: Digital Subscriber Line

The road to municipal Internet: Boulder benefits from Longmont’s journey

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English: Looking north from the intersection o...

English: Looking north from the intersection of Main St. and 3rd Ave. towards the 300 block of Main St. Longmont, Colorado. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Governments do not tend to learn from their mistakes, they just cover them up with more money. Even detailed articles like these fail to ask the question whether government should be doing this or are there better ways of delivering broadband services.

By Karen Antonacci

Paul Radliff, of Longmont, had his home connected via fiber-optic cable to the city’s new high-speed Internet service earlier this month.

Under his old DSL service, he could download information at a speed of 20 megabits per second. Continue reading

Verizon boosts revenue, income on mobile and broadband growth

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Verizon’s first quarter results demonstrate that fiber-based broadband is a winner even for large telecommunications companies.  It supplants their loss of POTS customers with higher revenue generating services.

FiOS installed in Montclair, New Jersey

FiOS installed in Montclair, New Jersey (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By , IDG News Service |  IT Management

April 24, 2014, 9:01 AM — Driven by growth in mobile and Fios broadband customers, Verizon Communications on Thursday reported first quarter 2014 revenue of $30.8 billion, up from $29.4 billion a year earlier.

Verizon reported net income of nearly $6 billion for the quarter, up from $4.9 billion a year earlier. Net income attributable to Verizon, not including income for its former mobile partner Vodafone, was $3.9 billion compared to $1.9 billion in the same period last year. Verizon purchased Vodafone’s 45% stake in Verizon Wireless in a deal that closed during this past quarter.

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SoftBank CEO Urges an End to Copper

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Masayoshi Son
Image by Danny Choo via Flickr

Japanese media giant has a bold if somewhat self-serving plan to cover the country in optical fiber

By John Boyd  /  November 2010

Japan has long been regarded as a leader when it comes to providing broadband connectivity and deploying “fiber to the home” (FTTH). Yet entrepreneur Masayoshi Son, chairman and CEO of telecom and media company SoftBank Corp., is critical of the way broadband technology is being implemented and has urged the government to back his ideas for radical change.

As is the case in most developed countries, the Japanese industry is employing broadband in two ways: over existing copper phone lines using digital subscriber line (DSL) technology, which provides theoretical maximum download speeds of around 50 megabits per second, and over newly laid optical fiber cable with the claim of delivering data at up to 200 Mb/s. Even though SoftBank has the largest number of DSL subscribers—a 38 percent market share—Son says this two-tier deployment strategy is costly and inefficient and is causing Japan to lose its competitive edge.

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