Tag: Internet service provider

Mobile Broadband Shouldn’t Replace Fixed Broadband – Report

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3G Wireless Broadband Mobile Router http://www...

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Here’s a warning about jumping too far onto the mobile broadband bandwagon. Selling it as an alternative to fixed broadband will fail in both the U.S and Europe. That’s according to a new survey from Analysys Mason.

The report, The Connected Consumer Survey 2: Mobile Broadband, says there is a strong, and correct, perception among consumers that mobile broadband is slower, less reliable and more expensive than fixed broadband. Seventy percent of those surveyed had that opinion. Where consumers have a choice between fixed and mobile broadband, mobile broadband, the report says, should not be sold as the primary means of access, but as a complement. Six-thousand consumers were interviewed for the study.

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U.K. Farmers Laying Their Own Fiber

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The following video was shown at a rural broadband conference in the United Kingdom.  A group of farmers took their broadband destiny into their own hands by laying their own fiber and installing their equipment.  It demonstrates the relative ease at which a fiber-based broadband network can be installed in rural areas.  Coming from a farming state, farmers are quite capable diggers and builders.  They may even do a better job and be more conscientious since they are doing the work on their own and neighbors’ properties.

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Small companies doing big job of delivering broadband

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By Michael Pollick & Doug Sword
Staff Writers

Until recently, Internet providers like Myakka Technologies were the low men on the totem pole.

Based in the unincorporated eastern Manatee County community of Myakka City, which has no stoplight to its name, this little company has only been able to exist because the big players — Verizon, Comcast and Bright House — had no interest in providing high-speed Internet service to the low-density rural byway.

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Come on baby, light my fiber

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San Luis Obispo de Tolosa Mission, CA
Image by Michael D Martin via Flickr

A fiber-optic project could be the first step in connecting SLO County to ultra high-speed broadband

BY MATT FOUNTAIN

When Google announced in February 2010 that it was launching a competitive experiment to bring ultra high-speed broadband networks to a small number of trial locations throughout the United States via fiber-optic lines, its intention wasn’t to break into the service-provider business.

The Internet-search giant was attempting to promote awareness of high-speed fiber, test new ways to build fiber networks, and explore the creative potential ultra-high-speed Internet service carries for developers and consumers—the potential, for example, to create new bandwidth-intensive “killer apps” and services and other uses not yet imagined.

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Iowa: Study: A third of households lack broadband

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For some reason I seem to know many people in Iowa that are the 5% that do not have access to broadband.  I assume that satellite access was included in this study.  Penetration would be much less if satellite was not included.

95% have access to some form of high-speed Internet, but some don’t want it, say it’s too expensive or don’t have a computer.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

CEDAR RAPIDS — A new study prepared in cooperation with the Iowa Utilities Board found that one-third of Iowa households don’t have broadband service, but not entirely because of a lack of access.

The study, released Wednesday, found that 95 percent of households do have access to some form of high-speed Internet, The Gazette of Cedar Rapids reported.

Among households that don’t subscribe to broadband service, 45 percent didn’t want it, 31 percent didn’t own a computer and 21 percent said it was too expensive.

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Consumers getting only half of advertised broadband speed

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Publish By Consensus

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Articles like the one below flooded the media this week when the FCC released its’ “Broadband Performance: OBI Technical Paper No. 4.”  All of the articles jumped on the headline that users were actually receiving half the bandwidth that the carriers were purchasing which implied that consumers were being cheated by carriers.  Even the typically conscientious ARS Technia jumped on this headline (or SEO) grabbing theme/meme.  Some of the articles took the time to extract from the report that the reasons for speed variations could be due to a multitude of factors such as user network, other Internet, and server delays, but many of them stuck with the prevailing theme.  The technical press seem bent on pressing the meme that “carriers are evil and we need the government’s regulation to save us.”  While I would be the first to chastise a carrier that was not providing what I purchased, my experience is that the transport usually lives up to the advertised speeds.  Remember too that there is always the obligatory “up to” qualifier on the speeds as well.  If I have any complaint with the incumbent ISP is that the price per bit is too expensive.

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Opelika Votes to Create Municipal Network

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BroadbandBreakfast.com Staff, BroadbandBreakfast.com

S. 8th Street in Opelika, Alabama
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WASHINGTON August 11, 2010- The Alabama town of Opelika has decided to set up its own cable television and internet network.

The town voted in a referendum aimed at providing some competition to Charter Communications; the town’s only ISP.

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