Tag: telecom

Fiber Penetration Hits 42.5 Percent in U.S.

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Spinning Optical Fiber

Spinning Optical Fiber (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

BOSTON, MA — Business fiber penetration of commercial buildings in the U.S. increased to 42.5 percent in 2014, according to latest research from Vertical Systems Group. This compares to a penetration rate of only 10.9 percent in 2004. These statistics measure fiber availability at company-owned and multi-tenant buildings with twenty or more employees, which covers more than two million individual business establishments.

“Accessibility to fiber-based business services in the U.S. nearly quadrupled between 2004 and 2014, with hundreds of thousands of sites newly fiber-connected during this time period. As a result of this growth, our fiber penetration benchmark now exceeds 40 percent for the first time,” said Rosemary Cochran, principal at Vertical Systems Group. “Looking forward, the high stakes endgame for network operators is to deepen and broaden their service infrastructures around fiber – the future of wireline.” Continue reading

Arlington to make its high-speed fiber network available to businesses, federal agencies

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Crystal City

Crystal City (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Arlington will make its high-speed fiber network accessible to businesses, federal agencies and other organizations later this year as part of an economic development initiative unanimously approved by the Arlington County Board on Saturday.

Arlington will license access to a 10-mile dark fiber line traversing economic centers — including the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor, Glebe Road, Columbia Pike and Crystal City — that it will own and maintain. It will be an extension of an existing fiber network the county uses to connect municipal buildings and operate things like traffic signals. Continue reading

Move over, Google Fiber. Hello, Brooklyn Fiber

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English: The Brooklyn Bridge, seen from Manhat...

English: The Brooklyn Bridge, seen from Manhattan, New York City. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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Download an entire movie in about a minute and a half. Send a whole genome in a fraction of the time.

That’s the promise of low-cost gigabit Internet service that is finally coming to New York.

Brooklyn Fiber, a three-year-old five-person startup, is rolling out its gigabit broadband service this week in Industry City, the Brooklyn complex of former warehouse buildings under development in Sunset Park. That’s 20 times faster than existing download speeds in New York City, which average around 52 mbps, according to Ookla’s Speedtest.net service. Upload speeds average about 17 mbps. Continue reading

No Broadband Champagne Yet

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Blair’s opinion piece generally supports competition as opposed to more regulation as proposed by FCC Chairman Wheeler. While he has the facts to make a case that more regulation stifles innovation and cements the incumbents market position, he does not fully utilize them to make a strong case against Title II regulation. Instead he uses this opportunity to support municipal broadband and his Gig.U organization. Still I am delighted that re/code published is opinion article against more regulation because they have been a strong supporter of Title II regulation.

By Blair Levin, Executive Director, Gig.U

On Feb. 26, the Federal Communications Commission will vote to regulate broadband under Title II and challenge two state laws constraining municipal broadband deployment efforts. Progressives, longtime advocates of both actions, owe a huge “thanks” to Verizon. Its legal challenge to earlier, weaker FCC rules opened the door to the reclassification and a footnote in the court decision provided a path for the FCC to champion municipal broadband, a valuable lesson for all considering responding to adverse agency decisions. Continue reading

19% of US Homes May No Longer Have Broadband

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English: A wireless internet router, part of M...

English: A wireless internet router, part of Minneapolis, Minnesota’s broadband wireless internet network run by U.S. Internet. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Broadband” is another term that historically had a specific definition in the telecom industry but now politicians have co-opted it and made the definition squishy. Before the Internet was a commercial service, the industry referred to signals as being narrowband, wideband, and broadband. Broadband was defined as any signal being greater than 1.544 Mbit/s or a DS1/T1 rate. Now broadband has evolved from an adjective to a noun with a different meaning depending on how the FCC defines it. I guess I should think of it as further evolution of the English language.

All across America, people could be waking up to their last day with broadband internet access. Oh, the speed of the bits in their pipes isn’t changing, but what we call it might be. The FCC is set to vote on whether or not internet access should only be called broadband if it’s 25Mbps or higher downstream. The current standard is a measly 4Mbps, which ISPs are just fine with. Continue reading

No Word on Google Fiber as Year Draws to a Close

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So that Google Fiber thing? Is that happening?

Google Fiber is expected to announce by the end of the year whether it will begin offering its fiber optic internet service in the Atlanta market. Monday is Dec. 1. So, you know, you gonna hook it up or what, Google?

The company isn’t saying much. Continue reading

Cities Tackle Broadband Imperative

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2014-10-30-getimageI want to be an optimist about this effort, but I am afraid that it will turn out to be another of many conferences bureaucrats attend using taxpayer money. The contribution that broadband services makes to economies is well documented and understood so listening to highly paid consultants restate what they can read in a magazine or report is not a valuable use of time. Instead they should use this forum to openly share results and experiences in deploying broadband infrastructure. They should learn what business models work and what don’t work. This forum should present ways to stimulate new applications of services and promote competition of service providers. I hope that “Next Century Cities” is used as a constructive tool to share the knowledge of broadband infrastructure deployment and service provider competition and not as a way to grow government over the private sector.

There is a new organization in town and it’s quietly getting the attention it deserves.

Called “Next Century Cities,” it met last month with mayors and executives from 32 cities in Santa Monica, California to talk about the new economy, the critical importance of broadband infrastructure to economic wealth and well being and the vital role cities must play to succeed and survive in what is fast becoming a turbulent, knowledge driven world. Continue reading