VC: Slowdown not a telecom phenomenon
By: By Carol Wilson
Even in uncertain times, venture capitalist Matt Rubins of M/C Venture Partners in Boston is still bullish on mobile broadband, CLEC investments and network infrastructure plays in 2008. Rubins spoke with Editor-in-Chief Carol Wilson...
Gearing up for the digital revolution
By: By Sarah Reedy
At this time next year, the world will have gone through a digital revolution, making analog anything a thing of the past. In preparation for going all-digital, consumers are charged with putting together a digital environment that suits their own unique needs. Telecom analyst Carol Ingley felt the impending transition was so important that she started her own company, Media Mogul of the Home, and wrote a how-to book on the subject to be published in April. She shared with Associate News Editor Sarah Reedy why “digital” will be the buzzword of 2009...
TIA study: Economic downturn won’t deter telecom
By: By Sarah Reedy
According to the Telecommunications Industry Association’s “2008 Telecommunications Market Review and Forecast” for the global telecommunications industry, there has been a healthy uptake of telecom services, both at home and abroad, with international markets seeing more growth than domestic markets...
Could targeted ads create an IPTV digital divide?
By: By Ed Gubbins
As IPTV allows for more targeted forms of advertising, it could potentially illuminate differences among demographic groups in varying levels of demand by advertisers. Could that effect create a digital divide similar to the one created in broadband infrastructure? John Reister, chief IPTV architect for BigBand Networks, explains...
FCC traffic-shaping hearing set for Monday
By: By Rich Karpinski
The Federal Communications Commission today released the agenda for a meeting Monday on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks and service provider traffic-shaping, with speakers from Comcast and Verizon taking up the carrier point of view...
Occam GPON gear coming in Q2
By: By Ed Gubbins
Occam Networks plans to start shipping its first gigabit passive optical networking (GPON) gear in the second quarter, benefiting from an acquisition it made last year...
Knology studies triple-play customer loyalty
By: By Sarah Reedy
As Knology fights to climb out of the red this year, the rural triple-play provider will spend much of 2008 striking a balance between competitive pricing and increasing average revenue per user on its bundle. The company has learned in recent years that bundled services don’t just increase customer ARPU, they increase customer retention...
BitTorrent developers seek traffic-shaping route-around
By: By Rich Karpinski
In the latest turn of a long game of cat-and-mouse, BitTorrent developers has said they are working on extensions to the core peer-to-peer (P2P) protocol to better thwart efforts to detect and throttle down heavy BitTorrent users...
Video quality major issue for IPTV, study says
By: By Carol Wilson
A new study, commissioned by a company that provides quality monitoring, identifies video quality as critical to the growth and success of IPTV and reports service providers don’t always have the tools they need to monitor quality...
Amedia Networks ceases operations
By: By Ed Gubbins
Amedia Networks ceased all operations last week, the company has disclosed in regulatory filings...
New box brings open IPTV home
By: By Carol Wilson
A Dutch company is trying to bring IPTV to the masses over the Internet via a business model that uses corporate sponsorships to subsidize distribution of a key piece of hardware that ties together Internet video with existing video products...
In the Spotlight: Virtela's Bill Dodds
By: By Carol Wilson
As a managed service provider, Virtela operates a virtual network, using the physical facilities from a broad array of partners to serve multinational corporations, including the increasingly popular undersea cable routes. The recent cable cuts in the Mideast raised concerns about the security and reliability of global networks and services, which Virtela Co-President Bill Dodds discussed with Editor-in-Chief Carol Wilson...
Markey offers Net neutrality compromise
By: By Carol Wilson
As expected, Massachusetts Rep. Edward Markey, a Democrat, is once again taking a run at imposing Net neutrality rules, this time introducing a bill that stops short of imposing requirements on Internet service providers but suggesting principles instead...
MWC: Nortel takes a closer look at EDGE
By: By Kevin Fitchard
BARCELONA--While the rest of the Mobile World Congress did back flips for the latest radio access craze, Long Term Evolution, Nortel Networks was talking 2G. The vendor is proposing that operators take another look at the EDGE networks of yesteryear, and specifically buy its new software upgrade to the GSM base station, Evolved EDGE...
MWC: WiMAX Forum to certify at 700 MHz
By: By Kevin Fitchard
BARCELONA--The WiMAX Forum today said it would include 700 MHz in its future certification profiles, creating a new opening for WiMAX vendors to sell their gear. With the forum officially pursuing 700 MHz, the stage may be set for a showdown between WiMAX and Long Term Evolution as both technologies are now targeted squarely at the spectrum...
MWC: Alcatel-Lucent, NEC form LTE venture
By: By Kevin Fitchard
BARCELONA--Alcatel-Lucent and NEC are creating an joint venture focused solely on Long Term Evolution in a bid to bring the 4G technology to market as quickly as possible. The partnership, announced here at the Mobile World Congress, has been running on silent for the last six months, and has already defined an LTE base station design the two plan to begin production of this year...
Qwest seeks broadband wireless partner
By: By Carol Wilson
Qwest Communications is actively looking for a partner in the broadband wireless arena, company CEO Edward Mueller told analysts today...
Mushroom Networks launches broadband-bonding CPE
By: By Ed Gubbins
A new broadband access equipment vendor making its public launch today promises to boost broadband speeds by bonding access lines of various types—including T-1, DSL, cable broadband and satellite...
EarthLink departure doesn’t doom muni wireless
By: By Carol Wilson
EarthLink's decision to exit the municipal wireless business and attempt to sell off its current assets shouldn’t adversely affect the current municipal wireless business, according to industry analyst Craig Settles, author of a new book, After Muni Wireless Comes to Town...
Tough enough
By: By Carol Wilson
Most companies probably would not want to be known as cutthroat. But in one part of Montana, the cutthroat trout is a good catch, and Cutthroat Communications is a company providing high-speed communications lines to an underserved population...
Portal power shift
By: By Rich Karpinski
Lost amid the hoopla of Microsoft's unsolicited $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo!, AT&T this month renegotiated its broadband portal deal with Yahoo! -- with much improved terms for the service provider...
DSL in the dumps, analysts say
By: By Carol Wilson
A growing chorus of analysts is questioning the pace at which Verizon and, to a lesser extent, AT&T have backed off selling basic DSL services in order to push their higher-speed Internet offerings and their video services...
Bell Labs: Reviving an icon
By: By Kevin Fitchard
As the research arm of a monopoly, Bell Labs invented the communications world as we know it. But in today's competitive market, this venerable institution must redefine itself to survive...
Hands on the home
By: By Mark Donahue
Residential gateways, IP set-top boxes, voice-over-IP terminals -- and soon you can add femtocell and WiMAX base stations. The list of customer premises equipment is growing, both in number and complexity, as service providers roll out richer services to more people...
Broadband may be growing faster than we think
By: By Tim McElligott
As it is, and may always be, with science: We still don't know what we don't know. Turns out it's the same with technology, as demonstrated in recent Pew Research reports about broadband...
