Microsoft Office market grip loosens as the cost of free drops

31 May 2014 by Steve Blum
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How much more popular do the descendants of OpenOffice need to be before they reache a tipping point? That is, the point at which open source productivity apps tip Microsoft Office into a terminal downhill market share slide.

The answer is not much. The Apache Software Foundation says that its child – Apache OpenOffice – has been downloaded more than 100 million times. That doesn’t represent the size of the user base by a long shot – the figure would include downloads of updates and browsing by the curious – but it’s not unreasonable to think it’s somewhere in the tens of millions range, albeit at the lower end.… More

Build economic demand to grow broadband supply

30 May 2014 by Steve Blum
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There’s no credible argument that telecoms companies are dedicated to anything like universal high speed, low cost Internet service. AT&T, for example, wants to send you a bill no matter where you live, but picks and chooses where to build fiber – “high potential” growth areas like central business districts and pricey new subdivisions – and where to rely on hit and miss mobile infrastructure, like inner cities and rural communities.

You can call that cherry picking, as I do, or redlining, as Harold Feld blogs in a couple of 5 minute videos (h/t again to Connie Stewart).… More

Long shot for federal broadband grants in California

29 May 2014 by Steve Blum
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Federal broadband infrastructure grants are pretty thin. Earlier this year, congress approved $10 million a year for five years for rural gigabit pilot projects. The FCC is looking at putting money into rural broadband experiments, but isn’t saying how much. And the US department of agriculture’s rural utilities service – which usually just makes loans – has $13 million available now for “advanced communications technology in rural areas”, via its Community Connect grant program.… More

The name of the gigabit game is fractal hopscotch

28 May 2014 by Steve Blum
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Look familiar?

Cox is the latest major Internet service provider to announce that it’s getting into the gigabit business, saying that upgrades…

…will start with new residential construction projects and new and existing neighborhoods in Phoenix, Las Vegas and Omaha. In all Cox locations, the company will begin market-wide deployment of gigabit speeds by the end of 2016.

If those three cities sound familiar, it’s because CenturyLink has already targeted Omaha and Las Vegas, and Phoenix is one of the blessed 34 cities on Google’s maybe list for fiber-to-the-home (but not CenturyLink’s).… More

CPUC to incumbents: upgrade broadband by April or else

27 May 2014 by Steve Blum
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New draft rules for governing the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) were released today by the California Public Utilities Commission. If approved, incumbent telephone and cable companies would be given a hard and short deadline to upgrade existing service areas, or face the prospect of competition from CASF-funded independents.

The CPUC is implementing a law passed last year by the California legislature that added $90 million to CASF and allowed independent Internet service providers and local governments to apply for grants and loans to build new broadband infrastructure, albeit under tight restrictions.… More

Bill hiking broadband construction costs approved by California assembly

27 May 2014 by Steve Blum
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The initial roll call, subject to revision.

Taking little more than a minute, the California assembly approved assembly bill 2272 this afternoon. The measure would add broadband infrastructure subsidised by the California Advanced Services Fund to the list of publicly funded projects that are subject to what are called “prevailing wage” requirements. That would mean that all work done – including work paid for by private matching funds – would be done according to union pay rates and rules.… More

Without competitive pressure, fiber can be as slow as copper

26 May 2014 by Steve Blum
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A new home development on the back side of the former Ft. Ord in Monterey County is getting fiber to the home. But don’t confuse that with fiber-to-the-home service, which so far doesn’t appear to be in the cards.
The East Garrison development has been in the making for several years. It was ready to move forward just as the Californian housing crash came in 2008, which put it and several other nearby developments into a deep freeze.… More

Broadband construction cost hike slides toward California assembly vote

26 May 2014 by Steve Blum
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Assembly bill 2272 is primed for approval by the California assembly. It would jack up the cost of subsidised broadband infrastructure projects – nearly double in some cases – and make it harder, perhaps impossible, for independent Internet service providers to get money from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF).

On Friday the appropriations committee, by a 13 to 4 margin, sent the bill forward to a vote on the assembly floor. It didn’t quite split along party lines – republican assemblyman Eric Linder, who represents the Corona area, joined the dozen democrats on the committee in voting aye.… More

Senators enjoy a clubbing from patent trolls

Patent reform legislation is dead in Washington right now, killed by senate majority leader Harry Reid as a favor to trial lawyers, who have given him as much as $4 million in campaign contributions in the past 5 years, and pharmaceutical companies. The senate has backed off from anti-troll measures passed last year by a wide, bipartisan majority in the house.

The heart of the package was a loser-pay provision, which would have given judges the power to make patent trolls pay defence costs when the verdict goes against them.… More

eBay wants to reassure you that it's your fault

24 May 2014 by Steve Blum
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Meet our new chief security officer.

I’m still waiting for my email from eBay telling me I should change my password. I checked my spam folder – that’s where all the other emails that tell me to click here and enter my password end up. Not a peep from the peeps at eBay, though. Of course, they only got around to flagging that advice on their home page yesterday. In an understated, be-sure-to-floss-daily sort of way

We take security on eBay very seriously, and we want to ensure that you feel safe and secure buying and selling on eBay.

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