December 2013 – Page 2 – Steve Blum's Blog

Kim gets gamed, because the Internet never forgets

21 December 2013 by Steve Blum
geek stuff, kcna watch, kipling, korea, planet earth

Supreme Leader, we have immutable faith in your shining mastery of Pong.

In Rudyard Kipling’s novel Kim, a teenage boy is trained to be a spy with a memory game. He’s given a brief glimpse of some items, and then has to describe what he remembers. Over the course of many rounds, his powers of observation and memory grow. It’s called Kim’s game.

But as North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is finding out, the Internet gives everyone a Kiplingesque memory.… More

Aussies jump in with Utopia FTTH bid

20 December 2013 by Steve Blum
broadband, community networks, ftth, google, macquarie, public policy, utopia

Spends just as well as a greenback.

Utopia’s saviour appears to be an Australian investment company, Macquarie Capital Group, that specialises in large public sector projects, including fiber optic networks. According to a story in the Salt Lake City Tribune, Macquarie is starting out with a feasibility study…

The goal, according to a senior Macquarie executive, would be to develop a private-public partnership with any of the UTOPIA cities that wanted to participate, with Macquarie paying to build out the municipal Internet grid and then running it under a 30-year revenue-sharing contract.

… More

CPUC approves $1.8 million for "fiber to the vacation cabin"

19 December 2013 by Steve Blum
broadband, casf, cpuc, ftth, ponderosa telephone, public policy

No phone, no water, no power, no people. But wicked fast email.

“I’m a big supporter of fiber to the home, but fiber to the vacation cabin is a different thing”, said commissioner Michel Florio as he argued against giving a $1.8 million grant to the Ponderosa Telephone Company to build broadband infrastructure in a remote area of Madera County. His fellow commissioners did not agree, though, and the project was approved on a 4 to 1 vote.… More

Setting broadband development priorities for California's central coast

18 December 2013 by Steve Blum
broadband, casf, ccbc, cpuc, public policy, regional consortia

Central coast roadmaps for broadband development.

The Central Coast Broadband Consortium (CCBC) took the first steps yesterday towards identifying priority areas for broadband infrastructure development. At its annual meeting, held at the Monterey airport, representatives from local Internet service providers, agencies and businesses looked over plans for a three month process that’ll lead to a list of communities that are eligible for broadband construction subsidies from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) and have both a high degree of need and resources sufficient to ensure successful projects.… More

Growing a region's economy and protecting its quality of life with broadband

17 December 2013 by Steve Blum
broadband, ccbc, cpuc, digital 395, mcbc, public policy, regional consortia, santa cruz

Economic development pros at CCBC workshop.

“The goal is to put in infrastructure that supports 10 Gbps,” explained Patrick Mulhearn at the Central Coast Broadband Consortium’s (CCBC) economic development workshop this morning. Mulhearn works for Santa Cruz County supervisor Zach Friend, who is leading the effort there to overhaul the the way county manages and regulates the construction of broadband infrastructure. He pointed to two key policies approved by supervisors…

Allow the installation of equipment within public right of ways, subject only to “time, place and manner” of access, through the County’s encroachment permit process.

… More

Broadband priorities and lessons learned for California's Central Coast

16 December 2013 by Steve Blum
broadband, casf, ccbc, cpuc, public policy

Broadband gaps are easy to find.

Broadband infrastructure priorities for Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Benito counties are up for discussion tomorrow, as the Central Coast Broadband Consortium (CCBC) holds its annual meetings with economic development, public works and telecoms professionals. The CCBC is wrapping up the second year of a three year broadband development project funded by the California Public Utilities Commission, via the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF).

The CPUC has asked regional consortia to think about how to identify areas that are eligible for CASF subsidies for broadband infrastructure construction, have the need for it and sufficient resources to support it.… More

Utopia might finally be utopia, thanks to Google

15 December 2013 by Steve Blum
broadband, community networks, ftth, google, provo, public policy, utopia

Is a Google buyout the exit strategy?

One way or the other, it looks like Google is behind an impending bailout of Utopia, Utah’s multi-city muni fiber-to-the-home system. According to a story in the Ogden Standard-Examiner (and with a h/t to the Baller Herbst List)…

…officials gave only generic detail on what’s coming as a huge opportunity involving a major company mirroring Google’s involvement with Utah County.

They’re referring to Google’s take over of the municipal FTTH system in Provo, earlier this year.… More

Comprehensive study shows wireless radiation does not affect people

14 December 2013 by Steve Blum
electromagnetic hypersensitivity, emf, iei-emf, mobile, public policy, wireless

It’s safe to take off the hat now.

There is no scientifically valid evidence that radio waves produced by WiFi or mobile telecoms equipment harm people or make them sick. That’s the conclusion of a systematic review of 29 scientific studies that looked for connections between electromagnetic fields (EMF) and illnesses that people claim are caused by them…

Idiopathic environmental intolerance attributed to electromagnetic fields (IEI-EMF) is a controversial illness in which people report symptoms that they believe are triggered by exposure to EMF.

… More

Twelve days of Christmas might end with broadband in a farm bill

13 December 2013 by Steve Blum
broadband, community networks, farm bill, public policy, RUS

Put your thinking toque on.

Democrats and republicans are reportedly finding middle ground on a re-write of the U.S. agriculture, rural development and food subsidy law, otherwise known as the Farm Bill. The two competing bills passed earlier this year both include money for rural broadband projects, but the house of representative’s version has only about half as much money in it as the senate’s. In either case it’s barely noticeable in a trillion dollar-scale package.… More

Cities and carriers won't win new mobile bandwidth by playing under the old rules

12 December 2013 by Steve Blum
att, broadband, mobile, public policy, qualcomm, small cells, wca

Just the beginning for urban mobile crowding.

If mobile data networks are going to be capable of handing 1,000-times more traffic in the near future – as Qualcomm believes they will – the number of cell sites will have to increase by 100-times, at least in dense urban areas. That was the pictured painted last night by Ronen Vengosh, vice president of marketing and business development for PureWave Networks, at a small cell seminar organised by the Wireless Communications Alliance on Qualcomm’s Santa Clara campus.… More