Uncategorized

4K TV sales growing, with 20% U.S. market share in sight

19 February 2017 by Steve Blum
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About three-quarters of all large screen televisions – those more than 50 inches – that were sold last year in the U.S. (and worldwide) were 4K, ultra-high definition (UHD) sets, according to Paul Gagnon, the director of tv sets research for IHS Markit. By 2018, all but 100% of big screens sold will be 4K-capable. In raw numbers, the Consumer Technology Association – the trade association for the U.S. consumer electronics industry – estimates that more than 80 million 4K sets will be sold worldwide this year, and next year the total will be in the 100 million unit range.… More

Artificial intelligence naturally ignores bicycles

18 February 2017 by Steve Blum
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As someone who regularly spends several hours a week on a bicycle, wondering if the diesel rumble of a truck coming up behind me is the last sound I’ll ever hear, I was sorely disappointed to read that help, in the form of robotic vehicles, might be a long time coming.

A story by Peter Fairley on the IEEE Spectrum blog looks at the successes that self-driving car companies have had in developing software and sensors that can recognise other cars and predict their movements, and contrasts it with the failure to do the same with bicycles…

Nuno Vasconcelos, a visual computing expert at the University of California, San Diego, says bikes pose a complex detection problem because they are relatively small, fast and heterogenous.

… More

Verizon could close a big competitive gap with Charter's fiber

17 February 2017 by Steve Blum
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Verizon needs to build more than 100,000 new cell sites and add more fiber connectivity to close a capacity gap with its U.S. competitors, according to a report from New Street Research. And, the report concludes, buying Charter Communications – as rumors say it might – could help solve some of Verizon’s problems. It wouldn’t be much benefit to Charter, though.

The report estimates that when the number of cell sites and the amount of spectrum used is taken into consideration, Verizon has a bit more than half of the capacity per subscriber that AT&T and T-Mobile have.… More

The worse your broadband, the harder price hikes hit, FCC data says

16 February 2017 by Steve Blum
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Broadband service is getting more expensive, particularly if you’re on the slow side of the digital divide. The Federal Communications Commission just published its 2017 urban benchmark rate survey, which it uses to set prices and data caps for subsidised rural service – via the Connect America Fund, for example – as well as standards for lifeline service.

In 2016 (which is the benchmark year for 2017 rates), urban customers subscribing to packages with download speeds of 10 Mbps, upload speeds of 1 Mbps per second and a data cap of 100 gigabytes per month – in other words, the slowest and lowest service – paid $76.49 per month.… More

Competition, and something more, drives Comcast upgrade in Huntsville

15 February 2017 by Steve Blum
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Demand.

Chalk up another win for broadband competition. Comcast announced that it was expanding its next generation – DOCSIS 3.1 – cable modem footprint to Huntsville, Alabama, and would be offering gigabit-level service to at least some customers. Details on service locations, roll out schedule and prices were lacking, though.

What clearly isn’t lacking is a competitive threat. Huntsville’s publicly owned electric utility is in the process of building a fiber to the home network that will be operated by Google Fiber and offer gigabit service at about half the price that Comcast charges in the four cities where it’s already offering it.… More

No common carrier rules, but draft bill leaves room for net neutrality

14 February 2017 by Steve Blum
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Say goodbye.

A republican-backed bill introduced in congress in 2015 might be the best clue we have regarding where broadband regulation is headed at the federal level. Shortly before the Federal Communications Commission redefined broadband as a common carrier service, and then used that authority to establish a code of conduct for Internet service providers – the network neutrality rules – senator John Thune (R – South Dakota) and representative Fred Upton (R – Michigan) circulated draft legislation aimed at short circuiting that action.… More

Mobile carriers buy 70MHz UHF slice for $20 billion

13 February 2017 by Steve Blum
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The auction is over and mobile broadband carriers gained 70 MHz of spectrum in the 600 MHz band, at a cost just under $20 billion. After four cycles of downward bidding by television companies willing to sell their channel assignments followed by upward bidding by wireless companies wanting to buy them, the Federal Communications Commission’s incentive auction ended on Friday.

The downward, selling price auction ended last month, with TV stations willing to accept $10 billion in return for giving up 84 MHz of UHF spectrum.… More

Two nuggets of broadband policy gold offered to Trump administration

12 February 2017 by Steve Blum
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It’s in there somewhere.

So as not to throw the baby out with the bathwater (although it’s a small baby in an ocean of bathwater), it’s worth highlighting a couple of genuine wins in the last gasp “progress report” from the Obama administration’s federal broadband opportunity council.

The acknowledgement by the federal economic development agency (EDA) that broadband infrastructure is eligible for grant funding is particularly valuable, since it’s backed up with cash. EDA is now encouraging local agencies to “incorporate broadband investments (if applicable) into their regional economic development strategies along with other assets such as transportation infrastructure, energy, land use, etc.”… More

Too little, too late from the federal broadband opportunity council

11 February 2017 by Steve Blum
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Received and filed.

It’s called a progress report, but there’s not much progress to report. And the safe bet is that the federal broadband opportunity council will go into hibernation, rather than continue with whatever progress it might have made. Nevertheless, the council published a valediction of its efforts as the Trump administration was walking in the door.

The council was formed in 2015, following Barack Obama’s community-broadband-king-for-a-day speech in Iowa in January of that year.… More

CPUC broadband subsidy skepticism grows, grants on hold

10 February 2017 by Steve Blum
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A proposal to build a 300 mile middle mile fiber network connecting remote communities in northern California to high speed Internet access might or might not be in line for extra cash. The Digital 299 project would go through the mountainous terrain along state route 299 from Redding in the Sacramento Valley, through Trinity County and on to Eureka on the Humboldt County coast.

Yesterday, the California Public Utilities Commission weighed a recommendation from staff for a $41 million subsidy from the California Advanced Services Fund against pleas from local communities along the proposed route for an extra $6 million that they believe is necessary to make the project financially viable.… More