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Faster rural Internet headlines faster Canadian election

29 August 2015 by Steve Blum
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Speed matters in Canada.

Better broadband infrastructure and service seems to be the shortest route to rural voters hearts, at least in Canada. Instead of hyping more generous farm subsidies or big, new water projects, Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper is making faster Internet access for rural areas a top promise, as he campaigns for a fourth term…

At a campaign event in the eastern Ontario community of Lancaster, south of Ottawa, Mr. Harper says there is no infrastructure investment more critical to Canada’s economic fortunes than Internet access.

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Two picks for (what's left of) the summer broadband reading list

23 August 2015 by Steve Blum
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Click for more.

Two good guides to planning and executing municipal broadband projects have been published recently: The Next Generation Network Connectivity Handbook by Blair Levin and Denise Linn, and Connecting 21st Century Communities published by Next Century Cities without authorship credit.

Both offer planning frameworks for both political leaders and city staff interested in either developing local broadband projects – of any sort – or laying the groundwork for others to do so.

[Connecting 21st Century Communities]() is short – 18 pages – and focused on policy alternatives at the local, state and federal level, including dig once ordinances, building codes and streamlined permitting processes.… More

Latest Snowden revelations will push Internet infrastructure and traffic away from U.S.


Expect more lines in the future to bypass the U.S.

If there was ever any doubt that there’s no privacy on the Internet, the latest nuggets from Edward Snowden’s trove of documents detailing U.S. electronic spying efforts should remove it. Stories on the ProPublica.org website and in the New York Times show how telecommunications companies have cooperated with the National Security Agency to trawl emails that pass through their systems, regardless of where the messages originate or where they are destined.… More

Apple ready to do to autos what it did to mainframes and flip phones

20 August 2015 by Steve Blum
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The automotive assembly line of the near-future.

Rumors of an Apple-built car appear to be true. The Guardian, in a story written by Mark Harris, tells of enquiries made by Apple engineers to GoMentum Station, a test site for driverless cars located on the old Concord Naval Weapons Station in the East Bay Area. With military-grade security still in place, the site is run by the Contra Costa Transportation Authority and is billed as the largest secure test bed site in the United States.… More

Blackberry joins the Android party

15 August 2015 by Steve Blum
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Sometimes, you just have to drink the bong water.

Finally, Blackberry is generating some buzz. The Canadian company is preparing to make and bring to market an Android powered phone, according to the Crackberry.com website. It’s a necessary step, if the company has any hope of wringing value of out the ashes of its former empire.

Blackberry is still trying to find its way in the world. Historically, it’s had three core competencies: an operating system, hardware manufacturing, and a secure platform for enterprise software.… More

San Antonio confirmed as Google Fiber's next stop

6 August 2015 by Steve Blum
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San Antonio opens the gate for Google.

San Antonio has officially gone from being a “potential” Google Fiber city to an “upcoming” one. Google made the announcement yesterday in its blog…

Fast growing cities need Internet speeds that can keep up with their progress. For the 1.4 million residents of San Antonio, one of the biggest and fastest growing cities in the country, this is truer than ever. Which is why, today, we’re proud to announce that Google Fiber is coming to San Antonio—the largest Fiber city to date…

Soon, we’ll enter the design phase of building our fiber network in San Antonio.

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Cable operators see broadband pulling away from video

5 August 2015 by Steve Blum
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Charter Communications is gaining broadband subscribers, while Suddenlink is losing them. Both companies are shedding television customers, although Suddenlink is dropping them at a much faster rate. That’s the top line from the companies’ financial reports for the second quarter of this year.

On the whole, Charter reported a net gain, with pickups in broadband and voice accounts more than compensating for the declining video subscription numbers. It ended the quarter with about 5 million broadband and 4.1 million televisions subs, a gain of 70,000 and a loss of 33,000 respectively.… More

Arizona appears to be next for Google Fiber expansion

4 August 2015 by Steve Blum
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So far, no love for the Pacific Time Zone.

Google continues to lay the groundwork for expanding its fiber to the home project into more metro areas. According to a story by Darren DaRonco and Parker Leavitt in the Arizona Republic, Google is negotiating agreements with cities in the Phoenix area to get access to public right of ways. The first city to approve a deal is Tempe…

The agreement “gives us approval to build a network in the city of Tempe,” said Angie Welling, Google’s public policy and government affairs manager.

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Mobile data traffic accelerates, infrastructure needs to keep up

2 August 2015 by Steve Blum
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Click for a lot more detail.

The average mobile data customer in the U.S. is consuming 2.5 gigabytes of bandwidth every month. At least that was the picture at the end of the first quarter of this year according to mobile market analyst Chetan Sharma, who tracks such things. Likely, that number is even higher now – Sharma had average usage pegged at 2 GB just three months before.

Sharma believes mobile consumption is accelerating, while the cost to users continues downward…

In the US, it took roughly 20 years to reach the 1GB/user/mo mark.

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Santa Cruz rail offers a dig once chance for broadband

5 July 2015 by Steve Blum
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Click to see the big version.

Another broadband opportunity in Santa Cruz is opening up. The county Regional Transportation Commission (RTC) is offering the use of its 32-mile railroad right of way to interested utility companies, including broadband and telecommunications service providers.

The route runs more or less near the coastline along the length of the county, from Watsonville to Davenport, going through the cities of Capitola and Santa Cruz. About half the population of Santa Cruz County lives within a mile of the right of way.… More