Uncategorized

Supreme court approves FCC "shot clock" limits on local review of wireless facilities

22 May 2013 by Steve Blum
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Cities have to shoot, but that doesn’t mean wireless companies will score.

Another barrier to construction of wireless broadband facilities has come down. Or, depending on your point of view, the federal government has pre-empted a bit more of local government’s ability to regulate what’s built or not in a community.

The U.S. supreme court has given its blessing to the FCC’s “shot clock” rule that put limits on the amount of time a local agency has to approve or deny an application to build a tower or put new equipment on or around an existing one.… More

Sweeping California broadband subsidies under the carpet

21 May 2013 by Steve Blum
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Nothing to see here. Move along.

A new analysis of proposed changes to the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) ignores restrictions added at the urging of cable and telco lobbyists. The primary purpose of the CASF program currently is to fund the construction of new broadband facilities in areas that don’t have access to service of at least 6 Mbps download and 1.5 Mbps upload speeds. If California state senators base their vote on the latest summary prepared by legislative staff members, they’ll think they’re voting to 1.… More

Longmont keeping FTTH details out of public view for now

20 May 2013 by Steve Blum
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Taxiing towards takeoff in Longmont.

The Longmont, Colorado city council settled for a staff report and a powerpoint presentation that summarized the results of a feasibility study, before voting unanimously to take the next step toward building a municipal fiber-to-the-home system. The nitty-gritty details – business model, raw research data, quantitative analysis and the like – are being kept out of the public domain for now.

The report asked the city council to allow staff to continue moving ahead with work on the project, and in particular to give the city’s finance director permission to develop a financing plan, based on various debt options.… More

Google lights a prairie fire in Kansas

19 May 2013 by Steve Blum
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Kansas kicks it up.

Average Internet download speeds over the entire state of Kansas jumped by 86% in 2012, according to the State of the Internet tracking report from Akamai, a content delivery network pioneer.

To be sure, Akamai’s study relies on its own observed traffic and more or less ignores low speed, sub-256 Kbps connections, which would bring the average down. But its methodology is reasonably consistent across geographic markets and provides a fair basis for making comparisons.… More

Gigabit mobile phones teased for the 5G road map

18 May 2013 by Steve Blum
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It’s more than a 5 year mission to the next generation.

Samsung’s latest mobile technology announcement could result in faster mobile data traffic running on much higher frequency bands. Speeds of up to 1 Gbps on the 28 GHz band have been claimed, using antenna designs that are intended to mitigate the poor indoor penetration and range associated with millimeter wavelengths. It’s experimental – the commercialization target is 2020 – and intended to be a foundation for 5G service.… More

Netflix and YouTube are still eating the Internet

17 May 2013 by Steve Blum
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And the hits just keep on coming.

One-third of prime time Internet traffic on North American wireline networks is generated by Netflix viewers. Another third comes from other video sources – legal and otherwise – and anything else people do on the Internet accounts for the remaining third. That’s according to the latest semi-annual report by Sandvine, an Internet technology and research company based in Waterloo, Ontario.

Mobile viewers, however, prefer shorter videos on YouTube, which accounts for 27% of peak mobile download traffic, as well as coming in second place on fixed networks at 1%.… More

Five broadband trends shaping communities


A good place to talk about water, land and technology.

I was asked to do a presentation on broadband trends at the Urban Land Institute’s spring meeting in San Diego today. Specifically, it was for one of the ULI’s community development councils, which is focused on planned community developers. I had to narrow the list down to five:

  • Conduit is gold. Cities and private developments can build a base for jobs and industry just by putting conduit in the ground whenever a trench is opened.
… More

Santa Cruz supervisors move forward with broadband policy initiative


Pioneering surfing of all sorts.

Model broadband development policies are on a fast track in Santa Cruz County. On a unanimous vote yesterday, county supervisors gave staff three months to evaluate four specific recommendations and come back with an action plan.

“This is a far-reaching agenda for increasing the region’s access to broadband by lowering the administrative barriers to entry for, and increasing coordination between, private telecommunications providers,” wrote Zach Friend, the county supervisor behind the effort.… More

Waiting for the FTTH feasibility case in Longmont

14 May 2013 by Steve Blum
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Art is nicely presented in Longmont, too.

The city council in Longmont, Colorado considers today whether to move ahead with plans to build a municipal fiber-to-the-home system. They’ll be reviewing a feasibility study prepared by a consulting company and then deciding whether to direct city staff to come up with a financing plan.

Longmont is near Boulder, in the Denver area. The city runs its own electric utility, serving about forty thousand households, and has a backbone fiber optic network that was installed about fifteen years ago to support utility operations.… More

5G mobile means more fiber in more places

13 May 2013 by Steve Blum
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Qualcomm graphic.

“Bringing the network closer to the user is key to 1000x,” said Prakash Sangam, director of tech marketing for Qualcomm, speaking to the Wireless Communications Alliance in Santa Clara, California last month. 1000x is Qualcomm’s shorthand way of saying that with mobile data traffic more or less doubling every year, we’ll need one thousand times the amount of available bandwidth in a few years.

“Reaching this 1000x is a matter of when and not if,” Sangam said.… More