planet earth

China has new national broadband plan, goals

19 August 2013 by Steve Blum
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I signed up for broadband and all I got was this little red book.

China wants to lead the broadband world in something other than malicious Internet attacks, 42% of which originate there, putting it comfortably ahead of the U.S., at second place with 10%. So China’s State Council – the equivalent of its cabinet – is setting a target of 50% national wireline broadband availability by 2015. By 2020, the goal is to connect the entire country – all 1.3 billion people or so – with a minimum of 20 Mbps in urban areas and 4 Mbps in rural areas, and top speeds of 100 Mbps.… More

Diversify and conquer


Amazonian elephant coming up from behind.

There were three global technology elephants left standing at the close of the Consumer Electronics Show in January – Samsung, Google and Apple. Microsoft was last seen rumbling toward the elephant’s graveyard and the two likeliest candidates to replace it, Amazon and Facebook, were still shy of the necessary bulk.

Recent days have shown why Samsung and Google will rule the herd for a long time to come.

Google has so many market-default services that it’s accounting for 25% of daily Internet traffic, with 60% of the world’s devices touching it every day.… More

Boldly spend with PayPal Galactic

29 June 2013 by Steve Blum
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What fun would moon golf be without a friendly wager?

There’s more than a whiff of publicity stunt about it, but even so, the launch by PayPal and the SETI Institute of a project to create a payment system that can be used in outer space is a fascinating idea. The initial problem they want to address is creating a medium of exchange for the space tourism industry.

Elon Musk, one of PayPal’s founders, is also behind SpaceX, which makes real rockets that are already sending cargo into orbit and should soon be capable of transporting people too.… More

Blueseed and Bitcoin converge on peer-to-peer sovereignty and currency

22 June 2013 by Steve Blum
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Free-floating money gets a ride on a free and floating colony.

Two hardcore libertarian projects have joined forces in what might be the start of a new economy that’s outside the normal reach of national governments. Or it could just be the sharp poke in the eye that provokes a potentially fatal response from authorities.

BitAngels, a startup fund fueled by Bitcoins, is putting the equivalent of $100,000 into Blueseed, which proposes to moor a cruise ship twelve miles off the Northern California coast, just outside of U.S.… More

The only loony thing about Google's Project Loon might be the name

17 June 2013 by Steve Blum
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Driven by computing power, not Newton or newtons.

New Zealand’s Canterbury Plain is hosting Google’s latest idea-that’s-so-goofy-it-might-work, appropriately named Project Loon. Thirty high altitude balloons carrying data relay equipment were released to drift over Christchurch, generally heading east towards the telecoms starved Chatham Islands. The concept Google is testing is to put enough balloons into the air to create a fleet of atmospheric satellites that can talk to each other and to the ground, and relay Internet service to hard to reach places.… More

Building on a broadband lead

15 June 2013 by Steve Blum
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Blocking strategy.

Akamai, a leading content delivery network provider, publishes periodic performance reports that ranks global Internet service by country. Its latest figures put Korea, Japan and Hong Kong at the top of the chart.

That doesn’t tell the whole story, though. The Akamai numbers show how fast traffic is moving on its network, not how much of it there is. So having, say, super fast connections in gaming centers and clusters of homes with gigabit class connections can skew the rankings.… More

Don't predict African broadband growth with consensus and conventional wisdom

2 June 2013 by Steve Blum
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African traffic coming thicker and faster.

Cisco’s latest Visual Networking Index (VNI) shows global data traffic tripling over the next five years, growing to a level of 121,000 petabytes per month. North America and the Asia-Pacific region are the the big hitters, then and now, each accounting for roughly a third of total Internet traffic. Africa and the Middle East, on the other hand, barely registers. The report projects faster growth there, but even so that region’s share of global data movement will only go from about 2% of the total to 3%.… More

Asia leads in Internet speed and disruption

11 May 2013 by Steve Blum
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Asia-Pacific 4th quarter 2012

Asian countries hit the top of the charts in the latest “State of the Internet” rankings released by content delivery network pioneer Akamai. The numbers for the last quarter of 2012 rank Korea, Japan and Hong Kong 1-2-3 in terms of average broadband download speed, with scores of 14.0, 10.8 and 9.3 Mbps respectively.

Before the hand-wringing over the U.S. not being number one starts, consider that 1. it does pretty well coming in at eighth place with average broadband download rate of 7.4 Mbps and 2.… More

Meeting the challenge, like Bostonians

16 April 2013 by Steve Blum
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One moment calm and routine. The next, anything but.

It is an unfortunate fact of life that it takes a tragedy to show people at their best. Yesterday’s bomb attacks at the Boston Marathon did just that. The community responded instantly, selflessly and flawlessly. As a distance runner who has always wanted to do Boston, the sorrow of the day hit hard. But I was proud of the people in my sport and even prouder of the people who support it.… More

Civinomics launches platform for cooler, smarter conversations about hot button issues

12 April 2013 by Steve Blum
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Civil discussion about community issues is the goal of a start-up launched last night in Santa Cruz, California. Civinomics is a platform for online workshops and in-person polling, aimed at engaging a wider segment of the public in conversations about local issues and ideas. Where ever those might be.

“It represents the evolution of social media into civic media,” said Chris Neklason, the company’s product management guru and the co-founder of Cruzio, an independent ISP and the host of the ribbon cutting event.… More