mobile

Mobile broadband gets faster in California, but maybe not fast enough

26 October 2014 by Steve Blum
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Mobile broadband is better in California, and improvements have been made quickly. That was one of the takeaways from a meeting of Central Coast Internet service providers and California Public Utilities Commission staff in Seaside last week. Jim Warner, a network engineer at U.C. Santa Cruz and chair of the Central Coast Broadband Consortium’s technical expert group, discussed his analysis of results from the latest round of the CPUC’s mobile broadband field testing.… More

FCC narrows scope for local review of wireless build outs

22 October 2014 by Steve Blum
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The FCC’s decision to tell local governments that if they don’t approve permit applications for relatively minor modifications to wireless infrastructure within 60 days then permission is automatically “deemed granted” is a bit less than absolute. Local governments can still go to court to stop installations, and there’s a narrow set of reasons that permit applications can be rejected.

But make no mistake: the FCC is severely limiting the scope for local review of “collocation, removal, or replacement of transmission equipment on an existing wireless tower or base station,” or other work on on that infrastructure if it doesn’t involve a substantial change to its existing dimensions.… More

FCC says wireless permits automatically granted if local goverments don't act in 60 days

20 October 2014 by Steve Blum
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If local governments don’t approve certain permit applications for wireless broadband facilities within 60 days, then the FCC says permission is automatically “deemed granted”. That’s one of the new rules limiting how local and state agencies can regulate wireless broadband infrastructure issued by the commission on Friday.

The 60-day time limit affects permit applications for “collocation, removal, or replacement of transmission equipment on an existing wireless tower or base station,” so long as it doesn’t involve a substantial change to the existing structure’s dimensions.… More

Bitcoin grows where broadband flows in Santa Cruz

5 October 2014 by Steve Blum
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No Internet access, no Bitcoin. If a merchant wants to take payment in Bitcoins at the cash register – or anywhere else – both he and his customer have to be connected. Danny Thorpe, owner of the Quail and Thistle tea room in Capitola, was one of the first bricks and mortar merchants in the area to accept Bitcoins. He spoke to the Santa Cruz Bitcoin and Crypto-currency Meetup in September about the benefits and pitfalls – a video of his presentation is below.… More

Datawind squeezes costs out of bandwidth for developing markets

4 October 2014 by Steve Blum
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$80 for a tablet with a year of mobile Internet service included is a powerful selling proposition, particularly in the developing markets that Datawind is targeting. The Canadian company showed its newest tablet – priced at $38 with WiFi connectivity only – at the Showstoppers event at the CTIA show in Las Vegas last month.

Datawind has solved two tough problems: making a cheap and functional tablet and bundling it with even cheaper mobile service in a useful way.… More

New Blackberry phone aimed at small share of small market

27 September 2014 by Steve Blum
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The Blackberry Passport was unveiled this week. It would be a great product, if it ran the Android OS. It’s physically unique in a useful way. The phablet form factor makes it possible to do work on it, in the classic document-centric sense. The physical keyboard will suit some people better than virtual ones, even though the layout is less than intuitive. And it’s rugged, which makes it attractive to a wide range of users, particularly people who work on their feet or outside.… More

For broadband subsidies, CPUC says real world performance counts more than mobile carrier claims

23 September 2014 by Steve Blum
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Urban California has far better mobile broadband service than rural areas of the state. That’s one of the conclusions of a study done for the California Public Utilities Commission analysing millions of field tests done at thousands of locations statewide (H/T to Jim Warner for the pointer). The study also shows that getting a true picture of what consumers can expect to experience requires factoring in the unreliability of cellular data systems.

Mobile service counts when the CPUC decides whether a community has an adequate level of broadband service.… More

California discounts mobile broadband performance

22 September 2014 by Steve Blum
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Cellular data services are sometimes fast but always inconsistent. Occasional bursts of good performance skew averages based on measurements taken over periods of time, building false expectations of the speed and performance consumers will actually get. That’s one of the conclusions reached in an analysis done for the California Public Utilities Commission, based on millions of field tests conducted at thousands of locations throughout the state (H/T to Jim Warner for the pointer).

Nearly everyone in California – 98% of the population – would have access to the CPUC’s minimum standard of service (6 Mbps down/1.5 Mbps up), if carrier claims and sporadic speed spikes are taken at face value.… More

Inflight mobile phone decision could be an FCC bellwether

20 September 2014 by Steve Blum
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Terrorists coordinating attacks, planes forced to land because of fights among passengers, airline staff pummelled as they try to keep order in economy class. The latest Liam Neeson thriller perhaps? Or maybe a United Airlines customer service training video?

Nope, that’s the future of U.S. air travel if the FCC decides there’s no technical reason to ban inflight mobile phone calls. At least if you believe some of the more than fourteen hundred public comments on the matter.… More

CTIA successfully reboots its mobile industry trade show

13 September 2014 by Steve Blum
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It’s still a work in progress, but the reengineered CTIA wireless trade show looks like it’s relevant enough to mobile industry execs to keep drawing them to Las Vegas. The new show tries to blend content from the CTIA’s traditional big springtime convention and MobileCon, its fall technology conference (or content or apps or whatever – usefully, it never stagnated), and consolidate the show floors.

The exhibits were workmanlike and generated a fair amount of traffic, at least on the first day (the only full day I was there).… More