The United States is ranked 7th worldwide in a Networked Readiness Index in a new report issued by the World Economic Forum. The index is based on a variety of economic and political as well as technical factors.
This is in contrast to last year’s OECD report, based on tighter criteria of bandwidth and connectivity, that ranked the United States 19th worldwide.
Damian Kulash of Chicago band OK Go appeared at the recent house hearing on network neutrality where he argued forcefully for protection of open access to content. Much of the band’s popularity derives from exposure on YouTube, where one homemade video has been accessed over 30 million times. Damian succinctly sums up his thoughts in an Op-Ed piece in today’s New York Times entitled ‘Beware the New New Thing‘. Continue reading
Mar 27: Comcast and BitTorrent today issued a joint press-release where they announced a collaborative effort to move beyond the current ‘reset spoofing‘ hooha. While Comcast will migrate by year-end 2008 to a capacity management technique that is “protocol agnostic”, BitTorrent agreed to develop fresh “optimizations” that will promoted as application standards.
Both BitTorrent and Comcast expressed the view that these technical issues can be worked out through private business discussions without the need for government intervention. Continue reading
In a new report from the Aspen Institute Professor Philip Weiser of the University of Colorado at Boulder offers a series of specific and concrete policy recommendations for expanding access, affordability, and adoption of broadband in the United States.
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Mar 19: New York Governor David A. Paterson announced that nine public/private sector partnerships will be the first recipients of grants from the New York State Council for Universal Broadband. The funds are targeted to help promote the research, design and implementation of innovative solutions to create affordable broadband Internet access for underserved urban and rural communities throughout the state.
Amongst the recipients were an initiative to bring broadband over power lines (BPL) to Onondaga County and a program to bring a year’s free access to residents of the Mount Hope community housing project in the Bronx. Continue reading
The Federal Communications Commission announced a public En Banc hearing to be held at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California on Thursday, April 17, 2008. The Commission will hear from expert panelists regarding broadband network management practices and Internet-related issues. The hearing scheduled at Stanford University is the second such hearing on broadband network management practices and Internet-related issues to be held by the FCC and follows a similar hearing held at Harvard Law School last month. Continue reading
The New York Broadband Advisory Committee held its fourth Public Hearing on Monday Mar 3rd 2008 at LaGuardia Community College in Queens. ISOC-NY videotaped the meeting and the audio has been posted on the ISOC-NY wiki.
The hearing was attended by Senator Larry Pressler – author of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that, amongst other things, established the E-Rate system. Continue reading
NYC Wireless has announced a new hotspot – Jackson Park in northern Greenwich Village.
The NYC Broadband Advisory Council will hold the Queens edition of its public hearing series at LaGuardia Community College, 31-10 Thomson Avenue, Long Island City, N.Y. 11101 on March 3, 2008 from 1pm – 4pm. Continue reading
Estimating the Exaflood: The Impact of Video and Rich Media on the Internet, a report released by the Discovery Institute estimates that by 2015 annual U.S. Internet and IP traffic will reach 1,000 exabytes, or one zettabyte, which is one million million billion bytes of data. Continue reading
The Benton Foundation today notes a number of recent critiques of USA national broadband policy, or the lack of it. Continue reading
 A new report by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) explores broadband options available to communities. It concludes that municipal investment in fiber is a must. Continue reading
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger commissioned the California Broadband Task Force (CBTF) to “remove barriers to broadband access, identify opportunities for increased broadband adoption, and enable the creation and deployment of new advanced communication technologies.â€Â The Taskforce just published it’s report, saying that better, faster and more available broadband capabilities would propel economic growth for the most populous U.S. state, where 96 percent of households already have access to basic high-speed communications. They suggest the state consider issuing bonds to pay for the broadband build out. Continue reading
Time Warner Cable said on Wednesday it is planning a trial to bill high-speed Internet subscribers based on their amount of usage rather than a flat fee, the standard industry practice. Continue reading
French satellite operator Eutelsat SA and U.S. equipment provider ViaSat Inc. have formed a partnership intended to make Internet access via satellite more competitive. The goal is to deliver faster, more flexible and less expensive broadband connections than those typically provided by existing satellite or ground-based rivals on both sides of the Atlantic. Continue reading