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DSL Prime

Frontier's down 40%, Century, Windstream not

Stock moves should be similar. Frontier, Century, and Windstream are U.S. mostly landline carriers in very similar businesses. They all have declining landlines, very modest broadband gr... more

Frontier's profitable Unbonded second line for $20

Think one line for downloading teenager, one for adults watching Netflix. Frontier has found a very lucrative niche product: a second DSL line to the same ... more

Everyone on Earth Connected by 2018: The 550 Challenge

Phone or net, wired or wireless. Kicking off Friday Feb 3 in DC, the 550 Challenge has a goal of connecting all 7.5B people by 2018, ... more

HD Voice Live in Germany, France and coming to Comcast

Gateways without HD already obsolete. Jeff Lewis of Comcast speaks on HD voice in Amsterdam February 14th. I don’t think he’s ready to announce HD voice ... more

Wireless Cloud

AT&T's Randall & Stankey: Wireless data growth half the FCC prediction

40%, not 92%-120% “Data consumption right now is growing 40% a year,” John Stankey of AT&T told investors and his CEO Randall Stephenson confirmed on the ... more

Free Mobile: Paris cloud, Bottoms-Up design, LCHV profit

Xavier Neil's 20 euro ($27) unlimited voice, data, and SMS deal is drawing a million customers a week to Free Mobile. He's changing the mobile world ... more

Spectrum Efficiency: AT&T's Sensible Argument for the T-Mobile Deal

Massive spectrum waste in small blocks. Combining the spectrum of AT&T and T-Mobile will result in more efficient use of spectrum, AT&T tells Sascha Sagan of ... more

LTE: Timeline for What and When

2012-2014 LTE Speed: Decent 5-15 megabits average, 30-100 megabits peak Capacity: Lousy, only a few hours of TV/month. 2 gig caps would disappear absent market ... more

DOCSIS Report Cable

Comcast's $10 for Poor Families a Good Thing

I respectfully disagree, Karl.You're right about the limits and I am unsatisfied with "back of the bus" slow service. But unlike most of what ... more

AT&T, Verizon Find Broadband Map Data Unusable

Creating the model for the Big Telco Plan for USF/ICC, Jim Stegman found the data in the National Broadband map so unreliable he couldn't use it. ... more

30-40% Will Pay (A Little More) For Faster Than 10 Megabits

Between 21% and 40% of Britain's Virgin cable customers are paying extra for speeds faster than 10 megabits, Merrill Lynch calculates. Virgin charges £13.50 for 10 me... more

Quick: 1 and 4.5 Gig DOCSIS Explained

I've been reporting since 2005 that (shared) gigabit cable would come so this is no surprise. John Chapman and Anton Wahlman provided the roadmap at Fast ... more

Fiber News

CityFibre Fundraising for 1M UK Homes

First must raise $800M. Goldman and other bankers are looking hard for European infrastructure investments, encouraging both established companies and entrepreneurs to consider ... more

Telco Supplier Reality: With Capex Down, a Tough Market

“Growth Still A Challenge” Nikos Theodosopoulos writes about Tellabs, but he could be writing about almost any supplier to telcos or cablecos. The ... more

Fiber Home Turns Profitable in Japan

Kei Takahashi at Merrill Lynch Japan has a buy on incumbent NTT, a company struggling since 2002. Takahashi believes “growth in IP services such as... more

$20 For Verizon 3 Meg Fiber - With Catches

Verizon wants to shut down the copper where it has FiOS, so it's offering a sweet deal at the low end. Karl Bode at DSLR reports ... more

Internet & Television

HD TV Over Home Wireless in Everyday Use at Swisscom

Saving a $200-$400 truckroll? Vendors have been promising for years video quality wireless around the home, but Swisscom is the first Western carrier to offer a ... more

$40 IPTV Set Tops, Quantity 3 Million

With basic IPTV selling for less than $3/month, China Telecom can't afford an expensive set top. To bring prices down, they are requesting bids for 2.83 ml... more

Cordcutters: Roku, WD, Playstation or ??

We made a mistake buying the Roku box. It's great for Netflix, but doesn't play AVI's and other common formats I get often. Dan Rayburn, the ... more

Progress on Sony Linux Bugfix

The Sony Playstation 3 was ahead of its time with a remarkable 8 core CPU so it was welcome news when a way was found to ... more

Latest Issue

January 2012
AT&T's Randall & Stankey: Wireless data growth half the FCC prediction http://bit.ly/yyGsTG
40%, not 92%-120%
Free Mobile: Paris cloud, Bottoms-Up design, LCHV profit http://bit.ly/xqfQrw
Xavier Neil's 20 euro ($27) unlimited voice, data, and SMS deal is drawing a million customers a week to Free Mobile.
HD Voice Live in Germany, France and coming to Comcast http://bit.ly/wBgG6V
Gateways without HD and MIMO already obsolete.
Arcadyan: Emerging Asian Gateway Giant http://bit.ly/xiF8PA
Millions sold to Deutsche Telekom.
Everyone on Earth Connected by 2018: The 550 Challenge http://bit.ly/wuo6Hl
Phone or net, wired or wireless.
Alcatel's Vanhastel: Strong Sales, Soon for Vectoring http://bit.ly/Am7gOq
70-100 megabits 400-500 meters.
China Telecom promises 35% price drop, (no - see correction) http://bit.ly/xPwPOA
Tens of million fiber lines
Aware's DSL Patents for Sale http://bit.ly/y6iBMw
Brussels, October 3: Big European Operators Asking for Bit Tax http://bit.ly/yUPpSS
Found: $Millions in saving from universal service. (?satire) http://bit.ly/wsCs78
Multi-Billion ICC Windfall for Big Telcos http://bit.ly/yZ6s32
A huge story so far unreported.
Briefs: Japan fiber may not be profitable, Botswana, Stefano Galli of ASSIA, Italy saw an actual drop in broadband landlines, ZCorum, Jeremy Owens, Julia Angwin, John Eggerton, Brendan Sasso on nothing doing at the FCC, Craig Moffett, Brett Feldman, Doug Mitchelson, Jonathan Epstein of Deutsche Bank, Randall Stephenson, Vanessa Hessler, Ariel Masilos and Dror Salee, VP, are among those gaining as Anobit is purchased by Apple. They were GPON chip pioneers at Passave, now part of PMC-Sierra, before they became
Reply "subscribe" to be added, "un" to be dropped

“You have to make decisions knowing you never can satisfy everyone. Otherwise, you don’t get anything done.” Matthias Kurth, German regulator, who is bringing LTE to some of Germany's smallest towns

Randall Stephenson of AT&T dropped a bombshell: mobile traffic growth is down by more than half. The spectrum crisis has abated although we still need smart policies. Even bigger news comes from Paris. Xavier Neil's 20 euro ($27) unlimited voice, data, and SMS deal is drawing a million customers a week to Free Mobile. He's changing the mobile world by selling at half the price of any major operator in the U.S., France, or Canada.
Paris is proving giving all the spectrum to big incumbents is the worst way to go. Technology has moved beyond monopolies. Free can be cheaper because they have a more efficient network built on WiFi, femtos, and small cells. Sharing spectrum is 300% to 1,000% more efficient and is the way to get capacity. Towers will carry only a fraction of the traffic and with MIMO will have soon have far more capacity as well.
DSL has excitement as well. Now shipping vectored noise reduction nearly doubles speeds on short loops, to 50 and 100 megabits. FTTN/DSL builds are now considering when, not if, to make vectored gear standard in new builds. Alcatel is first to market with equipment with many to follow. The excitement obscures that the majority of phone lines are too long for vectoring to have much or any effect. Britain is building a new network with shorts loops and Germany had intended to, good opportunities for vectoring. But even short loops among the existing 300M DSL lines won't benefit unless the existing gear is replaced and that may never happen. Great engineering advances may not reach many homes.
Millions of customers - and telco profits - will soon benefit from MIMO WiFi fast enough for HD Video around the home. 4x4 MIMO is shipping from Quantenna and 3x3 from several. Swisscom, Deutsche Telekom, and everyone in France are shipping new gateways and often distributing HD video with wiring the house.
Anything less than 3x3 MIMO and HD Voice is already obsolete. Just watch what Free is doing in France, Deutsche Telekom and soon Comcast.
This issue is for the 17,000 losing their jobs at Nokia Siemens.