Telecom trends for 2012

802 Comments

1. June 7, 2012 at 10:48 am

   Tomi Engdahl says:

   Android Expected to Reach Its Peak This Year as Mobile Phone Shipments Slow, According to IDC
   http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS23523812

   FRAMINGHAM, Mass. June 6, 2012 – The worldwide mobile phone market is forecast to grow slightly more than 4.0% year over year in 2012, the lowest annual growth rate since 2009, due to a sharp decline in the feature phone market and sluggish global economic conditions.

   According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, vendors will ship a total of nearly 1.8 billion mobile phones this year.

   By the end of 2016, IDC forecasts 2.3 billion mobile phones will be shipped to the channel.

   The slow growth in the overall mobile phone market is primarily due to the projected 10.0% decline in feature phone shipments this year.

   In comparison, the smartphone market will largely offset the feature phone decline with shipments forecast to grow 38.8% year over year to 686 million units this year.

   “Underpinning the smartphone market is the constantly shifting OS landscape,”

   IDC projects Android will remain the most shipped smartphone operating system over the course of the five-year forecast though its share will peak this year. Increasingly, its share and growth will be driven by Samsung sales. This Android stratification will happen even as more devices powered by Google’s mobile OS from a wide variety of phone makers enter the market.

   iOS will continue its impressive run

   Windows Phone 7/Windows Mobile will gain share despite a slow start. Windows Phone 7/Windows Mobile will be aided by Nokia’s strength in key emerging markets. IDC expects it to be the number 2 OS with more than 19% share in 2016, assuming Nokia’s foothold in emerging markets is maintained.

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2. June 7, 2012 at 1:21 pm

   Tomi Engdahl says:

   Vint Cerf: ‘COMMUNISTS want to seize the INTERNET’
   Actually ‘meritocratic democracy’ is the True Way
   http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/07/un_vint_cert/

   Comment No less a figure than Vint Cerf has been addressing the US Congress on why the UN can’t be allowed to control the internet, whipping up sentiment against a supposed takeover bid and at the same time advocating something at least as controversial.

   the “father of the internet” called for Americans to rise up against the threat of the UN (in the guise of its telecommunications standards agency, the ITU) seizing control of the internet in the name of communism (well, of China and Russia anyway).

   “The greatest strength of the current system of internet governance is its meritocratic democracy,” says Cerf, forgetting for a moment that a meritocracy and a democracy are very different things.

   Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist adds that “most member states of the ITU have not even opened public dialogues with internet stakeholders to guide the development of their national positions or to seek input on their proposals,” and is obviously upset that governmental proposals put to the ITU aren’t made public.

   “Concerns about transparency stem not from theoretical concerns but from actual experience,” continues Cerf

   Google isn’t a member of the ITU, unlike Apple and Cisco. The ITU is happy to have companies signed up as members, and invites them along to events like the forthcoming Dubai shindig, but the submitted documents aren’t yet public and that’s obviously annoyed the Chocolate Factory.

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3. June 8, 2012 at 12:52 pm

   Tomi Engdahl says:

   U.N. could tax U.S.-based Web sites, leaked docs show
   http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57449375-83/u.n-could-tax-u.s.-based-web-sites-leaked-docs-show/

   Global Internet tax suggested by European network operators, who want Apple, Google, and other Web companies to pay to deliver content, is proposed for debate at a U.N. agency in December.

   The United Nations is considering a new Internet tax targeting the largest Web content providers, including Google, Facebook, Apple, and Netflix, that could cripple their ability to reach users in developing nations.

   The European proposal, offered for debate at a December meeting of a U.N. agency called the International Telecommunication Union, would amend an existing telecommunications treaty by imposing heavy costs on popular Web sites and their network providers for the privilege of serving non-U.S. users, according to newly leaked documents.

   The documents (No. 1 No. 2) punctuate warnings that the Obama administration and Republican members of Congress raised last week about how secret negotiations at the ITU over an international communications treaty could result in a radical re-engineering of the Internet ecosystem and allow governments to monitor or restrict their citizens’ online activities.

   “It’s extremely worrisome,” Sally Shipman Wentworth, senior manager for public policy at the Internet Society, says about the proposed Internet taxes. “It could create an enormous amount of legal uncertainty and commercial uncertainty.”

   ETNO refers to it as the “principle of sending party network pays” — an idea borrowed from the system set up to handle payments for international phone calls, where the recipient’s network set the per minute price. If its proposal is adopted, it would spell an end to the Internet’s long-standing, successful design based on unmetered “peered” traffic, and effectively tax content providers to reach non-U.S. Internet users.

   Developing countries “could effectively be cut off from the Internet,” says Pepper, a former policy chief at the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. The ETNO plan, he says, “could have a host of very negative unintended consequences.”

   But the ITU has 193 member countries, and all have one vote each.

   If proposals harmful to global Internet users eventually appear in a revision to the ITRs, it’s possible that the U.S. would refuse to ratify the new treaty. But that would create additional problems: U.S. network operators and their customers would still be held to new rules when dealing with foreign partners and governments. The unintended result could be a Balkanization of the Internet.

   Proposals that foreign governments have pitched to him personally would “use international mandates to charge certain Web destinations on a ‘per-click’ basis to fund the build-out of broadband infrastructure across the globe,” McDowell said. “Google, Tunes, Facebook, and Netflix are mentioned most often as prime sources of funding.”

   They could also allow “governments to monitor and restrict content or impose economic costs upon international data flows,” added Ambassador Philip Verveer, a deputy assistant secretary of state.

   This isn’t the first time that a U.N. agency will consider the idea of Internet taxes.

   In 1999, a report from the United Nations Development Program proposed Internet e-mail taxes to help developing nations, suggesting that an appropriate amount would be the equivalent of one penny on every 100 e-mails that an individual might send. But the agency backed away from the idea a few days later.

   And in 2010, the U.N.’s World Health Organization contemplated, but did not agree on, a “bit tax” on Internet traffic.

   The ITU’s process has been controversial because so much of it is conducted in secret. That’s drawn unflattering comparisons with the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, an international intellectual property agreement that has generated protests from Internet users across the world.

   “Not all those countries like open, transparent process,” says Cisco’s Pepper, referring to the ITU’s participants. “This is a problem.”

   Reply
4. June 8, 2012 at 3:55 pm

   Phil Shortle says:

   Studying this article – the gift of your time

   Reply
5. June 11, 2012 at 11:28 am

   Tomi Engdahl says:

   Europe crams ultra-fast 4G into tight spectrum crack
   Outta the way 3G, the new kid is here
   http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/11/3g_refarming/

   Euro telecoms regulator CEPT has released 120MHz of shiny new radio spectrum for “ultra-fast mobile broadband”, which would be more impressive if the bands weren’t full of reasonably fast data already.

   The frequencies concerned are around 2.1GHz and are already full of 3G networking everywhere – but a handful of operators are considering deploying faster 4G in those bands and can now do so with the official backing of Europe even if they’ll have to wait for permission from national regulators too.

   The bands concerned are allocated to frequency division duplex (FDD), which uses separate radio frequencies for sending and receiving to ensure a symmetrical connection. The industry is still obsessed with FDD having failed to notice that most of us download more than upload these days, but that’s a subject for another day.

   3G (UMTS) mandates 5MHz-wide channels, each of which carries multiple phones identified by a transmitted code (Code Division Multiple Access). 4G (LTE) also uses CDMS but can scale its channel width, though to achieve headline speeds it needs to spread out to its maximum 20MHz.

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6. June 11, 2012 at 1:59 pm

   Tomi Engdahl says:

   LG’s quad-core Optimus tabphone powers into Europe
   http://www.reghardware.com/2012/06/11/lg_4x_hd_powers_into_europe/

   The big-screen LG Optimus 4X HD has joined the growing list of quad-core party members, with the company’s Nvidia Tegra 3 powerhouse shipping across Europe this week.

   Here it’s a 4.7in IPS LCD display with a resolution of 1280 x 720, an aspect ratio of 16:9 and a pixel density of 313ppi.

   Reply
7. June 11, 2012 at 2:06 pm

   Tomi Engdahl says:

   Americans stand against UN internet-tax plan
   Can’t find any reds, so socialists will have to do
   http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/08/internet_tax/

   Comment The idea of taxing internet traffic has got the twitterverse into a tizzy. Apparently socialists monsters want pay for their carriage, and the UN has cooked up a secret plan to get the money.

   Having failed to find evidence that blue-helmeted geeks are poised to invade cyberspace, the US internet community is now up in arms about ITU plans for a mandated tax on web traffic, backed up by evidence laid out by CNET – and ignoring the fact that the evidence doesn’t in any way support the claims.

   The principle is mentioned in the context of commercial negotiations between companies, and there’s no mention of any mandated payments, but the idea is mooted.

   The principle of caller-party-pays is common in telecommunications outside the USA; in Europe we don’t pay to receive phone calls and the principle has served developing nations well over the last hundred years or so.

   But with the internet things are different: a poor country building internet infrastructure must pay foreign peers to carry its traffic.

   CNET’s assertion that the proposal “would spell an end to the Internet’s long-standing, successful design based on unmetered ‘peered’ traffic” would only be true if peering was indeed unmetered. But when the peers are unbalanced – as foreign surfers consume US content – then money changes hands, and almost all of it flows towards the USA.

   So bad is that problem that the ITU’s General Secretary has stated that countries which don’t speak English will do better in the internet economy as they don’t consume so much US content.

   Quite why the US and the Obama administration feel it necessary to repeatedly attack the ITU in this way is a mystery. Perhaps they really believe the internet is under threat from the UN, or perhaps it’s just an election year

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8. June 11, 2012 at 3:35 pm

   Tomi Engdahl says:

   Hello tourist – so you will be monitored

   Bank of Estonia, Tartu University and the OU Positium LBS have followed the movement of tourists since 2008.

   Monitoring is based on cell phones on their own. The creators of the system assure that records the individual numbers or personal information, but is intended to create and complete statistics on tourism.

   Source:
   http://www.taloussanomat.fi/tietoliikenne/2012/04/12/hei-turisti-nain-sinua-seurataan/201227195/12

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9. June 11, 2012 at 3:41 pm

   Tomi Engdahl says:

   Press Release: Mobile Adult Video Users to Triple on Tablet Devices by 2015
   http://www.juniperresearch.com/viewpressrelease.php?id=401&pr=317

   The growth in the tablet user base will cause the number of users of mobile adult video content on tablets to triple by 2015, a new report from Juniper Research finds. This trend is repeated across all forms of mobile adult content on tablets with the number of mobile adult subscribers and mobile adult videochat users also tripling by 2015.

   Constraints to Growth

   While the numbers of users accessing mobile adult content on tablets will grow rapidly, the fact that a significant proportion of tablets are shared devices will restrict growth. The move towards ‘multiscreen’ experiences also means that consumers may be reluctant to purchase content solely for the tablet. In some regions, legislation and social attitudes towards adult content will also restrain the growth of the mobile adult industry.

   Despite the many restrictions to growth, the adult industry is forecast to generate significant revenues from tablet devices. Tablet owners are generally more affluent than the average user, and are more likely than smartphone users to own a credit card – even in emerging markets. This means that tablet users are likely to spend more and more often on mobile adult content than the average smartphone user.

   ‘Tablets combine the privacy of a smartphone with a large screen, particularly suited for content consumption.’

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10. June 11, 2012 at 4:51 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Android activations near a million a day
    http://www.reghardware.com/2012/06/11/android_activation_nears_one_million_daily/

    Almost a million Android devices are activated every 24 hours, according to Google’s Andy Rubin.

    The company’s senior VP of mobile stuff revealed the statistics through Twitter where, after insisting he had no plans to leave Google, claimed “there are over 900,000 Android devices activated each day”.

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11. June 11, 2012 at 5:13 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Luxury car makers start to also make also mobile devices:

    Lamborghini drives Androids towards wealthy pockets
    http://www.reghardware.com/2012/06/11/lamborghini_drives_androids_towards_wealthy_pockets/

    Lamborghini has upped the gears with its own range of mobile products, including a tablet and a gold-plated Android handset, both set to drive into the hands of oligarchs this summer.

    Those more inclined to ride shotgun with other car makers were recently given the option of an edgy Porsche BlackBerry handset while Ferrari fans have previously been able to ride with Motorola.

    Reply
12. June 12, 2012 at 9:51 am

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    European ISPs Lobby ITU Against Net Neutrality
    Service providers say they should have the right to charge for better service
    http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/news/isps-ask-itunet-neutrality-81945

    European ISPs have asked the ITU to guarantee service providers’ right to charge more for guaranteed service levels, against the wishes of those lobbying for Net Neutrality.

    Governments including that of the Netherlands have passed laws banning the creation of a so-called “two-tier Internet”, in order to prevent service providers choking rival services. However, the European Telecommunications Network Operators Association (ETNO) has argued that the ability to charge for differentiated service is essential and urged the UN’s telecoms body to enshrine the principle in new international regulations.

    The International Telecommunications Regulations govern how the world’s telecoms operators work and are set out by a UN agency, the ITU (International Telecommunications Union). They are up for renewal, as their last version from 1998 pre-dated widespread use of the Internet.

    ETNO’s submission to the ITU sets out a difference between “end to end quality of service delivery” and “best-effort delivery”, and says operators should get “fair compensation”, concluding that “nothing shall preclude” commercial agreements based on differentiated service.

    Net Neutrality advocates say charging for services would allow providers to kill off competitors that run on top of their networks, like VoIP services such as Skype that operate over networks and compete with telephone services. The question also raises fears of Internet taxes.

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13. June 12, 2012 at 2:15 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Mobile chip firms ditch feature phone biz for smartphones
    R&D efforts focused on web-enabled devices
    http://www.reghardware.com/2012/06/12/mediatek_smartphones_feature_phone_development/

    One of the world’s largest mobile chip companies, MediaTek, is focusing its R&D efforts on smartphones at the expense of its feature phone business in another clear sign that the market for budget 3G handsets in countries like China and India is about to explode.

    Industry sources told Digitimes that MediaTek and its MStar Semiconductor spin-off, were shifting their software and firmware engineers from the feature phone to smartphone units.

    MediaTek is predicting a spike in sales of 14-20 per cent from the previous quarter and Q2 shipments of ‘smartphone solutions’ of 18-20 million, the report said.

    IDC analyst Melissa Chau told The Reg that the semiconductor vendor has been looking to wind down its feature phone business for a while because of the low unit sales price of devices and market saturation.

    “We know [smartphones] have become a big focus for the industry not just from looking at MediaTek’s R&D but also because other firms, like Qualcomm, are trying to copy the same model,” said Chau.

    “Companies like MediaTek are driving it but the local [handset] players see the writing is on the wall for feature phones too. Once we hit the $100 phone it will really drive up the smartphone market in general.”

    Asian countries like India and China offer up some of the biggest opportunities for growth here, as many have a large installed base of feature phones but an increasingly affluent and web-savvy customer base and huge subscriber numbers.

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14. June 12, 2012 at 2:40 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Lost Mode in iOS 6
    http://www.anandtech.com/show/5990/lost-mode-in-ios-6

    iOS 6 will also feature Lost Mode, allowing you to send a phone number to your missplaced iPhone. Anyone who finds it can just tap the phone number on the screen to immediately call you.

    Reply
15. June 12, 2012 at 5:08 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    iOS6 coming this fall, and it’s free and easy to upgrade wirelessly on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch — the moment it’s available.

    Source: http://www.apple.com/ios/ios6/

    Reply
16. June 12, 2012 at 5:19 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Amazon’s Appstore to Open Internationally This Summer; Will the Fire Follow?
    http://allthingsd.com/20120611/amazons-appstore-to-open-internationally-this-summer-will-the-fire-follow/

    Amazon is getting close to launching its Appstore in Europe later this summer, marking the first time the store will be available outside the U.S., according to sources familiar with the company’s plans.

    Similar to the Apple App Store and Google Play, Amazon’s virtual store allows consumers to download mobile apps to Android phones and tablets. Once available, the Appstore will likely work across most Android devices in Europe

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17. June 12, 2012 at 5:25 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Randall Stephenson: Spectrum and the Wireless Revolution
    http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052702303665904577450222319683932-lMyQjAxMTAyMDEwMTExNDEyWj.html

    The demand for mobile data is doubling every year. The U.S. needs policy changes to keep up.

    The demand for mobile data is now roughly doubling every year. Smartphones use 30 times more data than the cellphones they replaced. Meanwhile, the supply of spectrum supporting mobile devices has remained the same since 2008.

    That means we’re in a race against time. The demand for spectrum will exceed supply by 2013, according to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) estimates. If that happens, the speed of the mobile revolution will slow down. Prices, download times and consumer frustration will all increase.

    Congress recently approved the FCC’s plans to auction spectrum held by TV broadcasters

    Some people believe that new technology—such as smaller, more sophisticated antennas and wider deployment of Wi-Fi—can solve our near-term spectrum shortage. These network innovations can help, and at AT&T we’re evaluating or investing in all of them. But they are not enough to solve wireless capacity problems—not when nearly half the American adult population owns a smartphone and data usage continues to explode.

    For example, AT&T’s 30,000 Wi-Fi hotspot network is the largest provided by any U.S. wireless carrier, but it offloads a mere 1% of all the mobile data traffic we carry.

    If we are to meet our government’s expressed goal of providing high-speed wireless services to 98% of all Americans by 2016, we need to better align national policies with national priorities.

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18. June 13, 2012 at 9:31 am

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Google expects 10bn mobile subscriptions by 2020
    http://www.totaltele.com/view.aspx?ID=474227

    Google’s U.K. director Peter Fitzgerald on Tuesday predicted that global mobile subscriptions will grow to 10 billion by 2020 from 5 billion today.

    Internet giant also predicts number of end users accessing Web via PCs to grow to 5 billion over next eight years.

    “Most of the world has not seen of or even heard of the Internet, we’re still really in the early stages,”

    “The ultimate goal is to have Internet connectivity wherever you are in the world,” he continued. “What we’re trying to do is spur this connectivity.”

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19. June 13, 2012 at 10:12 am

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    U.S. Probes Cable for Limits on Net Video
    http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052702303444204577462951166384624-lMyQjAxMTAyMDEwMjExNDIyWj.html

    WASHINGTON—The Justice Department is conducting a wide-ranging antitrust investigation into whether cable companies are acting improperly to quash nascent competition from online video, according to people familiar with the matter.

    Cable companies provide both television channels and high-speed Internet access for many consumers in the U.S. With broadband Internet, consumers can watch individual programs or channels through online video services like Netflix, Hulu or Amazon, bypassing the cable company’s traditional bundles of channels.

    Having invested billions of dollars building their networks, some pay-TV companies have shown little inclination to get out of the business of packaging television channels and become mere conduits for other companies’ data. Some major entertainment companies also have an interest in preserving the current model of television viewing because they want cable companies to take bundles of their channels, rather than just cherry-picking the most popular ones.

    The Justice Department probe highlights how the shifts in decades-old patterns of television viewing are shaking the tightly regulated industry.

    In its cable TV probe, Justice Department investigators are taking a particularly close look at the data caps that pay-TV providers like Comcast and AT&T Inc. T have used to deal with surging video traffic on the Internet. The companies say the limits are needed to stop heavy users from overwhelming their networks.

    Internet video providers like Netflix have expressed concern that the limits are aimed at stopping consumers from dropping cable television and switching to online video providers.

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20. June 13, 2012 at 1:14 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Cisco puts a virty router in the clouds
    And a virty server in a router, among other unnatural acts
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/12/cisco_cloud_router_x86_coprocessors/

    Up front is a new Cloud Services Router 1000v which lifts Cisco’s routing software, running atop its IOS network operating system, off the iron and plunks it into a virtual machine for deployment out on the cloud. Cisco has taken IOS and the routing software stack in it physical hardware – including routing, VPN, firewall, NAT, QoS, application visibility, failover, and WAN optimization code – and ported it to a VM container that can execute on either VMware’s ESXi hypervisor or Citrix Systems’ XenServer hypervisor.

    This is analogous to the virtual Nexus 1000v switch that Cisco created for its “California” Unified Computing System blade servers to virtualize the network links between VMs running on the blades.

    Now Cisco can put routing and related security functions (all based on the familiar IOS stack) in all parts of an organizations infrastructure, whether it is an Aggregation Services Router (ASR) at the head end of the network, the Integrated Services Router (ISR) in the branch office, and the CSR out in the cloud.

    By putting a virtual router out in the cloud, customers can extend their own routing networks into the data centers of cloud operators and ensure that their networks are isolated from other companies who are sharing that physical infrastructure. This will allow customers or managed service providers to offer end-to-end routing from the data center to the branch office to the cloud.

    The CSR 1000v runs on x86 iron, of course, and the recommended configuration is to have four cores, 4GB of main memory, and 8GB of disk capacity allocated to its virtual machine for it to run.

    It runs IOS-XE release 3.8 and will run atop ESXi 5.0 or XenServer 6.0 hypervisors. The product will be sold under a subscription model; pricing was not announced. Cisco says that the CSR 1000v will be available in the fourth quarter.

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21. June 14, 2012 at 12:54 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Building The Next Internet, 250 Times Faster
    http://www.fastcompany.com/1840101/building-the-next-internet-todd-park-geni

    Developers in 25 cities are getting a playdate with GENI, an ultra-fast broadband sandbox, with the goal of building apps that push beyond the limits of today’s Net.

    White House CTO Todd Park announced today that the National Science Foundation, which built the $40 million Global Environment for Network Innovations, “GENI,” a prototype ultrafast broadband sandbox for developers, is sponsoring the US Ignite competition in partnership with Mozilla, Juniper, Cisco, Verizon, Comcast, and several other companies.

    The goal of US Ignite is to get people in 25 cities to build at least 60 new applications in strategic areas–health care, education, clean energy, manufacturing, transportation, and security–all taking advantage of what these Speedy Gonzales networks can do. High-quality, uncompressed video could allow doctors to perform remote diagnoses,

    “We’re hoping it will make developers drool,” says Matt Thompson, community manager for Mozilla, which will take the lead in coordinating hackathons and other events around the open innovation challenge.

    Reply
22. June 14, 2012 at 4:27 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Arista juices switch with x86 server, FPGA, atomic clock
    Not a God box – but close
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/27/arista_networks_fpga_switch/

    Upstart switch-maker Arista Networks, founded by serial entrepreneur Andy Bechtolsheim, is at it again, mashing up new kinds of iron to tackle problems in the data center. This time, Arista is bundling an atomic clock, a baby x86 server, flash memory, and field programmable gate arrays into its Ethernet switches to create what it is calling an “application switch”.

    This is not a network acceleration appliance in the sense of the kind that have been built by Cisco Systems, Citrix Systems, F5 Networks, Riverbed Technology, and others, proclaims Arista marketing veep Doug Gourlay. Those boxes, he tells El Reg, tend to be modified x86 servers with a new label slapped on the front of them that actually do not participate in the switching or routing of network traffic themselves, but are rather static devices that do something to traffic to accelerate an application in some fashion.

    “This is not a God box. The 7124FX will not solve all of your problems and it is not for everybody.”

    But the 7124FX certainly does sound like it is something that stock exchanges, governments, supercomputing, medical, and telecom clients will consider for specific workloads.

    The 7124FX design starts with the 7124SX 10 Gigabit Ethernet switch that Arista launched this time last year.

    This particular Bali ASIC is designed to deliver 500-nanosecond latency on port-to-port hops, no matter what size packet is being pushed through this Layer 2 and 3 switch. The 7124SX has 480Gb/sec of bandwidth and can handle 360 million packets per second

    The 7124FX also has a 50GB flash-based SSD tucked inside of it for persistent storage for that x86 coprocessor. What makes it an FX switch, though, is the Altera Stratix V field programmable gate array, which has 6.2 million gates and which can be programmed to emulate various kinds of hardware or to run very specific algorithms right in the network flow.

    That FPGA has 50MB of onboard SRAM memory, another 216MB of QDRII SRAM, and 8GB of DDR3 main memory all for itself; it links to the x86 coprocessor through a PCI-Express 2.0 slot.

    The sixteen SPF/SPF+ ports on the right of the 7124FX switch feed into the switch ASIC, and the eight ports on the right feed into the FPGA and then into the ASIC. The assumption is that all ports will not need inline acceleration running FPGA algorithms and applications.

    On the upper right hand side of the 7124FX you’ll see a micro coax port, which is the input for an atomic clock if you want to synchronize the transactions or packets going through the banks of 7124FX switches using a rubidium atomic clock that has less than 200 picoseconds of drift per year.

    What on earth does a switch need an atomic clock for – besides just being cool? Stock exchanges have to be fast, and that means everybody gets a 300 foot piece of fiber optic cable with which they connect into the exchange systems. Stock exchanges also have to be fair, which means they have to process transactions in the order that they hit the matching engines.

    But what if, suggests Gourlay, you use a set of synchronized atomic clocks to timestamp all of the packets and therefore all of the transactions coming into the exchange at the switch port level? This does two things. First, you know how to rank who goes first because every bit of data has a timestamp, and you can get out of the business of using GPS systems to try to correlate the timing of transactions.

    Also, synchronized atomic clocks wired into the switches allow for the stock exchanges and their trading customers to put their iron anywhere they want instead of cramming it into big wonking data centers in New York, London, Frankfurt, Paris, and Tokyo. Such clocks may make it cheaper to do automated, high-frequency trading, and the exchanges make it up in volume, so you know this sounds appealing to them.

    While people don’t talk about it much, FPGAs are used all over the place in systems today, including financial systems and various kinds of radar and signal processing systems used by the military and transportation agencies.

    The trouble with FPGAs, however, is that they are difficult to productize and put into the workflow, which is one of the reasons why Solarflare, a maker of high-end 10GbE network interface cards for servers, soldered an FPGA onto its network cards and is helping customers to in-line preprocessing, processing, and postprocessing of data as it comes into and exits servers.

    Solarflare is calling this the Application Onload Engine, and for freaky trading apps the company has been able to show a factor of 3X boost in performance by moving some algorithms to the FPGAs instead of running them on the server’s CPUs. Solarflare is trying to foster developers to write FPGA code that will run on their NICs, and is starting in the financial-services racket where it is best known.

    Arista expects for inline risk analysis and algorithmic trading to be popular routines to run on the FPGAs in conjunction with the embedded x86 server inside of the 7124FX switch, and in some cases, companies may not even need an outboard server at all to run their applications. (Crazy, isn’t it?)

    The regular 7124SX switch costs $13,000, but getting the full-on AppSwitch 7124FX switch with the x86 server, the FPGA, and the 50GB SSD will run you $49,995. Adding the atomic clock will cost you another $10,000 on top of that.

    Reply
23. June 14, 2012 at 5:00 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Speaking in Tech: The worst government IT deal of ALL TIME
    The one about the oversized Cisco routers
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/16/speaking_in_tech_episode_8/

    State of West Virginia’s absurd purchase of drastically oversized Cisco routers – it’s an incredible story you have to hear to believe.

    Charleston Gazette about the paper’s investigation into a suspicious $24m Cisco router purchase by the State of West Virginia using US Federal Stimulus Funds for the purpose of “homeland security”. The enterprise routers, which are sized for at least 500 users and are typically used for thousands of users, were purchased for schools and libraries with a single computer.

    State paid $22K each for Internet routers
    Devices made for college campuses now in rural libraries, schools
    http://wvgazette.com/News/201205050057

    Nobody told Hurricane librarian Rebecca Elliot that the $22,600 Internet router in the branch library’s storage closet was powerful enough to serve an entire college campus.

    Nobody told Elliot how much the router cost or who paid for it. Workers just showed up and installed the device. They left behind no instructions, no user manual.

    The high-end router serves four public computer terminals at the small library in Putnam County.

    The state of West Virginia is using $24 million in federal economic stimulus money to put high-powered Internet computer routers in small libraries, elementary schools and health clinics, even though the pricey equipment is designed to serve major research universities, medical centers and large corporations, a Gazette-Mail investigation has found.

    The state purchased 1,064 routers two years ago, after receiving a $126 million federal stimulus grant to expand high-speed Internet across West Virginia.

    The Cisco 3945 series routers, which cost $22,600 each, are built to serve “tens of thousands” of users or device connections, according to a Cisco sales agent. The routers are designed to serve a minimum of 500 users.

    Yet state broadband project officials directed the installation of the stimulus-funded Cisco routers in West Virginia schools with fewer than a dozen computers and libraries that have only a single terminal for patrons.

    Morgantown-based WVNET, the state government Internet services agency, uses six Cisco routers with similar capacity to serve all state agencies and public universities.

    West Virginia Homeland Security chief Jimmy Gianato, who’s leading the state broadband project, defended the $24 million router purchase last week, saying the devices “could meet many different needs and be used for multiple applications.”

    In July 2010, a West Virginia Office of Technology administrator warned that the Cisco 3945 series routers “may be grossly oversized,” according to an email obtained by the Gazette-Mail.

    “The Office of Technology is concerned that this equipment may be grossly oversized for several of the facilities in which it is currently slated to be installed,” Dunlap wrote in a July 12, 2010

    “The grant was not an equipment grant. It was to build fiber,”

    “The grant included paying for everything except the recurring cost of [Internet] service,”

    The routers alone cost the state $7,800 each, but “add-ons” — additional equipment that came with the devices — boosted the price tag by $14,800.

    West Virginia paid the extra cost because it purchased the 1,064 routers all at the same time, before running fiber cable to the public facilities.

    Reply
24. June 15, 2012 at 9:23 am

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Apple’s iPhone superiority in the American market shows signs of clotting. Motorola Razr Maxx Droid bypass the iPhone’s biggest mobile phone operator Verizon on sale.

    Still iPhone to keep smartphones market leadership in USA.

    IPhone demand slowing wrote in an investment bank William Blair analyst Anil Doradla.

    - Studies also show that consumers are not left to wait for the next iPhone launch, because it does not affect their purchasing decisions, Doradla writes, but adds he believes the situation will change a few months.

    Source: http://www.digitoday.fi/mobiili/2012/06/15/motorolan-droid-razr-maxx-ohitti-iphonen/201231593/66?rss=6

    Reply
25. June 15, 2012 at 9:36 am

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Karma: a 4G provider that rewards users for sharing their data plan with strangers
    http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/14/3078382/karma-4g-pay-as-you-go-clearwire-network

    “Something is fundamentally broken in the market for mobile providers,” says Robert Gaal, one of the founders of Karma, a startup that just graduated from the TechStars NY accelerator program. “We want to give everyone a mobile, 4G hotspot that lives in their pocket. It’s open to everyone, and lets you pay as you go. Best of all it works no matter what carrier or what device you’re using.”

    The Karma hotspot costs $69 and is powered by Clearwire’s network, which provides WiMax 4G service in 80 major US cities. Users pay $14 per gigabyte of data they use, with no monthly fee or minimums. The twist is that Karma makes your hotspot into an open Wi-Fi network. When a new user joins, they are taken to a personalized page about the owner of the hotspot. Strangers can then sign in with their Facebook account and get 100MB of free browsing. For every user who does that, the owner of Karma gets 100MB of free data credited to his account. The company calls this “social telecom.”

    It’s an interesting time for Karma to enter the market, as the large mobile carriers are increasingly moving away from charging per call and text, their traditional streams of revenue, and becoming data wholesalers.

    A recent study found that the average smartphone user consumes 221MB of data per month. On Karma, that would work out to a monthly cost of $3.09. Verizon charges $50 for 1GB on its new shared plan and it charges users as much as $40 for each device they want to use beyond the first one. AT&T’s mobile data plans charge $20 for 300MB of data and require a commitment of $50 for 5GB in order to enable the tethering that turns a device into a mobile hotspot.

    Reply
26. June 15, 2012 at 9:43 am

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Filed Under Cellphones, Wireless
    T-Mobile to conduct LTE-Advanced trials this summer in preparation for 2013 deployment
    http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/14/t-mobile-lte-advanced-trials/

    Eager to get its LTE ducks in a row, T-Mobile announced today that it plans to begin trials of the next-gen network this summer. But here’s the kicker: despite being tardy to the high-speed party, it plans on deploying true 4G in 2013, throttling ahead to the latest and greatest version known as 3GPP Release 10 — also known as LTE-Advanced.

    He says what occurred at Moscone West this week is just the beginning — in his words, “more of these speed sightings will occur as we work toward introducing 4G HSPA+ service in our 1900MHz spectrum in a large number of markets later this year.”

    Reply
27. June 15, 2012 at 12:39 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    The tiny island with a huge Web presence
    http://edition.cnn.com/2012/06/13/tech/web/tokelau-domain-name-holder/index.html

    Tokelau is home to only about 1,300 people. But a recent report (PDF) released by Verisign, the global registry operator for .com and .net, found that .tk is the third-most popular country code top-level domain (or ccTLD) behind only Germany (.de) and the United Kingdom (.uk).

    It’s all thanks to a man who literally lives on the other side of the planet from Tokelau: Joost Zuurbier of Amsterdam.

    “We had to explain to them what they had and what the Internet was in order to get things going,” Zuurbier said.

    After some handshakes in New Zealand, Zuurbier took the long, faithful journey to Tokelau with satellite equipment in tow.

    After six years of hurdles and complicated setup, Freedom Registry launched its .tk domain in 2006. Now, more than 9 million websites have .tk domains, and Zuurbier says there’s been a recent explosion of popularity, with about a million added each month.

    “We have never seen such enormous growth,” Zuurbier said. “The growth is coming especially from emerging economies like China, Brazil, Russia, Peru, Vietnam. These countries also have local ccTLD’s like .pe or .vn or .cn, but these are very hard to register for the local communities there, so they go to .tk.”

    Freedom Registry makes money through ads on expired domains. Zuurbier says registration and renewal are free for users, but when they abandon the site or don’t meet the minimum requirements of 25 unique visitors every 90 days, the domain gets “parked.” That means the URL still exists, but the content is replaced with ads tailored to the original site.

    Freedom Registry gives a cut of the money it earns to the people of Tokelau. In fact, one-sixth of their economy comes from the sale of .tk domains. Tokelau, however, has the smallest GDP in the world: about $1.2 million a year.

    Besides the annual license fees, Freedom Registry provides Internet service to Tokelau with that satellite Zuurbier brought with him. He says it costs about $2,000 a month for the same connection that would cost about $10 in the U.S.

    “We brought them the connectivity, and now there are 120 computers on the island, mostly laptops, because the power goes off at 10 p.m.,” he said.

    Reply
28. June 15, 2012 at 1:07 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Where’s your mobile video viewing frustration level?
    http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-blogs/other/4375376/Where-s-your-mobile-video-viewing-frustration-level-?Ecosystem=communications-design

    When do you finally throw your hands in the air and abandon mobile video viewing and downloads?

    According to Flash Networks’ Harmony Analytics Platform, subscribers that experience eight or more seconds of viewing stalls were 73% more likely to abandon viewing based on frustration. The study also reveals that an unleveled bandwidth playing field based on traffic congestion is partially to blame.

    The Harmony platform pinpoints traffic congestion, affected subscribers, and the user experience of subscribers so that operators can manage service more promptly and proactively. It then reallocates bandwidth based on real issues of subscribers. Pretty cool.

    Reply
29. June 15, 2012 at 1:37 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Two schools of vectoring thought—Use board or system level?
    http://www.eetimes.com/design/communications-design/4375326/Two-schools-of-vectoring-thought-Use-board-or-system-level-

    There has been a great deal of discussion recently regarding vectoring, a technology that can help extend the lifespan of today’s copper networks by boosting their performance to near fiber speeds.

    Historically, copper has been widely deployed globally, much more so than fiber. Vectoring is an important development since the copper infrastructure has always been susceptible to crosstalk–the electromagnetic interference that occurs between adjacent copper pairs.

    For telcos that are not yet ready to make the move to fiber, the crosstalk limitation puts them at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to deploying the high-speed broadband services that consumers want, and which the cablecos and alternative service providers are more than happy to provide.

    That’s where vectoring comes in. The technology mitigates crosstalk interference and thereby improves the rate and range of VDSL2 to fiber-like performance. Vectoring levels the playing field for telcos, enabling them to prolong the life of existing copper networks, deliver even the highest-speed broadband services and stay competitive as they make the transition to fiber.

    There are currently two opposing schools of thought when it comes to implementing vectoring in the field. While some telecommunications equipment vendors are touting board-level vectoring systems, others are extolling the benefits of system-level vectoring solutions.

    We’ll break it all down and examine several real-life deployment scenarios and provide a head-to-head comparison of the two approaches.

    Reply
30. June 15, 2012 at 2:16 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Die, contracts! Prepaid mobile phone use surges
    The American market doesn’t look like Europe or Asia, but it’s inching closer.
    http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/06/prepaid-mobile-phone-users-in-america-hit-record-high/

    But knowing that we’d only get EDGE speeds on our phones back in the US, it didn’t seem worth it to pay well north of $100 for two phones per month.

    So we made the jump—becoming two more of the many Americans who have recently made the switch from postpaid to prepaid.

    New industry data released in May shows American mobile phone operators have been hit with the first-ever net decline in contract (“postpaid”) subscriptions, a loss of 52,000 subscribers. And the number of non-contract (“prepaid”) mobile customers has reached record levels—now accounting for about 25 percent of all mobile phone users in America.

    “While one data point doesn’t make a trend, we are approaching the peak of the curve where new, traditional postpaid subscribers will be hard to find,” wrote Chetan Sharma, a mobile industry analyst, in his Q1 2012 report. “It is possible that the newly minted prepaid subs might return to postpaid subscriptions. The shift is correlated to the economic woes. Majority of the new subscribers will come from connected devices as we have been saying for the last couple of years.”

    That 25 percent of American mobile phone customers? Sharma told Ars it pales in comparison to most other parts of the world. Western Europe is about 70 percent prepaid. China, India, and Africa reach 70, 95, and 99 percent, respectively.

    But the American mobile industry is at a turning point. It’s becoming harder and harder for companies to attract new customers—110 percent of American residents already have cell phones. There are more mobile phones than people.

    The industry is still experiencing growth, however. “Connected devices” refers to entities that use a mobile network, but that aren’t traditional phones—your iPad, Galaxy Tab, or some other tablet-style device.

    Data now constitutes 85 percent of all mobile traffic in the United States.

    In other words, we all want more service on more devices. But we want to also save more money while doing it, and that may mean moving toward prepaid services.

    As postpaid falls, carriers adapt

    Sprint has been one of the innovators in this area—probably because it has been the big player facing the biggest problems as a company. Indeed, with Sprint’s new offerings being resold by Virgin, Boost, and now Voyager, the company seems to be poised to take advantage of the rising prepaid market.

    “Most of the world doesn’t live with contract anyway, and that was the only place we were going to be able to grow,” Jayne Wallace, a Sprint spokesperson, told Ars.

    “From a marketing standpoint, we would use the term ‘no-contract’ rather than ‘prepaid.’ That has a negative connotation with people,” Wallace noted.

    “I think it’s a lack of education; I’m sure there’s an element of too-good-to-be-true,” he told Ars. “Once you put people on to it, [they] would never go back.”

    The American mobile phone market is unique in another way: it’s shockingly difficult to change providers but keep the same handset.

    “It’s completely a fallacy perpetuated by the carriers that these devices are free and that we’re indentured for two years to pay for the cost of the device,” Chris Silva, an analyst with the Altimeter Group, told Ars.

    While some users (like yours truly) have managed to make the switch, others aren’t so lucky.

    “I can’t even get my brother to get off a contract,” Kwong told Ars. “He thinks it’s too much trouble to port your number, too much hassle. They would rather pay the extra. It doesn’t make sense to me.”

    Reply
31. June 15, 2012 at 2:25 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Giant Smartphones in Skinny Jeans: A Photoshoot
    http://gizmodo.com/5918418/giant-smartphones-in-skinny-jeans-a-photoshoot

    Huge smartphones are, against all sanity, in—and they’re only getting bigger. And jeans are getting smaller. Can humans and the big phones of today coexist?

    Reply
32. June 15, 2012 at 2:31 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    New Ethiopian law criminalises Skype, installs Internet filters
    http://www.africareview.com/Business+++Finance/New+Ethiopian+law+criminalises+Skype/-/979184/1426020/-/ln43ps/-/index.html

    The Ethiopian government has passed new legislation that criminalises the use of Internet-based voice communications such as Skype and other forms of Internet phone calling.

    Authorities have also installed a new filtering system that monitors the use of the Internet in the tightly-controlled Horn of Africa country in a move seen as targeting dissidents.

    The telecoms law strictly prohibits VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) which includes audio and video related social media communication, and the transfer of information packages through the fast growing global cyber networks.

    It also authorises the government to inspect any imports of voice communication equipment and accessories, while also banning inbound shipments without prior permission.

    Anyone involved in “illegal” phone calling services will be prosecuted and could be jailed for up to 15 years or fined heavily if found guilty.

    Making an Internet phone call through different software is punishable by three to eight years– automatically criminalising Skype and other similar voice services.

    But observers say the law is aimed at further limiting freedom of expression and the flow of information in the nation of 85 million people.

    Ethiopian Government Bans Skype, Google Talk And All Other VoIP Services
    http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/14/ethiopian-government-bans-skype-google-talk-and-all-other-voip-services/

    The Ethiopian government, Al Jazeera reports, has criminalized the use of Skype and other VoIP services like Google Talk. Using VoIP services is now punishable by up to 15 years in prison. This law actually passed last month, but mostly went unnoticed outside of the country. Ethiopian authorities argue that they imposed these bans because of “national security concerns” and to protect the state’s telecommunications monopoly.

    The country only has one ISP, the state-owned Ethio Telecom, and has been filtering its citizen’s Internet access for quite some time now to suppress opposition blogs and other news outlets.

    As for Skype and other VoIP services, the new law doesn’t just criminalize their usage, but the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology now has “the power to supervise and issue licenses to all privately owned companies that import equipment used for the communication of information.” It’s worth noting that, as TechCentral points out, the new law also prohibits “audio and video data traffic via social media.”

    According to Internet filtering and censorship watchdog OpenNet Initiative, Ethiopia currently has the second lowest Internet penetration rate in sub-Saharan Africa and just around 700,000 of the country’s 84 million citizens had Internet access in 2010

    Reply
33. June 15, 2012 at 2:48 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Censorship vs economics in battle for internet control
    http://www.itnews.com.au/News/305058,censorship-vs-economics-in-battle-for-internet-control.aspx

    Analysis: United Nations agency could spark a drastic change.

    A looming land grab for internet governance by the United Nations’ International Telecommunications Union (ITU) could spell a drastic change for governments and internet service providers alike.

    The union’s plan to revise a 1988 International Telecommunications Regulations (ITR) treaty this December has drawn the ire of civil libertarian groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

    But the union’s motivations are far from a desire to annex the internet, other observers say, describing it instead as a move to deal with today’s “unregulated world of VOIP and online content”.

    Representatives from 193 nations will meet in Dubai this December to redefine the scope of the ITU’s ITR treaty, a set of principles governing global telecommunications interconnects and cost structures.

    The treaty currently covers operational, regulatory, economic and legal concerns in telecommunications, including things as banal as the ‘accounting principals’ behind interconnection fees.

    According to iiNet’s chief technology officer. John Lindsay, new delivery models have given the “old world” of government-owned telcos an impetus to fight back.

    “The ITU would love to make the messy unregulated world of VoIP and online content go away,” Lindsay told iTnews.

    Carriers in both developed and developing nations have seen voice revenues decline in almost direct proportion to the growth in traffic across the the application layer in recent years, thanks most notably to services like Skype.

    “The ITU can be thanked for sky-high global roaming charges, high international voice terminating access prices, and codifying the Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing plan,” he said.

    “[The multiplexing plan] has lead to the dramatic reduction in the cost of international circuits and helped drive the exponential growth of internet traffic over the last decade since they introduced G.694 in 2002.

    “It’s ironic that this explosive data traffic growth has driven data prices to the floor and allowed technologies like VoIP to displace traditional voice network operators via services like Skype while simultaneously slashing the costs for competitive voice telcos around the world.”

    Mueller said the new proposed regulations mostly reflected developing nations’ dissatisfaction with the “internet model” of paying for your own connectivity.

    “The only people who don’t [support user-pays connectivity] are remote countries without a competitive market for international bandwidth,”

    “The ITU was the old government-owned telco ‘club’,” Lindsay said.

    “All that’s left is the government and a bunch of third-world monopoly telcos whose voice termination fees are a large source of hard currency income for the government.”

    Reply
34. June 17, 2012 at 8:56 pm

    Tomi says:

    FCC: Let’s kill analogue early, fob diehards off with converter boxes
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/15/fcc_wants_to_relieve_msos_of_dual_viewability/

    Every pay TV market has its idiosyncrasies, particularly for Multi System Operators (MSOs) such as Time Warner or Comcast in the US and Virgin Media in the UK. And in the US, one of these idiosyncrasies is the requirement that cable operators retransmit so called “must-carry” signals in both analogue and digital formats.

    This means they still provide analogue access to a few universal public and also local broadcast channels, just as digital terrestrial television has been required to do until switch-off – at least in in some countries.

    Now the US regulator, the FCC, is circulating a proposal that would distribute low-cost converter boxes to allow analogue customers to continue to view TV station signals, thus relieving MSOs of the burden of carrying them. The proposal, if passed, would come into effect on 11 December, 2012. The FCC is talking up the benefits of using the analogue spectrum for new digital channels and increased broadband.

    Reply
35. June 18, 2012 at 11:46 am

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Top 10 Ways to Get Free Wi-Fi Anywhere You Go
    http://lifehacker.com/5918856/top-10-ways-to-get-free-wi+fi-anywhere-you-go

    Whether you’re traveling or just trying to get out of the house a bit more, there’s one thing that plagues us everywhere we go: Wi-Fi. We may not have that cloud of Wi-Fi covering the planet yet, but you can find free Wi-Fi almost anywhere, if you know how to look. Here’s what you need to know.

    Reply
36. June 18, 2012 at 12:54 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    FCC may take up issue of cell phone radiation
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/16/us-cellphone-radiation-idUSBRE85F0LH20120616

    (Reuters) – The head of the Federal Communications Commission is asking for a review of the agency’s stance on radiofrequency energy emitted from cell phones amid lingering concerns that the devices may cause brain tumors.

    FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski on Friday circulated a proposal to his fellow commissioners calling for a formal inquiry into the mobile phone emissions standards set in 1996.

    The agency would also look into whether emission standards should be different for devices used by children, an FCC spokesman said on Saturday.

    In May 2011 the World Health Organization added cell phone radiation to a list of possible carcinogens, putting it in the same category as lead, chloroform and coffee, and said more study is needed.

    But since the WHO’s announcement, scientific evidence has increasingly pointed away from a link between mobile phone use and brain tumors, according to a panel of the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection.

    Reply
37. June 18, 2012 at 3:58 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    5 000 percent growth in Windows phone – is this what you require from Nokia?
    Nokia supplies faced 40 per cent drop in smart phone supplies

    Smartphone shipments grew last year in January-March to 41 percent of 145 million units.

    Samsung and Apple grabbed 55 percent in the first quarter deliveries of smartphones
    Apple and Samsung’s hawks 90 percent of smartphone manufacturers’ profits
    Samsung was the leading supplier of 43 million phones.
    Apple will provide 35 million
    Nokia only 11.9 million phones

    Source: http://www.itviikko.fi/uutiset/2012/06/18/5-000-prosentin-windows-phone–kasvu–tatako-nokialta-vaaditaan/201231764/7?rss=8

    Reply
38. June 18, 2012 at 4:09 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    ITU says broadband can heal world economy
    Calls on G20 to write broadband plans like Australia’s NBN by 2015
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/18/itu_g20_broadband_call/

    The Union has made that case in an open letter (PDF) to the leaders of the G20, who have gathered Mexico to collectively find solutions to kickstart the world’s economy.

    The letter urges the G20′s leaders to “… support the development of the broadband infrastructure and broadband-enabled applications and services which enable digital economies to grow and provide benefits to societies across the globe.” The letter also states new wires alone won’t be terribly useful, instead insisting investments in broadband must “… also provide for advanced online services, locally relevant content and services, and support for media and information literacy development to address inequity and deliver broadband inclusion for all.”

    The ITU is also rather keen on freedom of expression, saying that without it investment in broadband will have a lower yield.

    With that lot in place, the ITU expects entrepreneurs to invent whole new industries that make life easier for small-and-medium-sized businesses, at which point the economy presumably goes up several gears.

    Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s belief that “ every 10 percentage point increase in broadband penetration delivers in the order of a 1.3 per cent one-off growth boost to the economy.

    Target 1: Making broadband policy universal. By 2015, all countries should have a national broadband plan or strategy or include broadband in their Universal Access / Service Definitions.
    Target 2: Making broadband affordable. By 2015, entry-level broadband services should be made affordable in developing countries through adequate regulation and market forces (amounting to less than 5% of average monthly income).
    Target 3: Connecting homes to broadband. By 2015, 40% of households in developing countries should have Internet access.
    Target 4: Getting people online. By 2015, Internet user penetration should reach 60% worldwide, 50% in developing countries and 15% in LDCs.

    Reply
39. June 18, 2012 at 6:12 pm

    auto says:

    Hello just wanted to give you a quick heads up. The words in your article seem to be running off the screen in Ie. I’m not sure if this is a format issue or something to do with web browser compatibility but I thought I’d post to let you know. The design look great though! Hope you get the problem solved soon. Many thanks

    Reply
    • June 19, 2012 at 8:46 am

      tomi says:

      What version of IE you are using?
      I have tested the blog with several IE versions and I have not seen article text running ff the screen in Ie.

      On replies long URLs can sometimes run past the marginals,….

      Reply
40. June 19, 2012 at 10:13 am

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Google, Apple Tighten Grip on Smartphone Market
    http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052702303379204577474794114369320-lMyQjAxMTAyMDEwODExNDgyWj.html

    Apple Inc. and Google Inc. have brought mobile giants Nokia Corp. and Research In Motion Ltd. to their knees and captured more than 80% of the world’s smartphone market. Now they are going after the rest.

    Apple is marching into new markets—most recently U.S. prepaid mobile phones—to continue the growth of its iPhone and iPad devices and iOS software.

    Google is shifting gears with its Android software to exert greater control over its destiny. In the past, Google relied on hardware manufacturers to build Android devices and on carriers and other retailers to sell them to consumers.

    Today, Google is partly adopting Apple’s integrated model by manufacturing some devices on its own and it plans to sell several devices directly with big marketing campaigns.

    What’s behind these moves? Apple and Google see bigger gains ahead. Of the about 1.4 billion phones sold this year, only about 35% will be smartphones, a percentage projected to climb to 75% in the next five years, according to research and trading firm Wedge Partners. That potential bounty is intensifying the fight to sell more devices and accompanying services.

    Nokia, RIM and others “really underestimated what Apple and Google could do,” said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at research firm Gartner Inc.

    Overall, Google’s Android held 59% of global smartphone shipments in this year’s first quarter, up from 36.1% a year earlier, while Apple had 23%, up from 18.3%, according to IDC.

    Smartphones powered by Nokia’s Symbian OS, which it is phasing out in favor of software from Microsoft, dropped to 6.8% from 26% over the same period, and RIM’s share fell to 6.4% from 13.6%.

    Many Android devices are powered by older versions of the software, making it a challenge for apps to work well across them.

    As Google and Apple’s share has grown, the fighting between them has intensified. Last week, Apple unveiled the next version of its software for iPhones and iPads with a slate of features aimed at distancing itself from Google. They include a mapping service and enhanced Siri “virtual assistant” that provides an alternative way to search for information besides the traditional Google search box.

    Google, meanwhile, has accelerated plans to launch its own Siri competitor that would work on Android-powered devices, people familiar with the matter have said.

    Both companies also are trying to make their software more ubiquitous by pushing versions for tablets and TV software, believing consumers are going to want their phones to connect to a range of other wireless devices and services. Analysts said that other tech companies without similar reach will struggle to stay relevant to consumers.

    Reply
41. June 19, 2012 at 10:24 am

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Budget smartphones all the rage as punters look sub-£100
    Mobile reality a world away from the iPhone
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/19/china_smartphone_budget_growth_2015/

    Nearly half of the world’s largest smartphone market will be comprised of handsets under $200 (£127) by 2015 as local device makers and web firms compete to drag the great unwashed into the 21st century, according to analyst Canalys.

    On the eve of Mobile Asia Expo in Shanghai this week, the stats once again confirm that the bread and butter of the handset business is a world away from the shiny glass, polycarbonate world of the Galaxy S III and its ilk.

    Canalys predicts, as do most other analyst houses, that the low-end is driving smartphone growth in China, pointing out that even the cost of entry-level devices like the Lenovo A65, dropped in the past few months.

    Price competition is also being increased by the entry of web firms like Alibaba and Baidu into the mix.

    Prices are also coming down thanks to operators updating their minimum hardware specs for low-end devices, the analyst said.

    Industry sources told Digitimes that manufacturers across the Straits are not rushing to snap up contracts to build sub-1000 yuan phones because orders are unsteady and there is the risk that the Chinese vendors may look to slash ODM prices.

    IDC recently predicted that smartphone shipments in China would exceed those of feature phones next year, although it will be some time longer before installed user numbers do the same.

    Reply
42. June 19, 2012 at 6:32 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Android continues to dominate China’s growing smartphone market, as devices built on the Google-owned platform rocketed up to account for 55.4 percent of all active smartphones during the first quarter of 2012, up from 47.3 percent in the final quarter of 2011.

    The Apple platform is actually behind Nokia’s Symbian system, but the ageing platform continues its downward spiral in China, where its industry-wide representation dropped from 32.3 percent in Q4 2011 to 25.6 percent over the two quarters.

    Indeed, the report estimates that Android’s diversity in China means there are more than 2,000 different devices running the operating system. An increasing number of these variants come from third-parties, like Baidu and Alibaba which have developed their own forked Android platforms specifically for building affordable smartphones in China.

    As a report from Canalys speculated today, mid- and low-range devices are becoming increasingly important in China. The analyst firm predicts that 40 percent of all smartphones in the country will be priced below $200 by 2015.

    Source: http://thenextweb.com/asia/2012/06/19/android-marches-on-in-china-now-accounts-for-55-4-of-smartphones-ios-at-12-4/

    Reply
43. June 20, 2012 at 10:12 am

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Chinese Operators Hope to Standardize a Segmented Internet
    http://www.pcworld.com/article/257813/chinese_operators_hope_to_standardize_a_segmented_internet.html

    A technology draft written by employees at China Mobile and China Telecom and submitted to the Internet Engineering Task Force describes how the Internet could be split into several parts using the Domain Name System and in the process give countries more control over their own segment of the network.

    The technology is developed by the IETF, on whose website the Chinese “DNS Extension for Autonomous Internet” draft is available for viewing.

    Today, China blocks Internet access to some foreign websites. The goal outlined by the new document is to make it easier and cheaper for countries to create independent root DNS servers and realize Internet autonomy. Today, that is both costly and technically difficult, according to the draft.

    “When you read the document it very much comes across as a way to severely segment the Internet,” said Patrik Wallström, CEO at OpenDNSSEC AB, a not-for-profit company with the mission to facilitate the deployment of DNSSEC, which is used to secure DNS.

    If the draft is adopted it would give, for example, China full control of content on the Internet for users in the country as well as how it can be accessed and by whom, Wallström said.

    The reason for adopting the draft into a standard architecture would not be just for control, according to the authors. The current central architecture of DNS can’t keep up with the fast development of Internet, they say.

    That argument doesn’t ring true, according to Jakob Schlyter, a DNS expert at Swedish consultancy Kirei.

    “When you say something like that you have to back it up with some facts, which I don’t think they have … the DNS root has an extreme overcapacity,” said Schlyter.

    However, the chances of the draft being adopted is very remote, according to both Wallström and Schlyter.

    “It is a controversial subject, and the IETF works on standards that, in principle, are for the global Internet,” said Wallström.

    The idea of moving away from a central DNS root also goes against the IAB’s (Internet Architecture Board’s) technical comment from 2000, detailing the need for a unique DNS root to ensure the future of the Internet, according to Wallström.

    “The Chinese draft would be a return to that,” said Wallström.

    Schlyter is equally convinced that nothing will become of the draft.

    Because of the minuscule chance of the draft ever becoming a standard, the underlying reason for publishing it may be something altogether different, according to Wallström.

    “This is just me speculating, but with the arrival new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) a document like this one can be published to put more pressure on ICANN with the aim of maybe even splitting the organization into different parts where China has more power,” Wallström said.

    Reply
44. June 20, 2012 at 11:06 am

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Internet heroes and villains are named
    UK ISPA announces its annual shortlist
    http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2185418/internet-heroes-villains-named

    THE UK Internet Service Provider’s Association (ISPA) has published its 2012 list of internet heroes and villains.

    The list reflects what has happened on or around the internet is the last year. Villains then, include people behind ACTA and SOPA, and heroes include Ofcom for its “this won’t work” stance on web site blocking.

    Unsurprisingly, the villains represent the other side of the open internet debate, and there we get to meet Karel De Gucht, who pushed through the execrable ACTA trade agreement, US Representative Lamar Smith, who gave the world SOPA, Goldeneye International, whose business is speculative invoicing, and the International Telecommunications Union, for its “internet governance land-grab”.

    Reply
45. June 20, 2012 at 3:35 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Nokia, Siemens and the three other major network equipment provider says no thanks to a major Indian operator BSNL’s billion-dollar order.

    In February, ZTE won the tender subscription price of $ 58.6, which is to know the total bid price of $ 842 million.

    Huawei bid was 1.29 billion, Alcatel-Lucent’s 1.84 billion, 2.29 billion Ericsson and Nokia Siemens’ $ 2.49 billion.

    Government of India requires that the power supplies to be distributed among several builders. It is designed to increase network security.
    Tenders lost were expected to attend the construction of the network segments on the same terms as the winner.

    Nokia Siemens in addition to Ericsson, Huawei and Alcatel-Lucent withdrew from the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, BSNL’s network construction project, after the operator announced the Chinese ZTE’s winning bid conditions.

    This is not the first time that the network equipment suppliers withdraw from Indian projects.

    Source: http://www.itviikko.fi/talous/2012/06/20/nokia-siemens-karsastaa-verkkourakan-polkuhintaa/201231953/7?rss=8

    Reply
46. June 20, 2012 at 3:37 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Four telco vendors opt out of BSNL contract
    http://www.totaltele.com/view.aspx?ID=474380

    Ericsson, Nokia Siemens, Huawei, Alcatel-Lucent say matching ZTE’s bid not viable.

    BSNL had invited bids in July 2011 for equipment that will allow it to add 14.37 million mobile-phone connections. It had estimated the contract value to be about INR60 billion ($1.07 billion).

    In February, BSNL selected ZTE as the lowest bidder and also short-listed the four others for some parts of the contract.

    ZTE bid about $58.6 per connection, or $842.08 million for the entire contract

    But, the four vendors have all told BSNL that they won’t be able to match ZTE’s bid as their margins on the contracts are at risk, the people said.

    “This piece of news clearly supports our view that the time for aggressive footprint development is coming to an end for the leaders Ericsson, Huawei, and also for Nokia Siemens and Alcatel-Lucent,” Pierre Ferragu, senior research analyst

    Reply
47. June 21, 2012 at 10:18 am

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Apple’s Worst Nightmare Comes From an Unlikely Source
    http://www.benzinga.com/trading-ideas/long-ideas/12/01/2242580/apples-worst-nightmare-comes-from-an-unlikely-source

    Forget about everything you know regarding iPhone competitors because the biggest threat may come from the very place Apple relies on to manufacture all of its products: China.

    Rather, this story is about the Meizu MX, an iPhone knock-off developed and manufactured in China for Chinese consumers. Reuters has an intriguing video that showcases the launch of the phone, which was released on January 1.

    Hundreds of consumers lined up, waiting to get inside the brightly-lit stores, which were covered in white walls and a hint of blue, Meizu’s apparent color of choice. The Meizu stores were clearly inspired by the work of Apple

    Meizu isn’t the first company to copy Apple’s work, nor is Apple the first company fighting the danger of copycats. But Meizu is being more blatant about its actions, and it is doing so in a nation with different laws and regulations. While Apple could easily add Meizu to its list of patent infringement cases here in America, the company may not be able to do the same in China. That could be why Apple chose this week to make a formal announcement regarding the iPhone 4S’ availability in China.

    Meizu, however, has two (potential) advantages. In addition to being the first one to arrive on store shelves, Reuters said that the MX is a couple hundred dollars cheaper than the iPhone. This is appealing to Chinese consumers, who don’t have as much money to blow as their American and European counterparts.

    Sanford Bernstein analyst Mark Newman said that he didn’t think the Chinese phones could compete in the high-end market in China, but would most likely compete in the mid- to low-end markets instead.

    However, in looking at the MX’s design, its features, and the company’s website, it is safe to say that Meizu cares more about competing with Apple – who is still a relatively new player in China – than any other corporation.

    Going forward, China is expected to experience massive growth in smartphone sales, among other emerging areas. That is why so many American companies are eager to sell their products in China. Like it or not, Meizu is here to stay.

    Even worse, what if Meizu decides to release a product in the United States? At a price of roughly $400, few Americans would choose a Meizu MX over an Apple iPhone 4S. That said, Meizu could ink a deal with AT&T (NYSE: T), Sprint (NYSE: S), Verizon (NYSE: VZ), or some other carrier to offer the phone for $50 with a two-year contract.

    Reply
48. June 23, 2012 at 3:57 pm

    Mohammad Sones says:

    I would love to enter the contest also, where is the entry form?

    Reply
49. June 24, 2012 at 10:55 pm

    Tomi says:

    ITU denies plans for global internet power-grab
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/22/itu_plans_internet_regulation/

    The ITU has finalized its proposals for rewriting the regulations governing internet traffic, which will be decided at the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WC-IT) being held in Dubai this December.

    The eleven-day conference will host the rewriting of the international telecommunication regulations (ITRs) that govern the world’s communications traffic. This will be the first revision since the last conference in 1988, and the ITU Secretary-General Dr Hamadoun Touré said that change was essential to kick-start the “knowledge economy.”

    But worrisome proposals for taxing communications, reworking the system of DNS controls, and abandoning network neutrality have been leaked

    “We have a long tradition of cooperation and consensus building,” Touré said. “People may have differences but I believe that we can have friction of ideas, and from friction comes life.”

    “There has been some mention that somehow the ITU would give itself overall worldwide regulatory authority,” said ITU facilitator Richard Hill. “There are no proposals along those lines. The proposals are that the individual countries should take action in these particular areas.”

    On network neutrality, for example, the ITU’s briefing paper states “it has been proposed to replace ‘minimum quality of service’ in Article 4.3 with ‘satisfactory quality of service,’ while administrations should ensure that there is transparency in this area so consumers know exactly what they are getting,” which could cover a multitude of sins.

    US operators are broadly happy with the current state of play while Europe hungers for a chance to rewrite the rules.

    Reply
50. June 25, 2012 at 4:28 pm

    Tomi Engdahl says:

    Small cells still not ready for mobile prime time
    http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4375969/Small-cells-still-not-ready-for-mobile-prime-time

    Engineers still have significant work ahead to deliver small cell base stations, a key piece of the puzzle for easing congestion on heavily loaded mobile data networks.

    “It’s only a matter of when” until small and macro cell interoperability is ready, said Khurram Sheikh, chief technologist of Powerwave in a panel session at the event. He claimed his company’s small cells support both LTE and Wi-Fi and can increase an operator’s network capacity fifteen-fold while increasing battery life five-fold.

    “Everybody has nice stuff on their slides, but go try to find a good commercial small cell–I can’t find a single vendor to supply one, said Konstantin Yurganov, chief technology officer at Yota, a 4G supplier in Russia, in a talk at the event.

    The carrier has as many as 15 percent of its base stations heavily loaded in some cities with as many as 70 to 160 subscribers on a single base station, he said.

    Ultimately, small cells will be deployed both in public areas such as lamp posts and in businesses such as cafes and offices. That’s opening up an opportunity for enterprise networking companies to participate.

    In a keynote talk, Paul Mankiewich (right), chief technologist for mobility at Cisco Systems, called for a network API enabling broad virtualization across carrier and business nets. The API could build upon technology already in the works at the Wi-Fi Alliance to help identify traffic on public versus private Wi-Fi hotspots, he said.

    “We don’t have coherence between enterprise and service provider networks today,” said Mankiewich. “All that depends on two sets of standards that don’t speak to each other today,” he said.

    Reply