Archive | September, 2009

Best broadband is in Japan, South Korea and Sweden

A study conducted by the Saïd Business School at Oxford and the University of Oviedo in Spain (and sponsored by Cisco) has ranked South Korea, Japan and Sweden as the countries with the highest quality broadband connections. This year’s study focused on upload and download speeds as well as latency, not broadband penetration. With more [...]

Share
Read full story Comments { 0 }

Free WiFi comes to Borders book stores

Borders will be rolling out free WiFi service in its US book stores starting October. I had a feeling they were going to convert from paid to free WiFi after Barnes & Noble began providing free wireless service. At present, Borders uses T-Mobile but it is switching over to Verizon. I am happy to see [...]

Share
Read full story Comments { 2 }

Free Press debunks 10 net neutrality myths

Free Press has published a PDF debunking the top ten net neutrality myths. For instance, the myth that net neutrality rules will discourage investment: “The rhetoric about Net Neutrality discouraging investment is just a general outgrowth of the reflexive but misguided belief that any and all regulation discourages investment. The evidence does not support this [...]

Share
Read full story Comments { 0 }

St. Cloud shuts down free citywide WiFi service

St. Cloud, Florida, one of the first communities in the US to deliver free citywide WiFi service, is shutting it down citing budget problems. What’s very sad about this is that according to the mayor, the people who could not afford DSL/cable Internet service were the ones who used St. Cloud’s free WiFi: “No matter [...]

Share
Read full story Comments { 10 }

A reflection on Starbucks in the US: lack of cafe culture and the role of WiFi

I’ve always disliked Starbucks in the US — lousy coffee, uncomfortable seating arrangements, absence of real coffee cups (they give you a single espresso in a HUGE paper cup), bad food. But I was surprised to find that other people apparently have been dissecting the Starbucks “cafe culture”, notably a history professor at Temple University [...]

Share
Read full story Comments { 11 }

Will AT&T network crash when it launches MMS on Friday?

AT&T is finally launching multimedia messaging service (MMS) on the iPhone tomorrow. That’s a welcome announcement for some iPhone users, but many fear that the added data traffic will cause even more breakdowns in the network. Customers of AT&T have been critical about the operator’s poor cellular service which has been suffering from the success [...]

Share
Read full story Comments { 1 }

Wide gulf between advertised and actual speeds on UK mobile networks

UK mobile broadband customers are getting barely 1 Mbps, according to a recent survey: But the operators continue to use theoretical, not actual, speeds in marketing their service. Last July, Ofcom released its own study which confirms the discrepancy between actual and advertised speeds. Ofcom introduced a voluntary Code of Practice which, if adopted by a [...]

Share
Read full story Comments { 0 }

US Broadband Coalition releases report on national broadband strategy

The US  Broadband Coalition, an organization of more than 160 organizations whose goal is to advance the quality and penetration of broadband in the United States, has issued a report that summarizes the state of broadband and makes policy recommendations. Excerpt from executive summary: This report describes the opportunities that universal, affordable, and robust broadband [...]

Share
Read full story Comments { 0 }

Event: NewTeeVee Live, 12 November 2009, San Francisco

GigaOM Networks is holding its NewTeeVee Live 09 conference in San Francisco on 12 November 2009. This is a very timely conference as the boundaries between traditional TV, online video, and mobile video blur. Indeed, it’s no surprise that the core topic this year is “TV Everywhere.” On MuniWireless, we have written a lot about [...]

Share
Read full story Comments { 0 }

Travels with an iPod Touch: Free WiFi experience in Asia

I just got back from a holiday in Bali. One of the most significant observations on this trip: many major airports in Asia have fast, free WiFi. Better yet, they don’t make you go through annoying login screens. On this trip, I took only my iPod Touch. This is the first time I have traveled [...]

Share
Read full story Comments { 1 }
UA-18792507-1