News of Note — Rural Cellular Fails the Latency Test

Matt Larsen says that cellular broadband is useless in Nebraska as long as it continues to deliver 298 ms of latency. He also posts beautiful photos. In an earlier post, Larsen noted that his area has true broadband competition.

WISPA vendor member RADWIN launched a new 2.5 GHz radio delivering 200 Mbps called the RADWIN 2000 2.5 GHz BRS/EBS solution.

Mikrotik has released ROS V5.5.

David O’Neil of Rini Coran writes that the FCC Working Group on the Information Needs of Communities has released its report.

Fiber broadband will be fast in the cities

We’re well on the way to building a two-speed world, where the rural areas are in the slow lane. Big business centers such as Wall Street are already exploring the road to fractional terabit pipes. This was discussed in detail at the Telecom Exchange on Wall Street. Those interested in fiber news (and news from the greater New York city area) can find other press releases written up here.

Some in Australia are arguing that the planned 60 Mbps to the home national network could be built at half the price if it went to the node (FTTN) instead of to the home (FTTH) (h/t Joly MacFie).

A new 400,000 square foot data center built in New Jersey for the company that runs the New York Stock Exchange, NYSE Euronext, has only 100,000 square feet for servers. The rest is for security and machinery. It’s built to “withstand levels of punishment – both man-made and natural – that other facilities might not withstand.”

Business

Verizon is considering usage-based pricing. Many WISPA members would welcome the move and would likely charge less per GB consumed.

The backbone industry is in for a shakeup as contracts for long haul fiber that were signed during the boom 15 years ago expire and are up for renewal.

Netflix plans to expand into 43 countries in South and Central America and the Caribbean.

Commentator Philip Leigh believes that the IPO of Ubiquiti will be good for the fixed wireless broadband industry.

Nortel’s patents sold for $4.5 billion — which is more than the rest of the company sold for.

GoDaddy has been acquired by private capital.

Amazon reduced bandwidth fees for cloud data.

Australia’s ISPs have built yet another failing internet filter.

One CTO warns that few data centers implement the key best practices of IT network management.

Politics, regulation, and the law

Excellent anti-bell commentator and Stanford Law School professor Barbara Van Schewik says that Verizon is creating artificial scarcity in its cellular networks by preventing users from using Wi-Fi broadband as a substitute for the inadequate cellular broadband networks. Frankston calls this the anti-internet. Frankston writes, “they are bringing back circuits, AKA sessions for no purpose other than being able to charge for them and their ability to apply their own definition of quality. A circuit gives the carriers control over relationships – if you allow the relationships to be maintained outside their network they lose control.”

A new net neutrality law in The Netherlands is well written: it applies only to cellular operators.

Robert Cannon’s latest telecom law summary is here.

The FCC recently voided a CLEC tarriff because some customers did not pay for local service. “The opportunity to set incoming access charges with relative impunity has led to arrangements where the principal business of a CLEC may be providing local service to services that generate large volumes of incoming traffic and nearly no outgoing traffic – for example, conference call and chat line services. To attract high volume customers, the CLEC provides local service for free and may even pay the customer a share of its access charge revenues. Needless to say, these arrangements are highly attractive to conference calling and chat line providers. They’re also appealing to the general public, which may enjoy the services for no more than the normal cost of a long distance call ”

The FCC announced large fines to phone companies that “cram” customers, charge them for services they did not order. Expect a media campaign against ramming to hit the news soon.

The government of Kuwait wants a competitive residential broadband market.

Amazon is closing its affiliates in California to protest a new internet sales tax law there. Some have been arguing for years that California will have to default on its debt.

Microsoft admitted that cloud data stored in Europe, and theoretically protected by Europe’s stronger privacy laws, also fell under the purview of the U.S. PATRIOT act.

Nevada became the first state in the nation to allow driverless cars (h/t Bill Holton).

The Supreme Court ruled that state laws prohibiting the sales of violent video games to minors violate game companies’ free speech rights. Justice Scalia wrote that state can only prohibit depictions of “sexual conduct” and cannot prohibit depictions of violence. The industry will be free to police itself. An undercover survey by the Federal Trade Commission found that 87 percent of game retailers refuse to sell explicit or violent games to minors.

A Federal judge ruled that Google can be sued for Wi-Fi data that was intercepted while the company was building its Street View map feature. Meanwhile, the FTC is launching an anti-trust investigation of Google’s advertising and search businesses.

An executive at cellphone maker Ericsson takes the unusual position that copyright infringement is caused in part by unreasonable policies promulgated by copyright owners and earns praise from Slashdot.”

AT&T agreed to pay up to $2,000 per box after residents of Greensboro, N.C. complained about U-Verse terminals being installed on their private property without consent or notification.

Crime

A Time Warner sales rep sexually harassed a customer calling in for technical support and subsequently made local headlines.

The bitcoin currency dropped in value when it was hacked.

Co-ordinated raids in Latvia, the UK, and the US targeted a scareware ring that got over half a million people to pay $129 for malware masquerading as anti-virus software.