This is an excellent report that compares fiber deployments and in particular the reasoning behind it in USA and Europe. The cases of open access networks in the Netherlands and UK are presented vis-a-vis the integrated approach of AT&T and Verizon dominating the US.
This is a great reference point. Special thanks to @hermanwagter, who is also featuring in the video, for the pointer.
Watch the full episode. See more Need To Know.
The next big thing in the web is going to be semantics and personalization. While the current “version” of the web (i.e. 2.0) focuses on collaboration, user generated content and information sharing, web 3.0 aims at creating (ideally in an autonomic and automatic way) information from scattered data in different locations. There’s a bunch of services already (such as google and facebook and other niche consumer services) that are experimenting on this type of “added value” proposition for the customers. In a nutshell, specialized algorithms are embedded to web sites and enable user profiling and proprietary intelligence to make sure that the user gets what’s asking ranked by relevancy.
I put added value in quotes for a good reason. Is relevancy truly what a user wants? Is it just relevancy that we are looking for when we search the internet? It’s probably more than that. It is also about the important stuff as well as new, provocative, and challenging stuff. Are current implementations of web 3.0-ish algorithms help make the Internet more open and more useful? They certainly make access to knowledge more sofisticated, but do they actually make it better? Think about it for a minute before you watch the following video from TED (thanx @dirkvanderwoude for the pointer).
I was doing a little houskeeping on the blog the other day and decided to check up on the stats. It’s been quite a while since the last time I did that and found many interesting facts.
Here’s something nice: the top 10 articles in Broadband Prime, ordered by popularity. Only one is in “My Favorites” list ( in the right hand column of this page). I’d like to know why!
If you are one of the few remaining people in the industry that hasn’t yet received a copy of “The World of Fiber” report by Diffraction Analysis make sure to claim your free report here!
The report covers practically all FTTP deployments across the globe as long as they offer 100Mbps connection speeds and above. It presents all major developments in the industry and features an extensive discussion on the how, when and why of FTTP deployments by incumbents, alternative access and service providers and governments.
Carlota Perez, the keynote speaker to address FTTH Council’s conference in Milan earlier this month, made a very simple yet powerfull observation. Looking back to all 5 major industrial revolutions periods she divides each revolution era in two consequtive periods, one financially led and one production-led. The two periods are divided (or perhaps, more accurately linked) by a period of instability and recession. According to Mrs. Perez, we are currently going through the mid period before the production boom of the Internet revolution, having already experienced the finance-led overinvestment of previous years.
If you want to hear her talking about this in a distinctly persuasive argumentation see the video below, which I tracked on Total Telecom’s web site.
The place to be at the brink of winter is ECTA’s regulatory conference. While Europe starts slowly to digest the digital agenda 2020, the conference will address a number of issues relating (and not limited to) to the open internet (network neutrality), rules and approaches for the copper to fiber access transition and the potential extension of the universal service framework to broadband service as well.
I look forward to any conclusions made available by the organizers.
A few days ago I was browsing through the fans of the Fiber Camp and saw that a lot of Greek users have changed their avatar to a comic hero. I didn’t pay much attention until I realized that this was not a coincidence and that almost half of the fans gradually changed their avatar to a comic sketch. Fiber Camp ended being followed by Donald, Mickey, Goofy, Spiderman and other paper heroes!
As I looked more into it I found out that this was the result of an anonymous (not signed) Greek text that encouraged Facebook users to “change our […] avatars to a comic hero from our young ages so that we eliminate photos of humans from Facebook for just a few days”.
It sounds like a next-generation hoaxes/chain letters, circulating in the Interent since forever, but it probably isn’t just that.
It seems that social networking sites influence how users perceive anonymous recommendations and most importantly how they react to them. It also shows how easily can thousands of users be guided to coordinated behaviors, if the message is catchy and can penetrate the masses (think of the “happy hour”). An evolution of viral marketing maybe? Electronic reactions have no direct cost for the users and in several cases these are considered a lot of fun. And that’s all it takes, most of the time.
But I think this observation goes well beyond the potential of a successful marketing campaign. Internet users find it increasingly interesting to organize themselves into loose-purpose communities and most importantly to follow an idea and act collectively, denouncing individualism, the dominant social behavior in western cultures.
I think that society underestimates the power of virtual networks and social media, not in terms of marketing effectiveness of course, rather in terms of how users’ behavior may be maneuvered as they become increasingly exposed to the social media culture. Citizens’ long-term exposure to the Internet culture, expedited by social networking sites, may effectively change their behavior. Our actions are immediately influenced by our environment; but what environment? After all we are only mimics, naturally.
Network Neutrality has emerged as a key influential factor of telecommunications regulation in recent years, due to primarily the equivocal practices applied by major telecoms operators to transit and terminating network data streams. The observation I wish to bring to the fore with this post is simple and straight forward and relates to the difference in approaching the matter between the European Commission and the FCC.
FCC seems to acknowledge the necessity to have a 2-speed Internet for the standard services and for those services that will be characterized as “specialized”. [See this and that]. On the other hand the European Commission intermediate report on this summer’s public consultation on the matter highlights [See this] the fact that current situation is broadly acceptable among industry and other stakeholders, however future provisions should consider possibly differentiated measures according to developing conditions.
In my view, the difference in perspective between the EC and the FCC is the result, to a large extent, of the level of competition in respective markets. In effect, US is governed by a duopoly, while Europe faces a much more competitive landscape in the access market. FCC focused on regulating the long-haul, thus encouraging competition in the interstate circuits markets, while EC focused on access which fostered the emergence of numerous alternative broadband operators (exploiting the LLU regulatory regime).
