U.S. broadband industry trade body USTelecom and Internet provider Alamo Broadband filed Monday lawsuits against a controversial U.S. Federal Communications Commission proposal to reclassify broadband providers, which could be the harbinger of similar lawsuits from Internet companies.The FCC voted by 3-2 in February to approve new net neutrality rules that would help ensure the uninhibited flow of Internet traffic. It aims to reclassify broadband as a regulated public utility, thus prohibiting providers from selectively blocking or throttling or offering paid prioritization of traffic.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A group of big name vendors including Cisco, Microsoft, Dell, Intel, Broadcom, Juniper and Arista Networks this week created a consortium to address switch faceplate bandwidth density and airflow constraints caused by increasing networking speeds.The Consortium for On-Board Optics (COBO) is promoting collaboration in defining industry standards that permit relocating the optical module from the faceplate to inside the networking equipment where economic and environmental benefits can be achieved.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Late last week the FAA gave Amazon permission to move ahead with its experiments to develop a drone-driven package-delivery system.Bottom line first: I believe this whole concept is ludicrous – which is an upgrade from my initial reaction: publicity stunt -- and that nothing like it will be an important package-delivery mechanism for Amazon or anyone else in our lifetimes. (Everything happens eventually.)But just to play along, it would appear that the FAA’s biggest stipulations – the experimental drones must be operated by licensed pilots who must maintain line of sight contact with their craft – are deal killers if they prove permanent.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The net neutrality debate in the U.S. over the past year has been filled with hyperbole, speculation and questionable claims, coming from both sides of the debate.Let’s look at some of the hype and compare it to what we know from the U.S. Federal Communication Commission’s net neutrality order, released last week, and from other information.Four million people in favor of the rulesThere seems to be a misconception, driven as much by media coverage as actual statements by net neutrality advocates, that nearly all of the 4 million comments filed with the FCC in the proceeding were in favor of strong net neutrality rules. There’s some debate over analysis done on the final numbers, but we do know that a substantial number of comments came from people opposed to new rules.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Kenya has become the second country in East Africa after Rwanda to offer free Wi-Fi to the public, thanks to an initiative by Liquid Telecom and the Kenyan government.As in Rwanda, the free Wi-Fi connection will give users open access to the Internet with the exception of unlawful activities such as streaming or downloading offensive content or content that violates copyright.The move is expected to raise the demand for Wi-Fi-enabled handsets in the country. In Southern Africa, only South Africa so far is enjoying free access to public Wi-Fi, also provided by Liquid Telecom.In Kenya, Rwanda and South Africa, Liquid Telecom has put in place outdoor nodes designed to withstand harsh climatic conditions to offer uninterrupted connectivity and stable bandwidth.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Some on FTC wanted antitrust suit against GoogleGoogle came close to having to defend antitrust charges in the U.S.: Staff at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission who monitor competition pushed for an antitrust lawsuit against it in 2012, the Wall Street Journal reported. A staff report that has just come to light concluded that the search giant used “anticompetitive tactics and abused its monopoly power in ways that harmed Internet users and competitors,” the paper said. Another faction at the Commission, the economics bureau, issued a report advising against a lawsuit and no action was taken. Among the most damning findings: there was evidence that Google gamed its system to promote its own services and demote rivals, and scraped content from other sites.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
More than 700,000 ADSL routers provided to customers by ISPs around the world contain serious flaws that allow remote hackers to take control of them.Most of the routers have a “directory traversal” flaw in a firmware component called webproc.cgi that allows hackers to extract sensitive configuration data, including administrative credentials. The flaw isn’t new and has been reported by multiple researchers since 2011 in various router models.Security researcher Kyle Lovett came across the flaw a few months ago in some ADSL routers he was analyzing in his spare time. He investigated further and unearthed hundreds of thousands of vulnerable devices from different manufacturers that had been distributed by ISPs to Internet subscribers in a dozen countries.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Due to increasing need for bandwidth, cable infrastructure in Africa is being upgraded, and China-based Huawei Technologies is involved in some of the bigger projects.Stakeholders in the West Africa Cable System (WACS) Consortium will be upgrading the fiber cable using Huawei Marine Networks, a joint venture between Huawei Technologies and Global Marine Systems.The approximately 16,000 kilometer-long cable is owned by 17 international telecom carriers in Africa and Europe. According to Telecom Namibia’s WACS project engineer, Sevelus Nakashole, the initial phase of the project will upgrade will upgrade the cable from its current 10Gbps capacity to 100Gbps by June 2015.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s new net neutrality rules allow the agency to police future network management practices and business models rolled out by broadband providers, raising concerns among critics that an activist commission will inject itself into ISP board rooms.The so-called future conduct standard in the FCC’s new rules leave questions about what ISP practices the agency will allow, critics say. Following the FCC’s publication of the new rules last week, the future conduct standard has raised perhaps the most objections, other than complaints about the agency’s decision to reclassify broadband as a regulated, common-carrier service.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The FCC’s net neutrality decision last month that imposed stricter regulations on Internet Service Providers, under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934, has networking companies opposing each other even more fiercely than usual.The industry is split, though not evenly, between those that support the idea of stricter ISP regulation, re-imposing stricter net neutrality standards and treating the service providers more as public utilities, and those that oppose the measures.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Microsoft's deal with Xiaomi over Windows 10 raises eyebrows | Top 11 oddball real-world tech job interview questions +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
T-Mobile’s CEO says he’s confident that upcoming net neutrality rules won’t mean an end to the carrier’s “Music Freedom” promotion that allows unrestricted music streaming from certain sites.The rules, which were recently approved by the Federal Communications Commission but are not yet law, prohibit Internet providers from selectively blocking or slowing Web traffic and from offering paid traffic prioritization services. They’ve been opposed by Republican lawmakers and major telecommunications companies.John Legere said he’s still combing through the 400-page regulation, which the FCC passed after an unprecedented 4 million [m] public comments, but he doesn’t believe the service will be affected.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
T-Mobile’s CEO says he’s confident that upcoming net neutrality rules won’t mean an end to the carrier’s “Music Freedom” promotion that allows unrestricted music streaming from certain sites.
The rules, which were recently approved by the Federal Communications Commission but are not yet law, prohibit Internet providers from selectively blocking or slowing Web traffic and from offering paid traffic prioritization services. They’ve been opposed by Republican lawmakers and major telecommunications companies.
John Legere said he’s still combing through the 400-page regulation, which the FCC passed after an unprecedented 4 million [m] public comments, but he doesn’t believe the service will be affected.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
AT&T is one company that is planning on consumers being able to control elements of their home from the dashboard of connected cars.AT&T says that it is planning to link its connected car and smart home products via a voice recognition-enabled dashboard control. Home security will be the principal driver of the new tech in that case. But others are also in a race to bring functioning products to market and obtain consumer acceptance.Two existing AT&T products – AT&T Digital Life, a home management system, and AT&T Drive, its connected car platform – will be merged together to create its platform.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has fined Verizon US$3.4 million over its failure to notify police and fire departments during a 911 service outage last year.Under the commission’s rules, Verizon and other carriers were required to notify emergency call centers of a six-hour outage that occurred in April. The outage involved multiple carriers and affected over 11 million people in seven states.Verizon’s portion affected 750,000 California residents who were unable to call 911 to reach an emergency operator at 13 call centers in northern California. The outage was the result of a coding error at a large 911 routing center.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The next time you call customer service, you may get an answer from a Chromebook.The Chromebook won’t answer your questions, but the human who does may be talking through Google’s connected laptop with a headset. And they may be doing so from home.The days of vast in-house contact centers may be numbered now that pure software and VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) can handle the same tasks dedicated systems used to do. One of the longtime vendors of call centers, Avaya, has started turning to cloud computing for some large enterprise deployments.Now, with an eye on smaller customers, the company is hosting its contact-center software on Google Cloud and letting companies send out Chromebooks to agents who will talk and text with customers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The next time you call customer service, you may get an answer from a Chromebook.The Chromebook won’t answer your questions, but the human who does may be talking through Google’s connected laptop with a headset. And they may be doing so from home.The days of vast in-house contact centers may be numbered now that pure software and VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) can handle the same tasks dedicated systems used to do. One of the longtime vendors of call centers, Avaya, has started turning to cloud computing for some large enterprise deployments.Now, with an eye on smaller customers, the company is hosting its contact-center software on Google Cloud and letting companies send out Chromebooks to agents who will talk and text with customers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Users of Facebook’s Messenger app will soon be able to do more than just chat with friends and send them emoticons. They’ll also be able to send money.Facebook is adding a payments feature to its popular Messenger app, letting users link their debit card and send each other payments within the app. The tool is designed to be as easy as sending messages, with a “$” icon that will appear in the app. By tapping it, users can send money to the friend they’re chatting with. Recipients of the money will have to link their debit card to accept the funds.The free feature will be rolling out over the coming months in the U.S. to Messenger on Android, iOS and the desktop. Facebook made no mention of Windows.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
After last week’s Innovation Day announcements, Juniper Networks has a range of SDN, data center fabric and data center switching products to choose from.Does it have too many? The addition of the new QFX10000 spine switch and Junos Fusion fabric may mean some product rationalization is in the works.“There is some level of complexity in product positioning,” acknowledges Juniper CEO Rami Rahim. “But if customers decide to move from one fabric or SDN to another we provide the flexibility to move with investment protection. Customers care about the attributes of the product itself. That drives their decisions more than anything else.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
For 5G to be successful, the whole telecom industry has to re-evaluate how networks work and are developed. Multiple challenges, both political and technical, have to be overcome before the technology can become a reality.“Availability of spectrum is obviously a big thing,” said Gerhard Fettweis, who heads a Vodafone-sponsored program at the Dresden University of Technology.The amount of spectrum allocated to 5G will determine how fast networks based on the technology will eventually become. If they are to reach multiple gigabits per second, which proponents are already promising, operators are going to need a lot more bandwidth than they have today. A first step in securing that will hopefully be taken at the World Radiocommunication Conference in Geneva in November, according to Fettweis.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
This morning I mentioned my telephone answering machine in passing and a colleague reacted as though I had just confessed to still having an 8-track in my car.“You must be the last person on the planet to still be using one,” he said dismissively.In fact, I am not. It took me all of two attempts to find another colleague who also still has an honest-to-goodness physical answering machine.A bit of Googling failed to produce any statistics, but it did uncover a New York Times story reporting on what was then a relatively new phenomenon of answering-machine ownership by consumers. It was published in 1982, which -- pardon me for living -- doesn’t seem all that long ago.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here