Lobbying fight heats up over alternative broadband delivery method...

Microsoft, Google and Dell have formed the backbone of a six-partner coalition named the Wireless Innovation Alliance. Their goal is to use the so-called unlicensed "white space" spectrum -- partially freed by the migration to digital television -- to offer un-served consumers inexpensive Internet access via the airwaves (with these companies obviously providing the hardware, software and most importantly to Google: ads).

Google co-founder Larry Page has dubbed the technology "Wi-Fi on steroids," and has declared that he's "100 percent confident" that white space broadband is inevitable. Unfortunately, initial FCC tests of the technology's transmission detection and avoidance capability have been hit and miss (though dependent on who you ask). The push also has some very deep pocketed opponents.

Full article: broadbandreports.com 

Labels: airwaves, broadband, Larry Page, white space

On Friday last our sister publication, Communications Day, scooped the world with the exclusive revelation that the giant search-engine company Google plans to form a trans-Pacific cable consortium.

Over the weekend, the story attracted a great deal of US media attention after Google stock hit an all-time high in the hours after Commsday broke the news.

Google is now valued at US$174 billion and thus accounts for more than half of the total $330 billion market capitalisation of American-listed internet information providers, easily outdoing the next largest in its sector – Yahoo - that is valued at just US$35 billion. Like it or loathe it, Google is truly corporate phenomenon, and is worth in excess of US$50 billion more than the world’s most valuable telco, Verizon.

One of the best things about having a story hit the US tech blogosphere is the instant feedback mechanism it provides - so as our article was cited by the likes of the New York Times, Techcrunch, Slashdot and Broadband Reports’ websites there is no shortage of reader and blogger comments on what it all means.

Full article: telecomtv.com 

Labels: bandwidth, broadband, cable, Communications

Conditions that Google wants the FCC to impose on eventual buyers of the 700MHz spectrum have generated much interest, but higher laws than any that might be imposed by the FCC - the laws of physics - might determine the future of its proposals.

Google's highly publicised and controversial letter to the FCC says that 'the only way to guarantee new broadband platforms is through open platforms." Google discuses four types of platforms that it says "should be mandated for commercial spectrum": open applications, open devices, open services, and open networks.

Under its open networks proposal, ISPs would be able to interconnect their own network facilities with the last-mile towers of the wireless providers. The ISPs then would purchase or lease discrete blocks of network capacity and provide a competing retail service.

Full story: itwire.com.au 

Labels: broadband, FCC, Network, spectrum, wireless