When Google Fiber announced in Provo, it didn’t take long for Comcast to immediately whip out a new 250Mbps/50Mbps tier and match the announced price. The reaction isn’t all that surprising. They needed to look like they’re doing something to try and retain customers, and current modems meeting the DOCSIS… Continue reading
In quite the surprise announcement today, Qwest announced that its efforts to dress the company up for sale over the last decade have finally paid off. CenturyLink, the result of a merger between ILECs CenturyTel and Embarq, is buying the company in an all-stock transaction. This comes not even a… Continue reading
The biggest black eye in Qwest’s attempt to bring their broadband offerings into the 21st century has been the abysmal 896Kbps upload speeds, even when using ADSL2+ and FTTN. According to some insider posts at DSLReports, that may change. According to the tipster, Qwest is looking at VDSL2 with plans… Continue reading
Headlines this last week have been dominated by the DTV switch, The Pirate Bay’s trial, and a finalization of the broadband stimulus amount. There were also announcements on 4G wireless from AT&T and Verizon as well as more movement towards online video (and a big step back for Hulu). All… Continue reading
It feels like the summer TV season as most of the news this week is reruns from last week. The DTV delay and broadband stimulus continue to dominate the news headlines. We also saw the launch of Lafayette’s fiber project, some new gadget news and more bad news from device… Continue reading
The Salt Lake Tribune reports that Comcast has launched DOCSIS 3.0 service in their Utah markets with speeds up to 16M/2M. (Media-whoring alert: I got quoted in the article.) The speeds are about on-par with entry-level UTOPIA connections, but the upstream can’t do any higher. Comcast has no doubt chosen… Continue reading
Heartburn over the pending DTV switch, CES 2009 and a local retransmission battle are the main headlines of the last week. There’s also plenty of sour economic news and a few rays of hope for providers willing to grab onto innovative ways to deliver content. And, as expected, incumbents are… Continue reading
I think 2009 is going to end up being the year of broadband. Advocates are very well-organized and the new administration is putting a lot of post-election emphasis on telecom policy, an issue that’s typicaly given only election-cycle lip service. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin decided to up and cancel a… Continue reading
This week was kind of a slow news week. Most of the telecom world has been focused on President-Elect Obama’s plans for broadband stimulus and the continuing bad economic news from providers, programmers and manufacturers. Yes, there’ still even more layoffs and bad economic news. Level 3 is planning to… Continue reading
Between visiting family in Sacramento for Thanksgiving and a business trip to Montreal (where the hotel apparently didn’t believe in reliable Internet service), I got a bit behind on the Broadband Bytes feature. Never fear: I’ll make it up to you with a special double feature to get caught up… Continue reading