Best Broadband

Future Net Needs Fatter Airwaves: Report wired.com
Comcast: Too Cheap to Ignore seekingalpha.com
4G Will Not Have Same IP Battles As 3G, says Qualcomm electronicsweekly.com
Google bans tethering app from Android Market? cnet.com
U.S. Tech Spending to Tank in 2009 gigaom.com
Clearwire Transforms Wi-Fi Devices with the CLEAR Spot Personal Hotspot Accessory marketwatch.com
AT&T Offers Collect Calls to Wireless Customers in the U.S. mobileburn.com
Trends to expect from CTIA techdirt.com
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In 2007 Echostar split into two distinct companies, one of which focuses on satellite services (like Dish), and the other of which (Echostar Holdings Corp) focuses on set-top box manufacturing. The company purchased Sling Network to help with the latter half of that equation. This week Echostar is announcing their first HD-DVR that incorporates Sling box functionality and a 1 terabyte hard-drive, allowing you to watch your home TV services anywhere there’s a broadband connection. Of course now there’s just the little hurdle of carriers actually offering it. Echostar says it should be ready for testing in June, and available commercially before the end of the year.
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Incumbent phone and cable companies have spent years successfully lobbying state lawmakers to pass laws banning towns and cities from wiring themselves — even in cases where incumbents wouldn’t. The laws, usually written by incumbent lawyers, were passed in more than a dozen states without much public debate — though momentum slowed in recent years due to media attention and consumer advocacy opposition. With broadband stimulus money now in play, the laws are being pushed again — most recently in Pennsylvania, and now, say locals, in North Carolina by Democratic State Senator David Hoyle:

Of course “leveling the playing field” in this context is code for changing the laws to protect the revenues of regional incumbents AT&T and Time Warner Cable. The specific target in North Carolina appears to be a growing number of muni-projects in the state, including a $30 million fiber to the home project being built in Salisbury, North Carolina. The city of Wilson, North Carolina launched a $28 million municipal broadband operation named Greenlight last year, offering symmetrical speeds up to 100Mbps — far surpassing the best AT&T and Time Warner Cable have to offer.
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According to developers, applications that allow tethering for Andriod-OS-based phones are being pulled from the Android Market for violating the Developer Distribution Agreement. That seems to run contrary to earlier comments by T-Mobile suggesting they wouldn’t really care about tethering applications, and of course runs contrary to Google’s claim of an “open” handset development system. This isn’t that big of a deal, since users can still avoid the Android Store and install tethering apps on their own — but the move does seem strange — especially considering Google and company had been leaving the apps alone up until this point. Maybe T-Mobile had a change of heart, or perhaps Google lawyers are just worried about T-Mobile contract technicalities? Either way, banning useful applications doesn’t seem very “open.”
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Ericsson this morning announced that they’ve broken their own HSPA world record with the world’s first demonstration of HSPA multi-carrier MIMO technology, providing peak downlink data rates of 56Mbps (via router). Ericsson says they’ll be supporting commercial deployment of HSPA gear capable of 42Mbps by the end of this year.

Seeing this speeds first hand may be longer in coming, if carriers haven’t already migrated to LTE before then. While AT&T says they plan to migrate to LTE, they’ve also stated they believe there’s a lot of runway left for HSPA — and that they’ll be milking the standard as long as possible. AT&T currently has 7Mbps HSPA working in the labs, and has said they’ll offer 20Mbps HSPA release 7 before the end of this year. Hopefully that means higher caps?
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It has been interesting to watch cable industry executives talk about online video lately, few really understanding that broadband and piracy have changed video forever, and that there’s no stuffing the genie back in the bottle. Some execs, like Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes, seem to think they can simply take the existing business model (with its bi-annual rate hikes) and move it online. While that idea has its flaws, Rainbow Media CEO Josh Sapan goes one step further, believing that if he digs in his heels, the threat from online video will simply disappear. From Multichannel News:

Of course Sapan sees a future where cable and broadcasters become less relevant like print newspaper, as content becomes free (or cheaper), and competitors spring up from behind every bush. Ironically though, clinging to the old model and grumbling instead of adapting is precisely why many newspapers went under. Perhaps Sapan’s successor will understand that and help usher the cable and broadcast industry into the “platinum era” of television?
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Back when 3G to Wi-Fi routers first started to emerge back in 2005, Verizon liked to grumble about how such devices were against your terms of service, a wireless exec at the time complaining about how EVDO was for a single person, not “an entire neighborhood.” It’s now 2009, such devices are even more commonplace, and Verizon has apparently found a solution to the problem: start offering a 3G/Wi-Fi router of their own. According to PhoneArena, Verizon is getting ready to launch a device called the “MiFi 2200,” which is a re-branded version of the slim and sexy Novatel MiFi. Whether the device comes from Verizon or a third party, you’ll still of course bump into Verizon’s 5GB monthly bandwidth cap.
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American Airlines test of Aircell’s Gogo in-flight broadband service apparently went well, so the airline has decided to expand the service across its fleet. According to the carrier, they’ll be installing the service on more than 300 additional planes, 150 of which will be completed this year. 300 is about half of American’s total fleet — and it’s the planes that don’t fly over water, staying within reach of Aircell’s EVDO-based system. The service costs $7.95 for smart phone access on flights of any length, $9.95 for regular access on flights of three hours or less, and $12.95 on flights of more than three hours.
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Verizon, AT&T May Tell U.S. to Keep $7.2 Billion Stimulus Money bloomberg.com
Operators Agree To Standardize Marketing informationweek.com
Supreme Court refuses to consider Virginia anti-spam law cnn.com
LTE to Generate $70bn in Revenues Within 5 Years juniperresearch.com
Ericsson pushes HSPA world record to 56Mbps marketwatch.com
American to add Wi-Fi service to domestic flights usatoday.com
New laptop modems would let wireless carrier freeze a deadbeat’s computer orlandosentinel.com
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Phorm Launches Korean Trial Despite Concerns in U.K. clickz.com
Dell to Get Into the Carrier Game? gigaom.com
BBC turns on Sky and welcomes government call to market Digital Britain samknows.com
So Only When Piracy Gets Really Bad Will Record Labels Change Their Act? techdirt.com
Apple’s Airport Extreme gets dual-band Wi-Fi networkworld.com
Controversy over new Pirate Bay Facebook feature neowin.net
Busted! Conficker’s tell-tale heart uncovered theregister.co.uk
EchoStar Debuts Slingbox-Powered Cable Set-Top multichannel.com
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