Bill: Broadband and Infrastructure

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 06:37:09 GMT

Call for submissions on broadband solutions for remote areas. The Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator the Hon Stephen Conroy, has today called for submissions on policy and funding initiatives to provide enhanced broadband to rural and remote areas. Submissions on remote broadband will be accepted in parallel to proposals to roll-out the National Broadband Network. This consultation process seeks to explore options for those remote areas outside the coverage of the network. Submissions should be addressed to remotebroadband@dbcde.gov.au and be received by 5.00pm AEST June 30. Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, 11 April 2008. [edna]

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 05:53:11 GMT

Internet access doubles since 2001. Internet access in Australia has nearly doubled since 2001, according to an analysis of census information released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). In 2001, just over a third (35%) of homes across Australia had internet access; in 2006, that had grown to nearly two-thirds (63%). Nationally, two-thirds (66%) of homes in major cities have internet access, compared to under half (42%) for very remote Australia. Broadband is used by 46% of homes in major cities and 24% in very remote Australia. The report also found that income and education were key factors influencing people's internet access. ABS media release, 29 November 2007. [edna education news]

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 05:18:31 GMT

Patterns of internet access in Australia, 2006. There has been significant growth in Australia's access to/use of the Internet between 2001 and 2006. In 2001, 35% of Australian dwellings had access to the Internet in the week prior to the Census date. In 2006, 63% of Dwellings had access to the Internet. [edna recently added]

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 10:25:31 GMT

No closer to resolving broadband dispute: Telstra. Telstra says it is no closer to resolving a dispute with the Federal Government over broadband regulation. [ABC News: Breaking Stories]

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 11:30:46 GMT

Houston Approves Network.

The Houston city council appears to have set a record in approving a Wi-Fi network: EarthLink was declared the winning bidder just two months ago. Many larger cities have spent 8 months or longer getting from winning bid to council-approved contract. Houston will be an anchor tenant. The network is estimated to cost $40m. As in many other EarthLink-contracted cities, the vote for approval was unanimous.

The network is currently the largest committed deployment at 600 sq mi. While county-wide networks and Wireless Silicon Valley may be larger (the latter covering 1,500 sq mi), those larger networks typically are in trials or require city-by-city sign-off for urban deployment. Free access is promised for five percent of the area.

Agreements for attachment to electrical utility poles--cue ominous music--are still underway with a private firm, Centerpoint Energy.

[Wi-Fi Networking News]

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 11:29:42 GMT

NY Times Finds Draft N Underwhelming.

David Pogue reviews four 802.11n routers, and finds only Apple's meets most of the promise, Belkin second: Pogue was unable to achieve the highest speeds promised by these routers, except with the Apple AirPort Extreme. That may be because all these early routers are single band (2.4 GHz) except Apple's. They may also all be much more susceptible to interface or back-off from adjacent networks, although Pogue isolated a lot of variables. As other reviewers have found, range is much better than bandwidth, but Pogue wasn't able to get more than 49 Mbps from any device but Apple's. I have only thoroughly tested Apple's router, and achieved 70 to 80 Mbps in unoccupied 2.4 GHz channels.

Pogue had kind words for Belkin's Draft N gateway, due to its superb installation instructions and labeling and its clear troubleshooting icons that are built into the front of the gateway. If there's a problem, an icon representing the part of the network that's faulty flashes an amber outline; network components that are okay are outlined in blue.

His conclusion? "If you’re in the market for new wireless gear and can’t wait a few more months for the “n” committee to finish the spec, buy the polished, upgradeable gear from Apple or Belkin." I'm not waiting for the spec to be finished, but rather anticipating a wave of firmware upgrades that should improve performance in the 2.4 GHz band based on the latest draft from the 802.11n committee. (Pogue says that Linksys didn't promise to him that the device he tested can be upgraded; the other three manufacturers did.)

While the draft was approved in March, it may be weeks yet before firmware appears for shipping devices that accounts for changes, especially in how 802.11n and previous 802.11 specs work together on the same network and in adjacent networks. The Wi-Fi Alliance will also announced certified devices sometime this quarter for Draft N, which would mean new firmware as a result of "plugfests" and other lab testing to achieve that seal of interoperability.

[Wi-Fi Networking News]

Sun, 25 Mar 2007 21:43:49 GMT

Moving Petabytes.

[via Thejo] Jonathan Schwartz writes:

It [is] faster to send a petabyte of data from San Francisco to Hong Kong by sailboat, than by the internet.
...
A petabyte is a thousand terabytes, which is a million gigabytes, or a billion megabytes. Or 8 billion megabits. With me so far?

So if you had a half megabit per second internet connection, which is relatively high in the US (relatively low compared to residential bandwidth available in, say, Korea), it'd take you 16 billion seconds, or 266 million minutes, or 507 years to transmit the data. Can you sail to Hong Kong faster than that? At a full megabit, just divide the time in half. Even at a hundred megabits (about the highest, generally available, of any carrier I've seen), it's a few years.

[Emergic]

Sun, 25 Mar 2007 21:33:16 GMT

Costello attacks Labor's broadband coverage plan. The Federal Government has savaged Labor's announcement of a multi-billion dollar plan to improve broadband coverage throughout Australia if it is elected. [ABC News: Breaking Stories]

Wed, 07 Mar 2007 23:41:48 GMT

$162m deal for faster internet. Affordable broadband internet will be made available across Australia as part of a $162.5 million package to be unveiled today by the Australian Government. [edna education news]

Sun, 25 Feb 2007 04:15:45 GMT

Beyond Wi-Fi.

I'm at Beyond Broadcast at MIT, where 450+ people in a room, nearly all with laptops, are trying to get past wi-fi that normally works well but doesn't this morning. I'm using Verizon EvDO. Not my favorite company or service, but good to have in a pinch.

I highly advise looking and listening in on the live stream (links on the home page). The opening talk by Henry Jenkins is outstanding.

"We're poking the eyes out of our kids... it's a mass de-skilling..." Just one quote.

Now John Palfrey is talking, and unpacking What's Happening on the Net. Very comprehensive, in a very short time. He just mentioned VRM, as a way of doing economic democracy (other categories are semiotic and participatory democracy). Maybe we should work also toward GRM, for Governance Relationship Management.

Great line: It's a world wide web. Not something smaller than that.

There is a battle over the institutional ecology of the Net right now. Exacta-mundo.

Dave says the wifi is good in the overflow room. He notes, Papa Doc is blogging away over in the other room. So far nothing from him on the panel. Could his head be nodding too?? On this panel, yes. I liked Henry Jenkins and John Palfrey. And I like the guy from L.A. who's on the big screen, talking about how they do what they do. But what Yahoo and MTV are doing hardly seems "beyond broadcast" to me. And I gotta say my mind numbs every time I hear "user generated content" or "user generated media". Feh. On the other hand, Elizabeth Osder of Yahoo just said something about needing to know the intentions of participants, and that this would have to come from participants, or something like that. It was the first thing she's said that didn't glaze my ears or turn me off.

As for, With all the incredible minds in the "audience" -- what a waste... I agree. Yet I'm always amazed at how much people like to be in an audience, and face a stage, and receive whatever comes from the front of the room. There are rituals involved here. And we do need to screw with them, or we won't get "beyond" a single subject we use this format to cover.

[The Doc Searls Weblog]

Thu, 22 Feb 2007 22:14:38 GMT

AirPort Extreme: Apple Breaks 90 Mbps.

My review of the new AirPort Extreme Base Station is up at Macworld: This lengthy review, aided by several colleagues at the magazine, covers a lot of the basics for home users. I gave the unit 4 1/2 mice for how well it lived up both to its potential and how well it works. I was able to see consistently high speeds in testing, in excess of 90 Mbps in a single direction over 802.11n to Ethernet (flooding packets from N to Ethernet), and about 50 Mbps when flooding from N to N via the base station. My conclusion is that the device really needs gigabit Ethernet to achieve its full potential.

You'll note that the AirPort Extreme is what I was referring to in a post a few days ago in which I described how I developed new testing methodology for Wi-Fi gateways. The Extreme has a minor flaw that won't bite many people in its ability to pass traffic at full Ethernet speeds across its WAN port when network address translation (NAT) is engaged. Apple said they are looking into the problem, which is software based. A source unconnected with Apple provided convincing proof that the AirPort Extreme uses NetBSD as its embedded operating system, and that the network stack in that OS could be at fault. But it could be trivial to fix, too. (Update: Not to be obscure about NetBSD: the Acknowledgements.pdf file found on the CD-ROM that ships with the AirPort Extreme provides full copyright and acknowledgments credit for included software, as required by a host of GPL and other licenses. NetBSD is thoroughly acknowledged there; the DHCP software is credited to ISC.)

I'll be writing more soon about particular aspects of the base station, but for now, I'd like to direct you to the technical discussion about the Extreme's use of IPv6, the next-generation Internet routing protocol that's been "next generation" for something like eight or nine years now. IPv6 support is found throughout Mac OS X and is fully supported in the Extreme base station--so fully, Ars Technica's Iljitsch van Beijnum reports, that by default every Mac OS X computer that connects to a new Extreme gateway will be fully reachable through tunneled IPv6 from the rest of the Internet.

[Wi-Fi Networking News]

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 00:25:00 GMT

Optus to build extensive 3G network. Telecommunications company Optus says it is building a new third generation (3G) mobile network that will reach 96 per cent of the Australian population. [ABC News: Business Stories]

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 00:23:59 GMT

5 GHz or Bust.

George Ou has some interesting points about 5 GHz, but there's more to the story: Ou hates the 2.4 GHz band with something greater than a passion--it's crowded, there aren't enough non-overlapping channels, and it's just so out of fashion. He's right about all that. The 5 GHz band has lots of possibilities, including 23 channels open for use. Before we get too excited, though, let me point out a few things that Ou didn't cover--primarily, the signal power output restriction for 5 GHz. 5 GHz 802.11 standards can't send signals as far as 2.4 GHz for a good hunk of the band. (23 channels are available for 802.11 specs; there are technically 24 possible in a different configuration.)

One of N's possible advantages of double-wide channels--instead of 22 MHz, they can use 40 MHz channels, which effectively doubles throughput. When you combine a newly efficient design for encoding, two or more radios, and double-wide channels, that's when you get the high symbol rate of 300 Mbps, with effective throughputs that could go well over 100 Mbps. The 100 Mbps throughput factors in--as I understand it--the expectation that N devices will have brief periods in which they can bond two channels.

Here's my executive summary so you don't have to read my entire analysis:

While 5 GHz is uncrowded and has more clear, non-overlapping channels that can be combined for the highest speeds in 802.11n, the rules governing 5 GHz for indoor use with omnidirectional antennas mean that only two double-wide channels in 5 GHz are available at anywhere near the maximum power (and thus potential range) of interior Wi-Fi. A number of 5 GHz channels offer power levels that are comparable to 2.4 GHz--and that assumes manufacturers will allow their 5 GHz radios to output enough juice to produce ranges similar to 2.4 GHz. But the lack of competing networks in 5 GHz could mean that 5 GHz N networks will almost certainly work much better in crowded RF environments--apartment buildings, for instance--than 2.4 GHz N networks which have very little chance to use double-wide channels. (Proviso: Some countries don't allow double-wide channels in 5 GHz.)

Ou says that "802.11b was supposed to have given way to its sibling standard 802.11a which operated in the 5 GHz range." That's not my recollection back at the time this was happening. 802.11b and a were seen as having somewhat different purposes: 802.11a had the potential for high-speed, short-range indoor connections, and long-range point-to-multipoint outdoor hookups. This was largely due to the higher cost of A, as Ou points out, but also due to the shorter range possible in indoor applications due to lower signal strength allowed. (Also, there were doubts about A's ability to be produced using CMOS chip processes, which Atheros put to rest, even as it moved into G for competitive reasons.)

He notes that while 802.11g boosted speed, "the problem was that in order to maintain backward compatibility, 802.11g also had to operate in the limited 2.4 GHz space and worse it had to switch to 802.11b if even one legacy 802.11b device joins the party." This isn't strictly correct as described, although it's widely stated this way. An 802.11b device forces a G network to drop down to B speeds only when the B device is transmitting or receiving data. There's a bit of extra network overhead, as well, if you choose for your G device to support B that does produce a single digit reduction in throughput even on G devices. The same will be true with N: older devices will occupy disproportionate amounts of time while transmitting or receiving, but if they aren't heavy network users, the N network should still work well.

I would argue that dual-band gateways didn't succeed in the consumer marketplace because of an absence of a compelling reason to use them. Throughput wasn't a big motivator. There were initially few adapters, none affordable, for 802.11a when 802.11g hit its stride. Remember Steve Jobs telling us 802.11a was dead? (Hey, their new device supports A, so I guess it got better.)

If you had mostly 802.11b/g devices and wanted to use A, you'd have to switch all your adapters over because no consumer devices supported simultaneous dual-band operation in 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz. Some enterprise hardware did (and still does) allow both bands either through two baseband chips or through two separate radios.

Ou complains that MIMO's leap into the market caused the lack of 5 GHz expansion. "Since it already required multiple radios for single band operation, adding an additional set of radio on the access point would have increased the already-high prices even higher." But there are few except very high end devices that would have duplicated radios; typically, as I just noted, it's one radio with two frequency ranges supported for either 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz operation.

Now here we get to the crux: Ou writes, "802.11n in my opinion should have NEVER permitted 2.4 GHz operation in the first place and should have only used the 5 GHz band." However, that idea has two flaws, one of which Ou admits and addresses. First, it breaks compatibility, which means that it's not a solution for people with B and G that want to gradually move to N. Ou suggests that a cheap single-radio could have been inserted into access points to handle B/G clients and the N system could have worked just in 5 GHz. Let's leave out all the radio engineering issues involved in that--like antenna coordination, cost of manufacture, firmware support, and so forth. The second flaw is more critical: 5 GHz has too many limitations in range.

The four spectrum hunks of legal 5 GHz channels each carry restrictions that don't dog 2.4 GHz, and that's why 5 GHz hasn't caught on. Where 802.11b/g/n devices can transmit as much as 1 watt of power at the antenna and use any channel indoors or outdoors, rules for 5 GHz prescribe in the U.S. and some other markets which channels may be used indoors only, and has much lower power levels for omnidirectional indoor use than 2.4 GHz allows.

There are now four bands in 5 GHz channelized for 802.11 in the US, although they're numbered somewhat strangely. In brief, there is total of 555 MHz across 23 channels in 802.11a/n. The lower four are indoor only; the higher 19 are indoor/outdoor. The lowest four (5.15 to 5.25 GHz) can have 50 mW of output power, the next four (5.25 GHz to 5.35 GHz), 250 mW; the next 11 (5.47 to 5.725 GHz), 250 mW; and the top four (5.725 to 5.825 GHz) up to 1 W. (There are further restrictions on 5.25 GHz to 5.725 GHz in terms of detecting and avoiding stepping on military radar transmissions, which share those bands. And the 802.11a spec specifies 40 mW/200 mW/800 mW instead of 50, 250, and 1,000, just to make it even more complicated.)

There are an enormous number of details about effective output, antenna gain, and so forth, but most of that affects the use of directional antennas and point-to-multipoint outdoor connections, not the use of interior omnidirectional antennas.

Because 5 GHz signals have shorter wavelengths than 2.4 GHz signals, at the same amount of power, they propagate shorter distances. They're also worse at penetrating solid objects. This means that even if you use the top four channels for 802.11a or single-wide channels for 802.11n in 5 GHz, you will only be able to send data less than half as far if that. There are only two double-wide channels possible in that top band.

In the 250 mW restricted range of 5 GHz, you could achieve the same range by using higher power in 5 GHz than in 2.4 GHz. But many of the devices that offer 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz radios don't compensate in 5 GHz by having higher-powered signal output. Thus a device that gives you 100 interior feet in any direction in 2.4 GHz could span less than 50 feet for this reason in 5 GHz. The lack of interference from competing networks could compensate for the shorter distance, however.

(Another issue: Some 802.11n device makers may not let you use double-wide channels in 2.4 GHz. Apple's new AirPort Extreme with 802.11n says in its advanced configuration manual--online already long before the product ships--that what it dubs the Use Wide Channels options is only available in 5 GHz. Conversely, Apple is promoting its AirPort Extreme with N in some European as only offering 20 MHz channels in 5 GHz because of regulatory limits. Thanks to Iljitsch van Beijnum for pointing to the manual and the European issue.)

Still, 5 GHz does offer some hope, and while Ou thinks the boat was missed, I see Apple's support in clients and adapters for 5 GHz in N, and Intel's support in its Centrino client for 5 GHz as a sign that that band will pick up steam. Note that Intel is certifying access points and routers with a Connect with Centrino label--and those devices will likely have to support 5 GHz, like this Intel-co-branded Buffalo router.

Let me reiterate one point here at the end: Manufacturers often limit their devices to 100 mW or even much less of output power for 2.4 GHz for reasons of cost. The problem in using 5 GHz will come entirely from whether those manufacturers decide to use the same power output limits for 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz even though they don't have to, or whether they'll actually take advantage of 5 GHz by boosting its power to put its range into parity.

[Wi-Fi Networking News]

It is good to see the US has the same experience as Australia!

Fri, 29 Sep 2006 02:57:19 GMT

Rural Areas Left in Slow Lane of High-Speed Data Highway. Big phone and cable companies are reluctant to expand in rural areas, leaving millions without high-speed access. By KEN BELSON. [NYT > Technology]

Tue, 26 Sep 2006 05:33:16 GMT

AARNet3 has potential to revolutionise education and research. AARNet3, the specialist optic fibre network will change fundamentally the way Australian scientists and researchers participate in global research initiatives and will vastly expand our horizons for delivering innovative education programs and content. AARNet3 will provide leading-edge connections between researchers and educators at CSIRO, all Australian universities and most campuses, including those in regional locations such as Dubbo in NSW and Hervey Bay in Queensland. It also provides access to researchers and educators in observatories, teaching hospitals, cultural institutions and state and federal government research centres. More information: www.dest.gov.au/research/aren and www.aarnet.com.au 14 September 2006 [EdNA Home Page Headlines]

Tue, 29 Aug 2006 04:38:24 GMT

Next Billion Mobile Users.

David Kirkpatrick writes:

Despite the fact that more than two billion people worldwide already have cellphones, everyone agreed the growth opportunities are massive. "Most people are still not connected," said Padmasree Warrior, CTO of Motorola.

The design challenges to reach the unconnected are great, she said. "The next billion are in China and India and places like that. And many of them can't type or even read."
...
Kamal Qadir is CEO of CellBazaar, a Bangladeshi company which operates an online Craigslist-like buying-and-selling service that rural businesspeople access exclusively over mobile phones. His company charges nothing for the service, making its money by sharing the revenues that cell carrier Grameen Telecom, the country's largest, gets from carrying the calls.

[Emergic]

Wed, 23 Aug 2006 02:50:08 GMT

Coonan sees 'a lot to balance' for Telstra sale. The future of Telstra remains in limbo as Prime Minister John Howard and senior ministers consider whether to proceed with a planned privatisation of the company. [ABC News: Business Stories]

Wed, 16 Aug 2006 22:18:10 GMT

Google Launches Mountain View Network.

The network goes live Wednesday morning: Google's gift to its headquarters city is now labeled the largest purely free Wi-Fi network in the U.S. This qualification is necessary because there are larger cities, including some other Bay Area cities, that have advertising-supported free networks (such as MetroFi's) or limited free usage each day. St. Cloud used to be the largest free, non-commercial network, but they have a third the residents. The network was delayed a couple of months from an earlier launch plan to increase density to fill in niches.

Google deployed 380 Tropos nodes and says they spent $1m. The network isn't intended to provide robust indoor coverage, and isn't optimized in my view of their plan for bridges, although Mountain View's general architecture should allow bridged connections pretty easily.

The New York Times focuses on Google not building networks beyond Mountain View and San Francisco, the latter of which EarthLink has said that Google will be a key tenant on a for-fee network that EarthLink will construct. I have said dozens of times since the idea first floated of nationwide Google-Fi that metro-scale Wi-Fi is a low-margin business; applications that run on networks are much higher. Why would Google sink capital into a network that others could build and they could leverage?

[Wi-Fi Networking News]

Wed, 16 Aug 2006 22:16:36 GMT

Boingo Wireless Raises $65m.

A third round of private financing brings in $65m: The money was raised to finance the acquisition of cell/Wi-Fi airport operator Concourse Communications, which runs services for airport authorities in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Detroit, Chicago (both), New York (all three metro airports), and elsewhere.

They'll use the excess cash to "provide working capital to strengthen the company's balance sheet and provide funds for future growth." Which, translated, means, "We have money but not enough to move ahead at the speed we want to, and we want to buy more companies."

Boingo has raised nearly $100m in three rounds, the last of which was in 2003. The firm says they expect they will not raise additional private funds.

I have said many times that those that believe that Boingo's entire business is customer-facing resale of aggregated hotspot access might consider that the firm has an awful lot of staying power and an awful lot of staff to perform that one function. Remember that they are a software developer, just for instance.

[Wi-Fi Networking News]

Mon, 07 Aug 2006 22:49:08 GMT

Telstra cuts plans for Broadband Network.

Regular readers and subscribers to the CRLLEN website will be aware of the work the association has been doing to improve and broaden access to telecommunications and broadband infrastructure across the communities of Macedon, Mitchell and Murrindindi Shires.

In a blow to progress of the roll-out of high speed telecommunications networks across Australia, Whirlpool, [Australia's largest Broadband Users web site] reports:

Telstra has announced it has called off its talks with the ACCC over its Fibre to the Node (FTTN) network.

The proposal was announced in November last year, with Telstra planning to offer 12Mbit/s ADSL to mainland capital cities by replacing large sections of copper phone lines with fibre.

But the proposal hinged on Telstra achieving a "satisfactory regulatory outcome", which at the time was zero access to competitors. Since that day, Telstra relented and began talks with the ACCC over how competitors could access the network.

But today, Telstra said that discussion had "reached an impasse" and placed the blame squarely on the ACCC. "The major stumbling block was the ACCC's unwillingness to recognise the actual costs that Telstra incurs in providing its services and, especially, the costs it incurs in providing services to rural, regional and remote Australia", said a Telstra statement.

The ACCC says it is "perplexed" over Telstra's decision to stop talks, stating that discussions with Telstra had occurred as recently as yesterday.

The full story can be found on the Community Broadband Website.

Bill: Broadband and Infrastructure

It is good to see the US has the same experience as Australia!

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