FCC To Vote On White Space Broadband – Will vote on rules governing unlicensed wireless devices in vacated TV spectrum

As some tipsters had suggested earlier this week, the FCC will be addressing white space broadband at their upcoming September 23 meeting. According to a meeting agenda (pdf) posted to the FCC website, the FCC’s September meeting will focus on the E-Rate program (specifically, letting universities and schools purchase dark fiber directly), some E911 issues, [...]

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Ripe FCC Data: Our Broadband Is Still Pretty Slow – Only 44% of subscribers meet FCC’s new 4/1 Mbps benchmark

As we’ve long noted, the FCC has made broadband policy decisions based on flawed and incomplete data for years. Part of the 1996 Telecom Act required that the agency release quarterly reports on the status of broadband deployment. Unfortunately for consumers, that data has always been essentially useless — with the FCC declaring any zip [...]

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XO conducts coherent 100 Gbps optical network trial

XO Communications (OTC BB: XOHO.OB) has just completed its trial of 100 Gbps coherent optical transmission on a 1348 km route on its U.S. network. During the trial, XO leveraged Infinera’s (Nasdaq: INFN) 500 Gbps photonic integrated circuits (PICs), which integrate five 100 Gbps channels. The Infinera 500 Gbps PICs transmitted and received a 100 [...]

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AT&T U-verse brings FTTP services to Illinois apartment community

AT&T U-verse continues its growth in the multi dwelling unit (MDU) space as it announced a new agreement with Regency Apartments to bring triple play services to the new Windsor West Apartments in southwest Champaign, Ill. The agreement is part of AT&T’s Connected Communities program, which forms strategic marketing relationships with regional and national builders, [...]

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Canada’s incumbent telcos must pay rebates to urban users

Canada’s incumbent fixed line operators, including Bell Aliant (Toronto: BA-UN.TO), Bell Canada (NYSE: BCE), Telus (Toronto: T.TO) and MTS Allstream, must pay back residential phone customers located in urban areas who were charged too much between 2002 and 2006–a total amount of CAD $311 million ($295 million) the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) ruled [...]

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Sonic.Net Treats Customers Well, Earns Praise – Carrier gets oodles of link love for new network build, customer service

Sure, incumbent lobbyists and dysfunctional regulators may have crushed the majority of major, independent, residential broadband ISPs in the United States, but California-based ISP Sonic.net not only survived the indie ISP-pocalypse, but they’re busily building their own network. As we’ve covered for years, Sonic’s offering ADSL2+ (bonded, when possible) capable of providing speeds up to [...]

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AT&T Forgets They Began The Network Neutrality Debate – Then calls people “conspiracy theorists” for pointing it out

Consumer group Free Press is apparently hitting some of AT&T’s buttons this week, if this missive from AT&T lobbyist Hank Hultquist is any indication. Hultquist this week attacked the consumer group as a purveyor of “Da Vinci Code conspiracy theories” for a recent letter the group wrote to the FCC that points out how AT&T’s [...]

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Free employs Cisco for its IPv6 rollout

French competitive broadband carrier Free is making an aggressive IPv6 push with Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) that will serve more than four million of its broadband customers. By deploying Cisco’s IPv6 6rd Border Relay technology solution, Free is preparing for and mitigating the impending exhaustion of IPv4 addresses, while preparing its network to support the ongoing [...]

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Australian alliance proposes new version of National Broadband Plan

With approval for a National Broadband Plan being punted around by Australia’s ruling body like a muddy football, a group of network and Internet companies have taken matters into their own hands and published a manifesto calling for a market solution to broadband expansion–not an “infrastructure monopoly.” The Alliance for Affordable Broadband’s open letter, titled [...]

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Telmex to up Mexico’s broadband speeds to stay competitive with cable

With Carlos Slim’s consolidation of his Telmex Internacional (NYSE: TII) and America Movil (NYSE: AMX) holdings now complete, Telmex is going to turn its attention to upgrading its wireline broadband network with up to 20 Mbps speed capabilities to more effectively compete with cable competitors. To make this speed jump, Telmex will leverage the majority of its 2010 [...]

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