Users of Australian internet service provider Exetel are up in arms after learning their download speeds between noon and midnight each day will be cut by half under certain applications.
According to a post by Exetel on its own user help forum, the speed cut will come into force "approximately" from mid-November, and will only affect peer-to-peer (P2P) applications.
In a booth outfitted to look like a comfy living room, replete with couch and streamed network TV showing on a widescreen IPTV, Nortel on Oct. 10 unveiled what it's calling the first end-to-end mobile MIMO-powered WiMax setup to deliver 4G mobile broadband content.
That includes Internet everywhere, mobile video, VOIP, streaming media, data applications and mobile electronic commerce. In Nortel's demonstration, an IP television service with a live, high-speed WiMax connection was used to view and download broadcast TV via a 4MB stream with an integrated electronic program guide.
A group of technology and telecoms companies, including Spanish giant Telefonica, joined forces on Tuesday to boost the Internet speeds of copper telephone wires to almost equal that of fiber-optic cable.
"It will allow telecoms companies to provide high-bandwidth services cost-effectively ... rather than replacing all copper wires with fibre-optics up to the subscriber premises," said Zvika Weinshtock, vice president marketing for broadband access at Israeli telecoms equipment maker ECI Telecom.
Telstra has launched a $1 billion NEXT G mobile broadband network, offering high-speed wireless mobile and Internet access to 98 percent of Australians.
NEXT G, which boasts 12 channels of Foxtel television, sport and movie downloads, is more than 100 times bigger geographically and up to five times faster than any other 3GSM network in Australia.
Telstra said the launch will help it claim leadership in the third generation, or 3G market, by May next year.
The European Commission welcomed US Government moves on Monday to make the company that manages Internet domain names independent by 2009, but said it would monitor the process carefully.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which controls addresses including ".com" and country domain names such as ".cn" for China, now reports to the US Commerce Department.
The development of 3G and HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) technologies still remains the current focus of the mobile communications industry, and chances are low that WiMAX will become a mainstream standard since it is not expected to be commercialized until 2007, stated Hakan Eriksson, senior vice president and CTO of Ericsson, in a recent interview with DigiTimes. The following is an excerpt from the conversation.
BitTorrent, a San Francisco-based peer-to-peer networking start-up is working with Cachelogic of Cambridge, UK on a new protocol called the ?Cache Discovery Protocol? or CDP, which supposedly will act like DHCP for peer to peer networks.
The United States will eventually transfer oversight of the Internet domain naming system (DNS) to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
Just exactly when, however, is still at issue.
At a Department of Commerce hearing Wednesday, John Kneuer, the acting assistant secretary for communications and information, said the U.S. government remains committed to transferring control of the DNS.
However, Kneuer also told the panel the U.S. would continue into the foreseeable future to control changes to the master file of Internet addresses.
Singapore Telecommunications ( SingTel), the state's largest telecom operator, is putting two new ultra-fast broadband technologies on trial.
According to a statement issued by the company Monday, the Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) and the residential Metro Ethernet (ME) technologies will be tested in two local condominiums for six months.
The test of the FTTH, which brings optical fiber directly into a subscriber's home or office, started from last weekend while the ME, an Ethernet network in a metropolitan area, will be tried from Aug. 10.
The City gave a lukewarm reception to Sky's much-anticipated ?400m launch into broadband, triggering fears of a price bloodbath and sending shares in the broadcaster and its rivals lower. Chief executive James Murdoch said he plans to invest about one-sixth of Sky's operating profit over the next two years, and ?400m over three years, until the broadband business reaches profitability in 2010.
