Even though we’re living in 2013 and can stream entire seasons of TV shows in between banking and sending work emails on our phone alone, sending data around the world is not exactly an easy feat. The internet exists how it does today thanks to the help of cables sunk deep into the world’s oceans. A new, gorgeous map details the world’s submarine cables as they appear in 2013, and shows us where the underwater internet is headed in the future.
As manic as LTE adoption has been in the US, it could be triggering a full-fledged generational rift in Japan. NTT is cutting prices for fiber-to-the-home internet access by as much as 34 percent in the midst of falling landline subscriptions, and Australia’s Delimiter hears from unofficial sources at the provider that the cuts may be in response to youth being enamored with 4G on their phones. The tipsters believe that many of the younger set are picking one expensive LTE plan, even with data caps, instead of paying for two services; a price drop would be an attempt to keep at least a few of these wireless rebels onboard. Take the assertions with a grain of salt when there’s no official statements to match, but there’s no doubt that 4G demand is booming when NTT’s own DoCoMo just landed its 7 millionth Xi contract. We only wish American wired and wireless carriers would be so accommodating of our temptation to cut the cord.
Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Networking, Internet, Mobile
The cable business isn’t going to cede its share of the broadband market by waiting around for coaxial cable to become obsolete, and now those providers won’t have to make an expensive transition to a fiber-to-the-home infrastructure to achieve gigabit networks. Cable equipment provider Arris will demonstrate on Monday that it can deliver speeds of up to 4.5 gigabits per second by upgrading the existing cable broadband networks.
Today’s cable networking technology, known as DOCSIS, is currently deployed by providers such as Comcast in a version known as DOCSIS 3.0, and ISPs are using it to deliver up to 200 Mbps downstream. But Arris has upped the ante by allocating more channels for broadband and bonding them together, enabling speeds of up to 4.5 Gbps downstream and 575 Mbps up. Doing so takes away from the channels used to deliver actual TV channels, but if one accepts the thesis that television programming will gravitate toward an on-demand IPTV model, this becomes less of a concern than delivering more broadband capacity.
The new technology from Arris is merely a demonstration, but given that right now, about 56 percent of Americans get their broadband from cable providers, and that few large-scale telecommunications providers outside of Verizon are deploying fiber-to-the-home yet, enabling faster and future-proof cable networks will become an important step in keeping U.S. broadband competitive.
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