Broadband

BOSTON -- Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski said he supports cable and telecommunication companies adopting a usage-based pricing plan for broadband. "Usage-based pricing could be a healthy and beneficial part of the ecosystem," Genachowski said in an appearance at the National Cable & Telecommunications Assn.'s annual convention here. Genachowski, who was interviewed by former FCC Chairman and current NCTA Chief Executive Michael Powell, added that a tiered pricing approach may "increase consumer choice and competition" and "result in lower prices for people who consume less broadband.

Google Fiber, the ultra-fast broadband Internet service developed by the search-engine company, will be expanding to Austin, Texas, in 2014. In a widely expected move , Austin city officials and Google on Tuesday morning announced the expansion of Fiber. The service is already live in the Kansas City area and provides users with Internet speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second, which Google says is about 100 times faster than most American users' Internet speeds. "With a population of innovators and early adopters, Austin has always welcomed and embraced forward-thinking ideas," the Austin Chamber of Commerce said Tuesday in a statement.

Re "Net losses?," editorial, Aug. 10 Once again the Federal Communications Commission has got it wrong. Its regulatory leniency has not only threatened the freedom of content for Internet users, but has all but taken away the competition that spurs innovation essential to broadband development. Instead of unbundling the "local loop" and discounting line rentals, which it should, it has taken a step in all but crushing competition. The only way out of this is for the Bush administration to further develop broadband over power lines with the the money it pledged for research and development.

Residents in Austin, Texas may soon find out just how fast 1 gigabit Internet connection is like. Austin city officials and Google, which has been testing its ultra-fast Internet service called Fiber in Kansas City, have sent out invitations to an event Tuesday morning where they "will make a very important announcement that will have a positive impact on Austinites and the future of the city. "  Multiple news websites and blogs report that the announcement will be about the expansion of Fiber to Austin.

AT&T Inc. confirmed that starting May 2 it will impose a monthly data cap of 150 gigabytes on users of its DSL broadband service. Subscribers to its U-Verse service get 250 gigabytes a month. Consumers who go over this limit three times will be charged $10 for every 50 additional gigabytes of usage. The new data caps represent the latest move by an industry grappling with unabated and significant increases in bandwidth usage, fueled by online video consumption. According to the latest data from the Nielsen Co., U.S. viewers spent nearly 45% more time watching online videos in January than in the same month a year earlier.

Gigabit Squared, a start-up based in Ohio, announced it would bring gigabit broadband speeds to six communities across the country through a new program that has secured $200 million in funding. The Gigabit Neighborhood Gateway Program will be in partnership with Gig.U, a group of more than 30 research universities across the country, and will bring the select communities Internet speeds "from 100 to 1,000 times faster than what Americans have today," according to a statement released Wednesday.  "To see Gigabit Squared emerge so strongly today proves that yes, America needs an upgrade; and that yes, there are innovators and investors willing to step up to get it done,” said Blair Levin, executive director of Gig.U.

In an ambitious bid to revolutionize how consumers use the Internet, technology giant Google Inc. says it will build a network that would be 100 times faster than what is available for many users today. Entering territory tightly controlled by telecommunications carriers, Google announced Wednesday that it would build and test an experimental high-speed fiber optic network that could be available in several communities and reach as many as 500,000 people. The service could be available as early as next year, an analyst said.

Google Inc.'s announcement last month that it would build a high-speed broadband network set off fierce competition among 600 communities, the Internet powerhouse said in a blog post Friday. Google hasn't been specific about the criteria in selecting which community will get the experimental fiber optic hookup, simply saying it wants to increase Internet access and spur competition. The service would offer connection speeds of 1 gigabit per second -- 100 times faster than many high-speed home connections, the company said.

Here on the shoulder of the information superhighway, smartphones turn stupid, streaming videos shrink to a trickle and a simple download drags like a flat tire. Darwin is a former mining town cloistered in the high desert mountains between Death Valley National Park and the China Lake naval weapons testing center. Finding it isn't easy - a sign that marked the turnoff from California Highway 190 was stolen recently. In Darwin, there is no food, gas or lodging - or any businesses, for that matter.

Even as the Enron and Global Crossing bankruptcies further expose the spectacular waste fostered by the 1990s' Information Age bubble, an army of lobbyists in Washington is fighting to secure government support for broadband communications, the "next wave" of the "new economy." Subsidizing an ultra-fast Internet, it's said, will energize everything, from the stock market to our democracy itself. But if the unbalanced, profligate economy of the '90s has taught us anything, it should be the danger of granting any one sector, no matter how appealing, special political favor.

WASHINGTON -- In announcing he was stepping down, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski on Friday touted the agency's efforts to expand high-speed Internet access during his nearly four-year tenure. "I'll always be proud of what we've done technology to harness technology to advance the American dream for the 21st century," Genachowski told FCC employees in a gathering in the commission's meeting room. He said he would step down "in the coming weeks" and thanked the agency's staff for getting "big things done for our country.

Julius Genachowski, who will step down as head of the Federal Communications Commission within the next few weeks, leaves behind a mixed bag of accomplishments and disappointments. He had made expansion of broadband Internet access one of his priorities. We moved forward on that front, but not far enough. He also aimed to expand available wireless spectrum for smartphones and tablets and the like. That hasn't come very far either. As for pushing for cable subscribers to pay only for the channels they want, rather than pay for fat bundles of channels they never watch, Genachowski was largely silent.

Google Fiber, the Internet search giant's super-fast Internet experiment in Kansas City, Mo., that operates at a speed 100 times faster than a typical broadband connection, could be coming to a city near you. During Google's fourth-quarter earnings call, Google Chief Executive Larry Page and Chief Financial Officer Patrick Pichette made it clear Google Fiber is not a "hobby" for the company. "It's been great to see the success there with the initial roll-out," Page said. He cautioned: "We are still in the very early stages of it. " But he emphasized: "We are excited about the possibilities there.

AT&T said it will invest $14 billion over the next three years improving and expanding its wireless and broadband infrastructure. The Texas-based company said $8 billion will be used to improve its wireless network. AT&T said it plans to expand its 4G LTE high-speed Internet wireless network to cover 300 million people by the end of 2014. That's an improvement over the company's current plan, which would expand the network to cover 250 million people by the end of next year. The latest plan, which AT&T calls Project Velocity IP, dedicates the remaining $6 billion to improving the company's fiber-optic, broadband networks.

This week Microsoft is set to release an operating system for computers, tablets and smartphones that will put a vast amount of music at users' fingertips, free of charge - with the music industry's blessing. XBox Music, a service integrated into Windows 8, is just the latest in a series of music-related initiatives by the software giant, and its record hasn't been good (seen any Zune music players lately?). Nevertheless, XBox Music could be a turning point in the music industry's fitful adaptation to the broadband era. The new, advertiser-supported service will let users play songs on demand from an online jukebox, create customized webcasts based on the music of their favorite artists and buy MP3s from an online store stocked with an enormous selection of tracks - in short, a combination of Spotify, Pandora and Apple's iTunes.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel unveiled an ambitious plan to establish the city as a hub for ultra-fast Internet service and provide free Internet access in public spaces. The city kicked off its Chicago Broadband Challenge by turning on free Wi-Fi in Millennium Park on Monday. "Chicago will be one of the most connected cities in the world," Emanuel said. "The establishment of a world-class broadband network in Chicago will create thousands of jobs and dramatically improve educational opportunities, economic development, healthcare services and general quality of life throughout the city.

By Nathan Olivarez-Giles, Los Angeles Times The Federal Communications Commission has come up with a new way to apply some network neutrality rules that would force Comcast Corp., AT&T Inc. and other broadband Internet service providers to handle all Web traffic the same, without imposing limits on users or blocking websites. The proposal is aimed at blunting an April federal appeals court ruling involving Comcast that found that the agency had limited authority to regulate broadband Internet service.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski layered compromise upon compromise to get the commission's approval Tuesday for a Net neutrality proposal that at least some major Internet and telecommunications companies can live with. Those compromises disappointed advocates of a strong rule, and they weren't enough to placate Republicans who oppose the very idea of regulating broadband providers. Nevertheless, the result is both workable and necessary. At issue is the control broadband providers such as AT&T and Comcast can wield over the content, services and applications that are available online.

A top Netflix executive and the chief lobbyist for the cable television industry took shots at each other Wednesday morning during a congressional hearing on the future of video. At issue is whether caps on broadband data usage can be used by broadband providers as a means to hinder online programming services which could be seen as a competitor to traditional broadcast and cable channels. In particular, Netflix has raised concerns that cable and broadband giant Comcast Corp.

A wide-ranging government probe into the pay-television industry could ultimately lead to dramatic changes in the way consumers receive video content on their television sets as well as on tablets and mobile phones. The Department of Justice has started looking into business practices of Comcast Corp. and other pay-TV operators to determine whether they are engaging in practices that could derail or hold back emerging competition from such broadband distributors as Netflix Inc. "The future of online competition for cable is being decided right now, and it is crucial that government agencies responsible for protecting the public interest" investigate, said Harold Feld, legal director of consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge.