New Florence. New Renaissance.

Wi-Fi via White Spaces

“TV stations have traditionally broadcast over lower frequencies that carry information longer distances. However, with the ongoing transition from analog to digital broadcasts, more unused frequencies are opening up than ever.

By tapping into these lower frequencies, it should be easier to provide broadband Internet access in rural areas and fill in gaps in city Wi-Fi networks. For example, the spectrum between 512 megahertz and 698 megahertz, which was originally allotted to analog TV channels from 21 to 51, offers a longer range than conventional Wi-Fi, which operates at 2.4 gigahertz. "Imagine the potential if you could connect to your home [Internet] router from up to a mile," says Ranveer Chandra, a member of the Networking Research Group at Microsoft Research behind the project.”

MIT Technology Review

John Hagel on innovation via supplier networks

John Hagel on how the Chinese in particular are innovating through vast, scalable networks of suppliers with deep specialization

With smaller vendors “the person on the other side is not a lawyer or a procurement executive – it’s someone who ran a plant like mine” 

As for lack of IP protection “I need to continually innovate …so I can stay a step ahead …even though I know I am being copied”

Via Dennis Howlett

HD over Wi-Fi

"Quantenna Communications' chipset makes it possible to employ beamforming, in which a high-bandwidth stream of data can be directed toward a specific device, such as a television--something not possible with standard Wi-Fi routers. The result is a wireless connection with effectively double the range and bandwidth."

MIT Technology Review

Westwood One's Content Delivery Investments

As the National Association of Broadcasters show convened in Las Vegas this week, I had a chance to talk to Conrad Trautmann, SVP of Operations and Engineering at Westwood One, the largest provider of audio content in the US.

“The broadcast business of the future is all about HD radio, satellite radio, HDTV, audio and video on your mobile phone, wi-fi, wi-max, ipods, Iphones, itunes, podcasts, the list goes on. If you look at all of the above and the buzz at NAB the common theme is of course, digital.”

Ok, so us consumers know all that. What’s the big deal?

Well, they have to worry about sizable investment in IP based broadcast infrastructure, satellites and related modulation and things like “spring sun outages”, “cartchunks”(to attach metadata to wav. files) , “copy splitting” (to allow advertisers to target specific markets in their national campaigns)

In the last couple of years, Westwood has been investing in Media Access Xchange (MAX). They shipped MAX receivers to 2,000 radio stations across the country. The receivers are part of International Datacasting Corp.’s SuperFlex Pro Audio suite of products.

They allow content delivery direct to the affiliate’s automation system -  no more ripping CD's or downloading from an ftp site. And authentication to make sure only authorized, in good standing affiliates are getting the content.

That’s the future of consumer content too. Fewer visits to Blockbuster. Fewer Netflix deliveries. Personalized content delivered via IP. And much as we may dread it - “copy splitting” – yes targeted ads.

Countdown to 4G

Stacey Higginbothom at GigaOm has a status on various US mobile carrier plans for 4G - and the promise of 100 MBPS on the mobile network

Brookings Papers on Telecom Infrastructure

As part of a broader set of policy papers on state of US infrastructure and public/private ways to fund infrastructure investments are 2 papers focused on wireless and broadband telecommunications.

Couple of nuggets:

"..the FCC should be reformed to oversee "wireless" spectrum use through an increased emphasis on after-the-fact oversight (i.e., monitoring how the radio spectrum is used in practice) as opposed to its legacy of closely prescribed before-the-fact rules."

"These potential new wireless providers could then compete with existing telephone, cable, and cellular companies and other organizations for the obligation to bring broadband to an unserved community in return for a one-time subsidy. Defining this obligation in a highly flexible form and making it tradable on an open market would minimize the cost of infrastructure deployment and thereby reduce the subsidies needed."

Transoceanic Cable Boom

MIT Technology Review

"At least $6.4 billion worth of transoceanic cable projects are in the works, with even more on the drawing boards.

The new cables will connect the world more closely than ever, add far more bandwidth, and provide enough redundancy for data signals to survive accidents and outages."

The article includes an interactive map of major cables courtesy of TeleGeography Research which produces a number of neat maps of telecom traffic around the world

The NYCWiN Mesh Network

Lots of creative applications on NY City's new grid

State Tech Magazine

"NYCWiN will allow agencies to share high-bandwidth data, including wireless streaming video, at incident scenes for first responders. DoITT is currently working to ensure that wireless video feeds from NYCWiN can be shared with video networks operated by other city agencies. The New York Department of Transportation operates nearly 100 still and video cameras from its Traffic Management Center in Long Island City, Queens; the Metropolitan Transportation Authority focuses another 20 still and video cameras on the city’s major bridges and tunnels; and the New York Police Department operates several thousand cameras. The NYPD announced in July that it was seeking $90 million to deploy an additional 3,000 cameras in lower Manhattan."

and NY Times

"The Department of Environmental Protection wants to use the technology to eliminate the need for meter-readers to go door-to-door to monitor water usage. The city has installed 800 wireless water meters in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens that send readings every six hours over the network to a central computer."

"Dismantling of the Last Mile Barrier"

"GigaBeam, a technology company in Herndon, Va., has come up with an alternative: millimeter-wave technology, which transmits data over wireless connections at one gigabit per second — 1,000 times as fast as a D.S.L. connection."

Read more at New York Times

45Mbps at less than $ 30 a month!

WebPass offers 1 to 1000 Megabits per second (Mbps) Dedicated Internet Access for business customers or 45 Mbps residential broadband service. If you sign up for a year it is $ 350. Webpass only offers service at properties that are capable of supporting Ethernet. This data cable allows Webpass to operate completely independently of the local phone and television companies. Only in San Francisco, Oakland and Los Angeles to start with.