Network management

The NCTA—The Internet and Television Association, an industry trade and lobbying association for large cable companies, recently touted big increases in broadband speeds since the start of the pandemic. Specifically, NCTA states that the average U.S. download speed has grown from 138 Mbps in March 2020, the first month of the pandemic, to 226 Mbps in June 2022. Obviously, the cable companies are taking credit for much of the speed increase, and to some extent, that’s true.

We’re finally starting to gain a picture of how the big telecommunication companies (telecos) are preparing to leverage the upcoming Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) grants. Chiefly, large telecos all say they will be building rural fiber with grant funding – which is what rural America most desires. But a lot of rural folks blame the big telcos for the current miserable state of rural broadband. There are several big fears that I hear voiced about the big telcos winning the grant funding.

New broadband provider Brightspeed is now planning fiber expansion work in more than a dozen states, outlining its ambition to reach tens of thousands of new locations across South Carolina and Kansas. The operator is targeting up to 14,000 passings in South Carolina, with plans to hit an additional 36,000 passings by the end of its five-year buildout; and in Kansas, as it aims to reach 10,000 new passings and an additional 45,000 locations.

Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel recently proposed raising the minimum broadband speed requirement in the US to 100 Mbps for downloads and 20 Mbps for uploads. The move was generally well-received, but long overdue at a time when median download and upload speeds among US service providers still rank below several other nations. Still, Fiber Broadband Association President and CEO Gary Bolton said the FCC’s ongoing focus on speed minimums is a misguided approach.

Sens Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) introduced legislation to prohibit predatory data caps that force families to pay high costs and unnecessary fees to access high-speed broadband. As Americans’ need for data is increasing, pricing structures for broadband services must encourage participation in the digital economy, promote competition and innovation, and ensure investment in national broadband infrastructure is used to its highest capacity.

A recent telecommunications outage left millions of Canadians without access to internet and cell services for hours. It was a stunning reminder that Canada must revolutionize the industry and dismantle the oligopoly that runs it. On July 8, more than 10 million customers of Rogers Communications were left without internet and cell services when a maintenance update went sideways. At least two days later, some customers were still without service, while others had unreliable access. It was the second time in 15 months the Rogers service failed.

Rep Yvette Clarke (D-NY) introduced the Generating Resilient and Energy Efficient Network (GREEN) Communications Act (H.R.8178), legislation that aims to harden our communications networks against climate change and natural disasters, while simultaneously reducing the carbon footprint of communications infrastructure.

Consumers, regulators, and internet service providers (ISPs) all use client-based "speed tests" to measure network performance, both in single-user settings and in aggregate. Two prevalent speed tests, Ookla's Speedtest and Measurement Lab's Network Diagnostic Test (NDT), are often used for similar purposes, despite having significant differences in both the test design and implementation and in the infrastructure used to conduct measurements. This paper presents a comparative evaluation of Ookla and NDT7 (the latest version of NDT), both in controlled and wide-area settings.

Since the end of May 2022, the 280,000 people living in Kherson, Ukraine and its surrounding areas have faced constant online disruptions as internet service providers are forced to reroute their connections throu

An order by Indian regulators requiring Internet companies to store their users’ real names and track their usage history has alarmed digital privacy advocates and virtual private network providers, which have begun to pull out of the country in protest. ExpressVPN, a leading virtual private network firm based in the British Virgin Islands, said that it would shut down its servers in India.