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Don't worry, the next time we give them free money it will be different.

BWUAHAHAHAHAHAAHA

No PVR on the 360, eh? Maybe not a cablecard one, but software support for Microsoft's IPTV backend used by AT&T U-Verse in the United States.... that's old news. Too bad Gates already announced IPTV support for the 360 at last year's CES and specifically mentioned PVR support. http://telephonyonline.com/iptv/news/Microsoft_CES_IPTV_010707/ Congrats to slashdot for displaying a headline that's suitable for an announcement from CES 2007

Despite frequent attempts (often by Bob Metcalfe) to proclaim The Death Of The Internet, somehow the damn thing just keeps on surviving and expanding:

  * ARPANet Co-Founder Predicts An Internet Crisis October 25th 2007
  * Death of the Internet greatly exaggerated August 25 2004
  * The Death Of The Internet November 4 2002
  * Predicting the Death of the Internet May 18 2001
  * Internet still collapsing, Metcalfe says July 7 1997

I'd like to suggest a new anti-Internet-death-meme: the Internet is a giant collection of cockroaches. You can step on as many as you want with your HD video torrents, it just keeps on multiplying and scurrying around anyway.

Just in case anyone else was intrigued by "MVL Modems," I did a little searching and apparently they are a variation on DSL that's a bit more robust.

This fairly ancient (1998) article claims 24,000 line-feet at 768kbps and gives the name of an equipment manufacturer who pioneered the technology. Given the sparse information available and the fact I've never heard of it until today, I'm going to guess it was kinda stillborn.

Still might be cool in a pinch, though.

One thing I've always wanted to find out is whether there's a way to use two cheap consumer DOCSIS-compliant cable modems to transmit data over a dry piece of point-to-point CATV coax. The OEMs charge an absolute bundle for real cableco headend gear, and I've always wondered if it would be possible to hack two consumer ('tailend'?) boxes to talk to each other. Given the distances that you can run cable for compared to most UTP services, its ease of installation compared to fiber, and the ubiquity of DOCSIS equipment, that would be a pretty neat way of extending an Ethernet network over very long distances on the cheap.

http://telephonyonline.com/access/web/telecom_spri nt_lands_government/

"Sprint is supplying the backbone for the FBI's Digital Collection System Network (DCSNet), linking multiple bureau offices across the country. No contract value was released. For the National Guard, Sprint is replacing the armed services' ATM network, supplied by MCI, with the native IP architecture. The deal is valued at $18 million for the first year and $36 million over five years."

The last time I checked (quite a while ago), the standard choice was good old lead acid. Properly maintained they last forever and are the most cost effective choice.

No, lead-acid batteries are far from immortal. Rated life under ideal conditions is 5-10 years for "maintenance free" VRLA batteries, but real world use in an outdoor installation is nothing like a laboratory test (20-25C, few discharge cycles, never deep-discharged, full recharge before every discharge...). Typical field service life is less than that published in the spec sheet. Compare the warranty period to the advertised life rating: normal service life is between those limits. In hot climates such as Houston, two years of reliable service is doing well. The reliability engineer's rule-of-thumb that increasing temperature by 10C cuts life in half applies: this is a case where the wear-out mechanisms really are chemical processes governed by the Arhennius equation.

Lead acid batteries, especially "maintenance free" VRLA types, are subject to thermal run-away. High charging voltage (lack of proper temperature compensation) or shorted cells in the battery can initiate a run-away failure, generate excessive gas, even rupture the case if the gas generation is more than the pressure-relief safety vents can handle. Accidents can and will happen with any type of high power battery.

The batteries implicated in the fires were advanced, very expensive lithium-metal-polymer types developed and built by Avestor. They were built for long-life outdoor installations: rated for -40C to 65C, temperature regulated, self monitoring: these were no low end batteries! AT&T retained an independent failure investigation quoted here, which "...found that the battery design was sound, as were the safety features, and concluded that the risk of hazardous failures with this battery is as low, if not lower, than the risk with alternative batteries, which are used by other telecommunications and cable companies in similar applications."

While the technology was impressive, the business was unprofitable and Avestor closed in 2005.

It appears that the "third pipe" refers to a third viable option for high-speed broadband access. The other two pipes are cable modem technology and DSL. Source: http://telephonyonline.com/news/telecom_third_pipe s_charm/

(It does _not_ refer to creating a third ISM [license-free] band such as 900MHz and 2.4 GHz (especially since 5.8GHz [802.11a] is also license-free), and afaict, that's not what Google is lobbying for - they just want to be able to license it)

Maybe Verizon is a bigger Cisco customer than Vonage is.

Nobody runs IPv6 -- yeah, like your rinky-dink corporate network. You know, no one, except the federal government and the 3 of the 4 largest service providers supporting them. Networx deal.

>Explosions are quite common to high-capacity batteries. It's the energy, you see.

The main battery in my Prius is about the size of a suitcase and stores enough energy to lift the car straight up 40 meters. Hundreds of thousands are on the road, scooting along without incident. They're NiMH.

If it were just the energy density, you wouldn't see deep discharge leading to safety problems ("A deep discharge causes copperplating, which can lead to a short circuit in the cell").

If you short-circuit a battery, the size of the resulting boom will depend on the capacity and the delivery rate. But most batteries don't short-circuit themselves.

Lithium chemistries are exceptionally finicky, which is why reputable manufacturers put protective charge controllers into the battery pack itself.

IPTV is far from a monopoly
Yeah, and that's because the bill giving them the "national overlay" monopoly is still wending it's way through the system. http://telephonyonline.com/regulatory/news/congres s_cable_franchise_030906/
First-movers and whatever is left for cable companies in the States are dead as soon as this one passes.

And then there's:
VOIP Regulated away to the telcos/cable co's. Proverbial toll roads on the internet will be the final nail in the coffin.
CellularIs my service better or cheaper than it was 5 years ago? No. Please explain how they would jam -so- many bits down the average phone connection?
Digital Phone ServiceIs this service better or cheaper than my POTS service? As a former subscriber no. Emphatically no.

I agree they are set to see erosion of their customer base, but I would argue that they aren't meeting competitors in the marketplace, they are meeting them in Washington DC, where they have the money to raise barriers to entry. The average quickie-mart economicthink doesn't apply.

Most of you will buy your entertainment from the telcos in 10yrs. You'll pay more and get less too.

They are creating a "national overlay" that will allow them to sweep most of the cable/sat companies away because a phone and Internet monopoly isn't enough.

http://telephonyonline.com/fttp/marketing/telecom_ verizon_uses_rf/

We all know how -great- telco customer service is.

Who wins here?

From: Rude Awakening
Bandwidth commodity trading--or the trading of financial instruments that allow carriers to hedge against future dips or upswings in the price of bandwidth through forward-selling and forward-buying--is indeed stalled, according to Tony Craig, executive chairman of Arbinet-thexchange. "There's no underlying physical delivery model with integrity upon which contracts can be based," Craig said. "That doesn't exist in the bandwidth world."

From: Making bandwidth a commodity: Reality or just a good idea?
One company in the bandwidth exchange arena is Enron Communications, which is trying to recruit support for the model from service providers. Following the lead of its parent company Enron Corp., which helped transform the natural gas and electricity industry into a commodity, Enron Communications is planning to revolutionize the way bandwidth is exchanged.

From: Rude Awakening
Bandwidth commodity trading--or the trading of financial instruments that allow carriers to hedge against future dips or upswings in the price of bandwidth through forward-selling and forward-buying--is indeed stalled, according to Tony Craig, executive chairman of Arbinet-thexchange. "There's no underlying physical delivery model with integrity upon which contracts can be based," Craig said. "That doesn't exist in the bandwidth world."

From: Making bandwidth a commodity: Reality or just a good idea?
One company in the bandwidth exchange arena is Enron Communications, which is trying to recruit support for the model from service providers. Following the lead of its parent company Enron Corp., which helped transform the natural gas and electricity industry into a commodity, Enron Communications is planning to revolutionize the way bandwidth is exchanged.

They also know those fans aren't that large of a market.

. With some analysts estimating the Japanese geek market to be worth as much as $19 billion a year, companies are jostling to cash in.

Bandwidth commodity trading--or the trading of financial instruments that allow carriers to hedge against future dips or upswings in the price of bandwidth through forward-selling and forward-buying--is indeed stalled...

There's no underlying physical delivery model with integrity upon which contracts can be based...

Carriers ... are wary of taking financial responsibility if they can't deliver the bandwidth goods on time to customers.

Here's one article about a mole robot for digging conduit tunnels.
And another about a robot for laying conduit in sewers.
And those are just the first two hits on a google search for "underground conduit robot."

The Enron bandwidth market springs to mind. Never made much sense to me. And, hey, it's Enron.

There are several approaches to power distribution. One is "telco type" -48VDC distribution. This is most appropriate when the configuration doesn't change much. Wiring usually involves big cables and screw lugs. Plugs aren't standardized. More importantly, there's no set of simple rules, like the UL/NEMA/NEC standards that govern plugs, outlets, wiring, and circuit breakers, that make 120V power distribution safe without having to measure everything.

In the 120VAC world, everything has been designed so that end users don't have to worry much about overloading the wiring. If they do, a circuit breaker will trip. An ordinary power plug, a "5-15P", can handle 15A, so if you have an outlet strip, there is a breaker to protect the plug and cord from overload, should the total load on the power strip exceed 15A. A 20A power strip must have a "L5-20P" plug, the big twist-lock type. As soon as you get away from 120VAC, you lose that designed-in idiot-proofing. (Europe is still struggling in this area, with too many different connectors, so you don't get the same level of idiot-proofing in the 220VAC part of the world.) So once you leave 120VAC, you're going to need power engineering skills. (Clamp-around ammeters are very useful, and yes, you can get them for DC.)

There's also 400Hz AC distribution, which allows for smaller transformers and filter caps in power supplies. 400Hz rackmount servers are available. Aircraft, military, and some mainframe systems use 400Hz. It's not a big win in this era of switching power supplies.

There's 3-phase power distribution. Here's a 3-phase outlet strip. More to the point, there's an efficiency gain in running a UPS from 3-phase power, and big UPSs are usually 3-phase, at least on the input side. Arguably, power should be 3-phase down to the point where it's rectified to DC, because 3-phase rectifiers need far less filtering, but nobody does this for small loads.

American Power Conversion has been pushing the idea of integrating power conversion, cable management, and cooling into standard racks. Classically, those are the big problems in big computer systems. Seymour Cray used to say that the big problems were "the thickness of the (wiring) mat" and "getting rid of the heat". By that standard, APC is now as much of a computer manufacturer as, say, Dell; neither makes motherboards or ICs, they just package gear from others. Which is a wierd thought.

All of this power is going to be converted again, at least once, and probably twice, before it hits the semiconductors. That's the job of point-of-load DC to DC converters, usually ICs on the board that do the final conversion. Typically, when you get to the computer, there's a conversion from the line voltage (120-240VAC, 48VDC, etc) to internal distribution voltages of 5-12VDC, then another conversion and regulation just before each device, usually downward to something like 3.3VDC. This keeps transient load changes from one device from affecting others. There may be on-chip regulation, too. The losses at those last stages of conversion are usually the biggest ones in the whole chain.

And banks.

not for us... unless you have a fiber line

In decent sized cities, more and more businesses are using fiber lines. And oh by the way, it's becoming more popular in homes too.

Still sound far-fetched?

I've lived in Austin for three years, and frankly I was surprised to discover that there's a lot of wireless networking research being done by UT, IBM and Intel. See my Telephony column http://telephonyonline.com/ar/telecom_austin_texas _wireless/ With all this talent working on mobile networking and pervasive computing in town, it's really no wonder that the wireless freenet movement is so strong here.

sure it is:
Enron Opens Bandwidth Commodity Trading Service
Enron rings opening bell for bandwidth exchange
Making bandwidth a commodity: Reality or just a good idea?

seriously though, the fact that everyone's favourite company started trading it as a commodity doesn't mean it isn't so... :)

My town, Glasgow, Ky, has already done this. There is a nice article about it here. More info at this link. At $26 monthly or $260 annually, its pretty nice. Service is also offered in most of the county. It's really quite nice, especially for a little town out in the middle of nowhere. : )

Article 1

Article 2

You don't need commercial ownership of roads, you don't have "competing" sewer systems and you don't need commercial broadband networks either. When the profit motive gets the hell out of the way, the service can really start. WHY YOU CAN GET THE BEST DEAL ON HIGH-SPEED ACCESS IN GLASGOW, KY.

None of the links in the base topic is actually to the article.