April 19, 2005

Verizon has announced that it will let existing DSL customers in 13 Northeast states get DSL service without having to pay for telephone service on the DSL line. Customers who have DSL with phone service may drop the phone service and keep the DSL. This would also allow them to get voice over IP (VOIP) over the DSL connection instead, and not have to pay for regular phone service as well.

April 11, 2005

The Register has published an article summarizing the happenings at last week's WiMAX Summit in Paris. While fixed WiMAX (802.16d also known as 802.16-2004) is ready, the hot topic at the summit was WiMAX mobility and the standards needed to make it happen. Several competing implementations such as a proposed 802.16e as well as 802.16d+ are competing for standards approval. Chip makers and equipment makers like Alcatel, Nortel, and Intel have a lot riding on what happens with mobile WiMAX because any further delays or confusion could impede planned large scale network deployments of WiMAX as a whole.

April 7, 2005

MTV is testing a new broadband content site called MTV Overdrive. The site features entertainment news, music, and videos. The content is sent to users as Windows Media with digital rights management. In addition, MTV is also working on a specialized version of MTV Overdrive just for Media Center Edition users.

April 7, 2005

America Online has announced the availability of its Internet phone service in more than 40 cities. In an agressive move, the company is charging $13.99 per month to existing AOL subscribers. The monthly rate is for a local calling plan and increases by $5 after three months. Service to non-AOL subscribers and other calling plans are priced similarly to competing VOIP offerings from companies like Vonage and AT&T.

April 6, 2005

Cable modem speeds over existing lines could increase 400% to 1,600% in the next year or two. CableLabs, the cable industry's standard-setting consortium plans to endorse the new DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem transmission standard this month. Current downstream cable modem speeds of 3 megabits per second could rise to between 15 and 50 megabits per second under the new standard.

April 4, 2005

According to market research firm IDC, the number of residential voice over IP (VOIP) subscribers in the U.S. will jump to 27 million by 2009, up from an estimated 3 million today.

March 26, 2005

The wacky folks from EVDOinfo.com really put Verizon's EVDO wireless data network to the test. First they did a 2 way iChat videoconference at 60 MPH, then they did a streaming video webcam with GPS tracking over EVDO, then they did Vonage VOIP over EVDO. And, they have really cool video clips of all this madness.

March 24, 2005

Voice over IP (VOIP) is growing all across Europe, as businesses look to save money and gain new features such as unified messaging and collaboration. Revenue from European customers of VOIP is growing at an explosive rate of 13% per quarter.

March 19, 2005

The IEEE has settled on, but not yet ratified, a single proposal for the 802.11n next-generation Wi-Fi standard. It is designed to replace, yet still be interoperable with the 802.11/a/b/g standards, and will have up to 630 Mbits/s of throughput.

March 14, 2005

An emerging class of VOIP appliances with PBX power is giving small businesses serious telecommunications capability. One such plug-and-play appliance is the Snom VoIP Box which provides many PBX features such as automatic forwarding, music on hold, voice mail, automatic call distribution, management via web interface, call hunting, and more.

March 14, 2005

AT&T has announced that it will begin testing its WiMax service with corporate customers in New Jersey. The company plans to roll out WiMax wireless broadband technology in major cities over the next several years.

March 3, 2005

Using voice over IP (VOIP) technology, cable companies are increasingly taking customers and profits away from traditional phone companies like Bellsouth, SBC, Verizon, and Qwest. The number of cable phone subscribers in the U.S. currently stands at around 3.5 million customers, but the rate of growth, at least several hundred percent per year, is huge.

February 20, 2005

Tom's Networking posted a review of the Linksys Wireless-G Broadband Router with SRX (Model WRT54GX). This wireless router has three antennas and uses Airgo's "True MIMO" technology to achieve extended range and increased throughput, even when communicating with standard 802.11g nodes.

February 4, 2005

According to sources, AOL has quietly been testing its voice over IP service and may be only weeks away from announcing a rollout.

January 21, 2005

Verizon is raising DSL rates as much as 11 percent to cover state and local tax fees.

January 16, 2005

Six fee-based and three free VOIP go head to head in group of voice quality, reliability, and feature tests.