In the early years of the Internet, the more time people spent online, the more they paid a provider like AOL for their connection. But as customers have shifted to always-on broadband services, many Web surfers have enjoyed all-you-can-eat Internet for a flat rate.

Some cable and telecommunications providers are trying to turn back the clock and return to usage-based pricing for Internet connections. Carriers including AT&T Inc. (T) and Time Warner Cable Inc. (TWC) say they may have to switch amid a surge in Internet traffic as more people go online to watch videos and download movies.

Recent efforts to introduce usage-based, or metered, broadband services have met stiff resistance from consumers. But a new push by the federal government to adopt rules that would force Internet providers to treat all Web traffic equally, no matter how much bandwidth they take up, could give ammunition to the broadband providers that want to change how they charge for Web access, Internet experts and consumer advocates say.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Ok, I didn’t say anything last month when Jerry–albeit with some caveats–cited that FCC stat about how 88 percent of zip codes have four or more broadband providers. But now I see my friend Peter Suderman relying on the same figure over at Reason. And friends don’t let friends use FCC broadband data.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Internet-service providers may be worried about the Federal Communications Commission’s net-neutrality guidelines, but the analysts who cover them?

Not so much. In recent days, more than one has referred to the proposed rules as “a solution in search of a problem.”

The FCC supports net neutrality and wants to ensure that broadband providers don’t block access to certain sites or impede competitors’ services while prioritizing their own. Julius Genachowski, the agency’s chairman, announced its net-neutrality principles Monday, and cable and wireless carriers, as well as some lawmakers, were quick to signal their discomfort.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Obama officials received some 2,200 applications from companies and organizations for some of the $7.2 billion in stimulus money set aside by Congress to build out new high-speed Internet lines and services.

Applicants asked for upwards of $28 billion in funding for projects, far more than Obama officials have to distribute. The Commerce Department and Agriculture Department are handing out up to $4 billion of its total stimulus funding for the first round of applications, which were due last week. Two more funding rounds are planned later this year and early next year.

“Applicants requested nearly seven times the amount of funding available, which demonstrates the substantial interest in expanding broadband across the Nation,” said Lawrence E. Strickling, the Commerce Department’s assistant secretary for communications and information.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

We all know that in a few years, Long Term Evolution (LTE), the 4G wireless broadband technology being embraced by mobile carriers across the world, is going to rule the airwaves, becoming an important way for us to connect to the Internet. But for now, it seems HSPA, aka High Speed Packet Access, the 3G wireless broadband technology, rules the planet. HSPA is a common term used to embrace all acronyms for HSDPA and HSUPA as well as HSPA+.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

The total number of China’s Internet users reached 338 million as of June 30, representing a 13.4 percent increase from the end of 2008, according to the latest report by the China Internet Network Information Center, a government-affiliated Web research organization.

Some other highlights from the report:

• As much as 94 percent of the Internet population — about 320 million people — use broadband connections to access the Web. However, broadband Internet speeds lag far behind more developed countries.
• Over 80 percent of Internet users surf the Web at home. The number of people going Internet cafés decrease by 7 percent since end of 2008. Only 5 percent of the Internet population accesses the Internet from the workplace.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Charter Equity Research analyst Edward Snyder today lifted his rating on Broadcom (BRCM) to Buy from Market Perform. In his research note, Snyder said he expects to see an increase this fall in the company’s revenue from the wireless segment as volumes rise in shipments of EDGE system-on-a-chip components to Nokia (NOK) for its low-end phones.

Snyder says the part had been delayed by a “noise issue” that now appears to be corrected. Snyder says the total EDGE market could be in the $200 million to $250 million range; he says the low-cost portion targeted by Broadcom will be just a small fraction of the market, but that successful deployment of the EDGE SOC “would ensure Broadcom’s position in the top echelon of baseband providers.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Social networking services like Facebook and Twitter have played a remarkable role in breaking the Iranian government’s grip on information, both before and after last Friday’s election. But lately, access to the Internet in Iran has slowed to a crawl, demonstrating considerable technical sophistication on the part of Iranian authorities.

One Tehran resident, who asked to only be identified by his first name Behzad, said in a phone interview that his home broadband connection is now useless. Simply loading Google’s (GOOG) home page, he said, takes up to a minute.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

At the beginning of the year, I was informed I was no longer able to expense my AT&T (T) CallVantage Voice Over IP service or my monthly broadband charges as part of my employer’s efforts to reduce costs. This was not unexpected, as virtually every large corporation nowadays with home-based employees are doing exactly the same thing.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

A smaller percentage of Americans see their TV sets, dishwashers, clothes dryers and other “old” household technology as necessities, while a growing number describe broadband and iPods that way, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center.

About 1,000 U.S. adults were interviewed by land-line phone and cellphone earlier this month and asked whether they considered 12 common products necessity or luxury items. Researchers at Pew’s Social & Demographic Trends Project compared the responses to a similar survey conducted in 2006, shortly before the recession started.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Spending on telecommunications equipment has apparently slowed down in anticipation of pending details on a piece of that the government stimulus that will provide incentives for building out the nation’s broadband network, according to Avi Cohen, head of research at Avian Securities.

Cohen points out in a note to clients that Adtran (ADTN) execs asserted on their post-earnings conference call yesterday that the prospect of government subsidies apparently curtailed spending by Tier 2 and Tier 3 carriers and cable providers in the first quarter. The theory: companies opted to wait on capital spending projects until policies on incentives were clear.

As Cohen notes, there will be two sources of the added government funds.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

When we first heard about President Obama’s “broadband” stimulus, we worried that it was nothing more than a boondoggle for incumbents rather than an actual broadband plan. One of his top advisors, Blair Levin, effectively acknowledged that by admitting that the stimulus package really had little to do with stimulating broadband, and a lot to do with stimulating jobs.

Read the rest of this post

The number of consumers signing up to access the Internet via PC data cards has come nearly to a screeching halt, according to new data from comScore (SCOR).

The research firm reports today that the number of U.S. subscribers signing up for mobile broadband services using data cards grew just five percent sequentially in the fourth quarter, after a long string of double-digit gains. ComScore notes that PC data card adoption grew 163 percent overall in 2008, after 157 percent growth in 2007. But the five percent growth in Q4 was down from 22 percent sequential growth in Q3; in the 2007 Q4, there was 28 percent sequential growth.

Read the rest of this post

On March 10, Dan Spatz joined hundreds of other people who crammed into a 500-seat auditorium at the Commerce Dept. building in Washington, D.C. The crowd of executives, entrepreneurs, and local officials had gathered for the first public hearing about how the federal government plans to distribute $7.2 billion in grants and loans to improve broadband Internet access in the U.S.

Spatz, a city official from The Dalles, Ore., took the microphone to ask a relatively simple question: How would the government determine which regions in the country are “unserved,” a critical definition because those areas without broadband service are supposed to take priority under the legislation passed by Congress.

Read the rest of this post

Interim Federal Communications Commission Chair Michael Copps was clearly feeling his oats on Tuesday at the government’s “kickoff” of its national broadband campaign. “The years of broadband drift and growing digital divides are coming to an end,” Copps told the gathering at the Department of Commerce’s main auditorium.

“Too few consumers and small businesses in this country have the high-speed broadband they need if they’re going to succeed,” he added, and so “today we say: ‘Enough.’ We mobilize and we begin to build.” Also attending this digital pep rally was Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and a small platoon of reps from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

Read the rest of this post