INTERNET TELEPHONY — December 2013

The Best & The Worst of 2013

Ask people to name the best thing that happened in tech in 2013, and you'll get a wide variety of sunny answers. Ask for the worst, and one reply is likely to rear its ugly head.

That said, let's take our medicine first, and leave the best for last....More>>>

Departments

Network Infrastructure

2013 Marks Google Fiber's First Birthday: But Despite All the Attention, the Company Is and Will Remain a Broadband Baby
Last month marked Google Fiber's one-year anniversary in Kansas City. That means it had been a year since the first customers began receiving the 1-gig connectivity. By the time this issue makes it to press, most if not all of the areas targeted for Google Fiber will have been installed.

Video

Forced Bundling of Pay TV Channels: No Longer a Tenable Marketing Model
The forced bundling of hundreds of TV channels is no longer tenable. This marketing model, the result of 60 years of evolution, has been immensely profitable for TV programmers. Understandably resistant to a change that could cost them billions of dollars annually, programmers must recognize that the model is failing. The two largest cable TV companies have reported their latest quarterly customer attrition. Comcast lost 129,000 subscribers during the third quarter of 2013. Time Warner Cable, with a substantially smaller customer base, lost 306,000 subscribers during the same period.

Wireless

Using Microduct in the Cellular World
With the onset of LTE and other broadband hungry technologies, cell tower owners and operators have seen the need to not just bring fiber to the base of the tower, but to take fiber up the tower as well. Unfortunately, the boost in performance achievable with fiber is seen as a trade-off with the cost of installing it.

Exploiting The Internet of Things with Investigative Analytics
From call detail records and network logs, to device and GPS information, there's an ever-increasing stream of machine-generated data in the telecommunications industry. More cell phones, mobile devices, clickstream data - and anything with a sensor or RFID tag - are being instrumented, a phenomenon dubbed the Internet of Things.

On Rad's Radar

Focus on the Customer
With all the changes going on in the telecom industry, with all the chanting of cloud, BYOD, mobility, yadda, what should you do? My answer: Focus on your customer.