Network management

This election, Chicagoans will vote on a non-binding referendum about whether Chicago should ensure citywide access to broadband internet. The referendum provides a unique opportunity to envision a more innovative way to connect Illinoisans—through investment in an open access broadband network. The largest such network in operation in the US is the Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency, or UTOPIA. In South Side neighborhoods where approximately fifty percent of the residents lack reliable internet service, open access broadband would be a game changer—the difference between eno

The end-user rarely has to worry or even think about a lot of what domain name systems companies do to keep things humming along. Working primarily in the background, infrastructure companies provide a critical yet completely overlooked service, unless something out of the ordinary, like abuse of the domain name system, or general downtime, happens.

To better understand the impact of network brownouts in the age of COVID-19, Accedian released the findings of its new research measuring the effects of network brownouts on business productivity and end-user experience. Network brownouts are unexpected performance degradations, excessive slowdowns and network congestion that impact application performance (as opposed to full network outages or blackouts). According to the 1,000 US senior IT decision makers surveyed for the research:

As a whole, the cable industry's upstream held up well during the Covid-19 pandemic, but with the increased use of video conferencing and other tools associated with work-from-home and online learning, cable operators need to accelerate their efforts on expanding the upstream according to CommScope CTO Tom Cloonan. "In the upstream, we've seen that it's grown by about 25% over what it was in February," Cloonan said. "So that's a big jump.

Thank you to the International Institute of Communications and the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission for inviting me to speak with you. We’ve been asked to talk today about consumer protection in a market economy. When we think about how best to promote the public interest, regulators should avoid the trap of viewing consumer welfare and the private sector as being inherently at odds with one another. After all, it is good for consumers when the private sector invests, innovates, and competes.

On Oct. 1, AT&T stopped selling digital-subscriber-line (DSL) connections, stranding many existing subscribers on those low-speed links and leaving new residents of DSL-only areas without any wired broadband. “We’re beginning to phase out outdated services like DSL and new orders for the service will no longer be supported after October 1,” a corporate statement sent beforehand read. “Current DSL customers will be able to continue their existing service or where possible upgrade to our 100% fiber network.”

Federal Communications Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel's screen froze just as FCC Chairman was asking for her vote during the commission's Sept 30 meeting. When Commissioner Rosenworcel rejoined the virtual meeting, she suggested the freeze was because of the demand on her home's broadband service. "We have problems in the house with multiple kids going to online school and a spouse who is working as well," she said. Commissioner Rosenworcel has been a big proponent of boosting the FCC's definition of high-speed service given that increased COVID-19-related demand on home broadband.

INCOMPAS, the internet and competitive networks association, filed comments Spet 18 at the Federal Communications Commission in conjunction with its 16th Broadband Deployment Report Notice of Inquiry (706 Comments).

If we want to make any progress on [connecting Americans] during hurricane season, then we need Congress to pass the “Reenforcing and Evaluating Service Integrity, Local Infrastructure, and Emergency Notification for Today’s Networks — or RESILIENT Networks — Act.” Congress should pass the RESILIENT Networks Act as quickly as possible. Neither the Federal Communications Commission nor state governments have taken the needed steps to update our regulations governing repair of physical networks to reflect modern network construction.

I’ve been asked to speak briefly about our experiences dealing with the pandemic in the United States, and some of the lessons we might be able to apply to unexpected events in the future. When it comes to America’s communications networks, the top headline is that they have performed extremely well during the COVID-19 pandemic. As one would expect, we saw significant increases in voice and Internet traffic as our lives and the economy moved online due to the pandemic. Our wired and wireless networks handled this surge without any significant service disruptions or declines.