250 Mbps Over Your Telephone Wires!

Dr John Papandriopoulos, an Australian research fellow at the University of Melbourne, won the University's highest academic prize on Tuesday - the Chancellor's Prize for Excellence in the PhD. According to the Australian Herald Sun, Papandriopoulos has "developed technology to make broadband internet up to 200 times (Internet speeds up to 250 megabits per second) faster without having to install expensive fiber optic cables."

This kind of bandwidth is hard to imagine over copper telephone wires and requires a little bit of background to understand. Papandriopoulos' work is based on the work of Stanford Professor John Cioffi, considered by many as the "father of ADSL". Cioffi is currently working in the area of dynamic spectrum management which, according to Wikipedia, is: "a technique being researched to improve DSL performance over ordinary copper phone lines by reducing or eliminating crosstalk between DSL phone lines that are close together."

Crosstalk occurs between conductive wires that are close together. Information, whether voice, video or data is transmitted in the form of electrical signals on copper wire. These signals produce magnetic fields around the wires and these fields are inductively coupled into surrounding wires. Ever drive under a high voltage power line with your AM radio on? If you have then you've likely heard the effects of a coupled field. Telephone wire fields are no where near as strong as high-voltage power transmission fields but, when other wires are close, crosstalk will occur and produce interference on the receiving wire.

Right now there is not a lot of technical information available on Papandriopoulos' work. According to the Herald Sun:

"Dr Papandriopoulos' research, which took a year to complete, uses mathematic modeling to reduce the interference that slows down downloading."

Also, according to Image and Data Manager:

"Dr John actually plans to part ways with the University of Melbourne and is “Currently trying to find a licensee for the intellectual property and I’ve also recently taken a position with a startup in the US, this startup focuses on this area and is run by Stanford Professor who is known as the father of ADSL” he continued, “The professor is John Cioffi who is pushing this whole notion of dynamic spectrum management, which is another way of saying dynamically managing interference.”

and:

"... the technology could be installed directly into existing modems as a software upgrade or be shipped in new modems depending on the ability of the particular modem type. In addition to this there would be a further installation required at the DSLAM in your telephone exchange which would then start cutting down the interference. Don’t expect to see the offering on your local PC store shelves anytime soon though, as Dr John hopes it will be available within 3-4 years."

This will be very interesting to watch.

Verizon Launches 20 Mbps Symmetrical FIOS Service

On Monday of this week Verizon announced 20 Mbps symmetrical FIOs service in parts of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut for as low as $64.99 a month. There are two things that I find exciting about this offering. First - it's great to see the bandwidths continue to go up. I feel this is just the start and we'll see bandwidths of over 100 Mbps within the next two years in selected areas as the telcos, like Verizon, go head-to-head with the cable companies like Comcast. If you are lucky enough to live in an area where FIOS is available you re in for a real treat regarding bandwidth.

The second exciting thing I see here is a shift to symmetrical services. Broadband products to date, including FIOS, ADSL and cable modem, have always been asymmetrical - the "A" in ADSL is even short for asymmetrical! Asymmetrical services provide more downstream bandwidth than upstream bandwidth. It's been a way for the providers to "cheat" a bit based on traditional Internet usage. Consider the way you traditionally surf the web - you enter a small amount of information in the address bar and hit enter. The address you type ends up going to a DNS (Domain Name Service) server and is looked up. The DNS server sends back the IP address of the site you want and your browser is directed to that site location. The site server then sends your browser the site contents you want to see.

Think about it - in the traditional model - a little information gets sent upstream and lots of information comes back downstream. Recognizing these patterns the providers have designed their networks to provide a little upstream bandwidth and lots of downstream bandwidth. Well...... all this has changed with this new FIOS offering from Verizon. Here's a quote from a Verizon press release:

"Verizon's new symmetric service is a smart response to the changing usage patterns of high-speed Internet subscribers," said Vince Vittore, senior analyst with Yankee Group. "We believe that as user-generated content continues to expand and telecommuting increases in popularity, upstream speed will become just as important as downstream for all users."

User generated content........ upstream speed becoming just as important as downstream for all users...... these are historical times!

Update - 10/31/07 - I found this video product demo on YouTube.

Colorado Rockies Online World Series Ticket Sales

By now most of you have heard that the Rockies had to suspend website World Series ticket sales yesterday afternoon. The team started selling tickets to the three possible Coors Field games yesterday. Here's a quote from the Rockies Team President Keli McGregor:

"Our Web site, and ultimately our fans and our organization, were the victim of an external, malicious attack that shut down the system and kept our fans from being able to purchase their World Series tickets. Throughout the day we've evaluated all of our options, and we continue to believe that the online sale approach is the most fair and equitable method to distribute the tickets. Our partners at MLB.com and Paciolan have fully assessed the situation and assured us that tomorrow's online sale will go as originally planned."

Here's another quote from USA Today:

"The Rockies were forced to stop the online-only sale of tickets after about two hours Monday after 8.5 million hits overwhelmed the servers set up to take the orders."

I'm questioning whether the attack was malicious or just people trying to cash in on World Series Tickets. Tickets at Coors Field are going for $65 to $250 on the website with close to 18,000 seats being sold for each game via the website. Here's more from USA Today:

"Season ticket holders were allowed to buy tickets over the weekend....... one ticket broker was selling lower-deck tickets for between $1,400 and $5,500 and an online seller offered tickets in the normally cheap Rockpile section for more than $17,000, although better seats were available for less."

With those kinds of potential profits this does not look like a "malicious" website attack. Selling on-line allows anyone any place, any where to buy and in turn sell for large profits.

The Rockies are supposed to turn the site back on today at noon.

Analog Televisions Still For Sale

I've written in the past about the FCC digital television mandate set for February 18, 2009. As part of the mandate, the FCC set some preliminary rules that appear to have been broken by some major retailers.

According to the FCC rules - as of May 25, 2007 - retailers that were selling televisions without built in digital tuners had to be clearly marked as such either on the set itself or in close proximity. The warning is required to say that the television will not be able to receive over-air broadcasts after February 18, 2009 unless a separate set top digital-to-analog converter box is used. Warnings were given out to several retailers back in June and this past week several fines were issued to some very larger U.S. retailers.

At this time I would not buy a TV without a built in digital tuner.

Google and Yahoo Offering More Online Space

Check out the Gmail blog and the companies efforts in their "Infinity+1" storage plan - a plan to provide Gmail users with "more space as we were able." According to the blog, the Standard and Education Edition storage, which is now at 2GB, will get a bump and begin matching Gmail's counter. Premier Edition users get bumped up from 10GB to 25 GB. The standard edition is free and the Premier edition is $50 / user account / year. The Education Edition also offers 2GB but makes the text-based ads alongside email, found in the Standard Edition, optional to students and academic faculty and staff.

Yahoo’s unlimited storage product provides unlimited email storage space. According to Yahoo:

"....users that follow normal email practices and comply with our anti-abuse limits can consume an unlimited amount of free email storage. This will apply to both new and existing users."

Yahoo also offers the Yahoo! Briefcase that provides up to 30GB of free file storage free to Yahoo account holders. Briefcase is great for students who are accessing computers in different locations - imagine a community college commuter student using a computer at home and another computer at school. Brifcase allows file storage that can be accessed from both locations.

There have been Google Gdrive storage rumors for over a year now.

U.S. Broadband Census of America

House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet Chairman Edward J. Markey's (D-MA) Broadband Census of America Act was given initial approval this week. The bill is designed to "provide for a comprehensive nationwide inventory of existing broadband service, and for other purposes" and will produce a national broadband inventory map. I've beat around broadband a bit here and have expressed my frustration regarding the "broadband divide" in the United States today.

According to the FCC website, broadband is generally defined in the United States as follows:

"High-speed Internet access or “broadband” allows users to access the Internet and Internet-related services at significantly higher speeds than those available through “dial-up” Internet access services. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) generally defines broadband service as data transmission speeds exceeding 200 kilobits per second (Kbps), or 200,000 bits per second, in at least one direction: downstream (from the Internet to your computer) or upstream (from your computer to the Internet)."

The bill had language to change this - according to DSLReports.com:

"The bill (original discussion draft pdf) initially stated that if a connection wasn't 2Mbps, it technically wasn't broadband. That provision has since been removed in a compromise....."

It's extremely unfortunate to see the 2 Mbps minimum removed for obvious reasons. Markey has posted an interesting release regarding the current broadband collection methods - here's a piece:

"...the fact that current data collection methods used by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are inadequate and highly flawed. Currently, the FCC counts a single broadband subscriber in a 5-digit zip code as indicating the entire zip code has broadband availability, even if the sole subscriber is a business and not a residential consumer. This can lead to highly inaccurate and overly generous notions of actual broadband availability and use, particularly in rural areas where zip codes are quite large."

This obviously needs to change. Markey goes on to praise mapping work done in Kentucky:

"This bill also encompasses an effort modeled, in part, on the experience in the State of Kentucky. There, a state-wide broadband mapping effort and community organizing initiative for un-served and under-served areas has helped to increase consumer and community knowledge of where and what type of broadband service is available, at a street-level degree of specificity. This is a very consumer-friendly mapping function and “demand-side” identification that the high tech and telecommunications industry also supports. The Committee Print contains similar provisions that embody the same goal."

A colleague in Kentucky, Vince Dinoto, has shown me some of these maps - very impressive. You can see some of the Kentucky work here. Figuring out exactly where services are needed - mapping - is one of the first steps in breaking the "broadband divide" in this country.

The bill is now up for consideration by the full House Energy and Commerce Committee.

UC Berkeley Posting Full Lectures on YouTube Channel

I said I would not until next week but just had to write a quick post on this topic. UC Berkeley announced today that it has started posting full lectures on YouTube. Subjects include biology, chemistry, physics and a lecture titled Search Engines: Technology, Society, and Business by Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

Here's a cnetNEWS.com quote from Christina Maslach, UC Berkeley's vice provost for undergraduate education:

"UC Berkeley on YouTube will provide a public window into university life, academics, events and athletics, which will build on our rich tradition of open educational content for the larger community,"

The Berkeley channel is at: youtube.com/ucberkeley. Take a look at what Berkeley is doing and also watch our NCTT channel at: http://youtube.com/user/NatCtrTelecomTech. You may find our RSS feed tutorial interesting!