A periodic roundup of relevant news… from our other blogs: CableCARD, FireWire, and FCC Mandates The NCTA reported that the largest US cablecos have now deployed more than 21 million set-tops with embedded CableCARDs. Despite that, the FCC’s CableCARD mandate is widely considered a failure, and the agency is actively looking for potential alternatives. 3D … Read more
Poor Baltimore. It was one of the first cities to get Sprint’s 4G Xohm service, but it got the short end of the stick when it came to Clear rollouts. Now it appears the city is back on track for 4G service. According to Gus Sentementes on the BaltTech blog, Clearwire is hosting a blogger/tweeter … Read more
While those of us in the know were aware RCN has been deploying customized TiVo Premiere units to all-comers in the DC area the last few weeks, a press release and updated landing page now make it official. Unlike the retail TiVo Premiere ($299), RCN’s rendition is currently limited to the the original TiVo interface. … Read more
Despite my aggravation at the FCC’s video stream earlier this week, it’s important to note that the government agency did cover several issues of weight during Thursday’s open meeting. Well, they didn’t so much cover them as agree to investigate them further. Among the FCC’s agenda items was a proposal to create a Notice of … Read more
I’ve never had great luck accessing the FCC’s video streams of its open meetings, but I was hoping for a better experience this time around. No dice. After a great deal of stuttering and regular disconnects, I lost the stream of today’s meeting entirely about an hour in. It’s not my individual connection that’s at … Read more
Cablevision, Comcast, and Time Warner Cable have pooled their Wi-Fi resources to offer subscribers free access to more hotspots throughout the NYC metro area. It’s a great perk for cable subscribers in the region, and yet doesn’t take away from the appeal of mobile broadband services (specifically WiMAX) that some of these self-same cable providers … Read more
The Comcast bandwidth meter pilot has reached my house, and for the first time today I got a look at our household data usage. Understand, we still have plenty of room under the Comcast 250-GB cap. However, I had hoped that our usage would barely register on the meter (like Jeff Baumgartner’s :)), and instead … Read more
More Wi-Fi and mobile broadband access have me considering my network usage trends more closely. At the moment, I am a regular user of public Wi-Fi hotspots, 3G on my smartphone, WiMAX with my USB stick, and, of course, fixed broadband through my cable connection at home. But with all this broadband, I find I’m … Read more