The spectrum in question includes the vacant bands between television channels—prime spectrum bands that have excellent propagation characteristics. Google and others have been lobbying the FCC to free up that spectrum to expand wireless data communications.

Television broadcasters and entities that use wireless microphones in spectrum bands adjacent to the white spaces have expressed concerns that freeing up the white spaces might cause interference problems. But according to the Wall Street Journal report, the FCC has been meeting with broadcasters and other interested parties to resolve those issues.

Wireless developer Spectrum Bridge claims to have a solution to potential interference problems. The company uses a white spaces database to dynamically assign non-interfering frequencies to white space devices in real time.

Spectrum Bridge has pioneered the use of TV white spaces in several trials. In the rural community of Claudeville, Va., the company installed a “middle mile” connection between the Internet and WiFi hot spot networks.

And in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains, the company helped Plumas-Sierra Rural Electric Cooperative & Telecommunications use white spaces to connect substations and switch gear to enable the coop to more effectively manager power flows.  That network also provides broadband Internet access to residents in the community.

The research, basing four evolutionary future scenarios on five premises, is intended as a business and policy strategy development roadmap to “help decision makers in both technology companies and government understand, anticipate, and manage key changes, risks, and opportunities so that the Internet’s potential to create economic and social value can be realized globally,” according to a Cisco news release.  A range of “critical factors,” such as net neutrality policies, infrastructure investments, consumer response to new pricing models, and technology adoption, are examined with an eye towards elaborating how they “might play out.”

“We can’t predict the future, but we do know that the Internet-related choices being made in 2010 will have long-term consequences—intended and unintended.  We hope these scenarios will foster a deeper strategic conversation in and across the technology and policy communities about the impact of today’s decisions tomorrow,”

It’s clear to the researchers that the next 2 billion Internet users will be very different than the two billion estimated Internet users globally today, a conclusion with broad ramifications throughout the Internet’s technological structure and economic/financial value chain.

“The next 2 or 3 billion Internet users will be mostly in emerging markets and very different from the first 2 billion; global business models and national policies will fail if they are based on old expectations of behavior, preferences, and success,” noted Enrique Rueda-Sabater, the report’s co-author and Cisco’s director of strategy and economics for emerging markets.

According to the agency, the average (mean and median) advertised download speed for U.S. residential
consumers is 7-8 Mb/s. But the mean actual speed consumers received was approximately 4 Mb/s and the
median actual speed was approximately 3 Mb/s.

The report also notes that U.S. Internet users generally fit one of four profiles. These range from utility
users who use the Internet primarily for basic news, communication and basic entertainment to advanced
users who consume large amounts of data and tend to use the highest quality voice video and other cutting
edge applications to. In between are “full media” users who are moderately heavy users of broadband and
who use high-quality voice, data, graphics and video, and “emerging multimedia” users who use some
video and graphical content but see the Internet primarily as a way to communicate and access news and
entertainment.

According to the executive summary, “80% of broadband use falls into three of these profiles, which
require actual download speeds of no more than 4 Mb/s.” The report adds that the 4 Mb/s target
is “intended to be a minimum level of service; it is not a limit on what speeds can be deployed.”

The report’s data about actual speeds was gathered by comScore from 200,000 machines representing a
cross-section of the U.S. Internet population, the report authors said.

The 4 Mb/s benchmark has created significant controversy within the industry. Many rural telecom advocates argue that the benchmark is inadequate for rural America, especially considering there appears to be a goal of 100 Mb/s for urban markets. Even with the FCC’s explanation, the 4 Mb/s benchmark does seem relatively low, given the insatiable demand for broadband services from urban and rural customers alike.

Among Comcast customers, intended on-demand viewing of fall TV series is significantly higher than that for the average prime time viewer.Here’s a breakout of survey respondents’ viewing preferences:

National Consumers Planned Viewing This Fall

• Live – 80%
• DVR – 41%
• Online – 17%
• On Demand – 16%
• Mobile – 1%

Comcast Customers Planned Viewing This Fall

• Live – 81%
• DVR – 32%
• On Demand – 30%
• Online – 18%
• Mobile – 1%

“Time-shifting has hit the mainstream and is changing the way people watch TV,” said Diana Kerekes, vice president of Entertainment Services, in a news release. “The results of our ‘TV Pulse Survey’ underscore more consumers are watching their favorite shows when and how they want to watch them.”

The data illustrates the growing importance of time shifted television and challenges service providers to ensure their video product can meet these expectations.

The connectivity center will include indoor lab and outdoor smart grid environments.

The goal of the connectivity center is to accelerate smart grid deployments by providing utilities and
wireless equipment manufacturers with a facility where they can have systems evaluated in what the center
operators call “near real world scenarios.”

“Almost all smart grid deployments involve a combination of private wireless communications transporting
a variety of legacy and advanced protocols for command and control of smart grid devices,” said Lockard
& White CEO Marc Lockard in the announcement.

Several electric cooperatives already have engaged the connectivity center to test various wireless
configurations for distribution automation and advanced metering infrastructure backhaul. In addition the
center is extending invitations to certain U.S. investor-owned utilities to visit the test facility and take part
in smart grid workshops.

This isn’t the first attempt to take back some broadband stimulus funding. There was an earlier attempt to remove $600 million, which initially passed the House, but not the Senate. Now the Senate has decided to remove the $300 million, which the House now has to approve. It’s quite the see-saw movement.

There were some newer companies among the winners as well, including Utopian Wireless, who won nearly $8 million  to construct wireless networks in 10 markets across six states. And Vtel Wireless won a significant award — $116.8 million –  for an LTE network throughout Vermont and part of New York and New Hampshire.

The project winning the highest dollar amount in this announcement was West Kentucky Rural Telephone Cooperative Corporation, which won $123.8 million, just about 10% of the entire award announcement, for a fiber-to-the-home network in West Kentucky and West Tennessee.

A complete list of winners is available here.

Akamai released its findings in its “1st Quarter 2010 State of the Internet” report, which is the latest in a series of similar reports from Akamai. Many telecom industry stakeholders turn to the Akamai reports for broadband connectivity statistics, which are based on data collected on an IP address basis from the company’s Internet content delivery and security infrastructure.

This quarter for the first time the State of the Internet report includes data about average maximum connection speeds, which researchers said is “more representative of the capability of many end-user Internet connections.” The overall average maximum connection speed in the U.S. was 16 Mb/s for the first quarter of 2010, according to Akamai researchers. All but three states (Wyoming, Arkansas and Idaho) recorded average maximum connection speeds above 10 Mb/s.

The latest data collected by Parks finds that 13% of households are familiar with 3DTV, up from 10% a quarter ago, and that, in some cases, 48% of them are willing to pay for 3D content– that given they have access to a wide enough range of content, including movies and TV shows, according to a news release.

“Efforts such as the ESPN 3D broadcast of the 2010 World Cup are great experiments and effective in building awareness of the technology, but they have not resulted in extraordinary 3D TV sales,” said Pietro Macchiarella, a Parks research analyst. “As content and service providers launch new 3D channels and Blu-ray discs, consumers will start to see more value in this technology, and shipments will increase as a result.” The availability of 3D movies sparked the most interest from those surveyed: “1/3 or fewer of consumers are willing to pay for 3D for TV shows and sporting events, but nearly 1/2 are willing to pay for 3D movies,” according to Parks. “Hollywood’s push to increase its 3D production benefits consumer awareness of the 3D experience and stimulates interest in bringing it to the living room,” Macchiarella said.

Trends in 3D tend to focus on television, but there are other forms as well. Some analysts point to potential for 3D games for broadband connected game consoles and 3D content delivered via the Internet to PCs and tablets. Indeed, the move to 3D will be a trend to watch. It has significant implications on bandwidth demand for your network.

CEI has built a strong regional presence over the past twenty-five years. We intend to inject the full complement of our resources to strengthen CEI’s efforts, now a part of Finley Engineering. “Our philosophy of working very closely with our clients fits very well with Finley’s philosophy of national resources with local presence. We look forward to providing those additional resources from our Springfield office,” said Charlie Watts, General Manager of the Springfield office.  Charlie will continue to lead our efforts there.