Holy disruption, Batman! Tech upstarts threaten TV broadcast model | Reuters

Tech upstarts threaten TV broadcast model | Reuters

Around the time television began to reach most U.S. homes in the 1940s and 1950s, cable TV came into being with CATV (Community Antenna Television), using a single large antenna to pull in and pipe weak, distant TV signals via cable into communities at the fuzzy, snowy edges of metro area TV broadcast signals.

Now just as it has distributed broadcast radio from all over the globe for the past decade and longer, the Internet is becoming a global CATV of sorts, capturing broadcast signals over thousands of antennas, according to this Reuters dispatch.  

This poses a major disruptive threat to the business models of paid cable TV and satellite featuring packages of hundreds of channels. Not to mention over the air TV broadcasters that have invested large sums to upgrade to digital TV broadcast equipment and transmitters with the end of analog TV broadcasts.

As the late mass communications theorist Marshall McLuhan wrote of television in its 1964 heyday, "The medium is the message." Now that medium is no longer TV.  It's the Internet.

Google testing white spaces cloud in South Africa

Memeburn has the story here involving the test involving the Tertiary Education and Research Network of South Africa (TENET).

The test is delivering connectivity comparable to basic Wi-Fi (2.5Mbps) to 10 schools, according to the story.

Google to Offer Internet Service in Olathe, Kansas - WSJ.com

Google to Offer Internet Service in Olathe, Kansas - WSJ.com: Google hopes its fiber initiative can put pressure on cable and phone companies to improve their networks as Americans use more bandwidth for online-video services such as Google's YouTube, among other sites.

Nonsense. Even assuming the truth of this purported rationale, Google can apply pressure all it wants, but for these publicly traded, investor owned Internet service providers -- Google included -- the real pressure is the pressure to produce quarterly earnings plus in the case of the incumbent telcos and cablecos, generous dividends.  And that imperative will always win out over CAPex to improve and build out network infrastructure.

Broadband 'black spots' across UK - Yahoo! News UK

Broadband 'black spots' across UK - Yahoo! News UK: Britons living in rural areas are stuck in "digital ghettos", an expert has warned as figures showed average broadband speeds have more than trebled in the UK.

These now reach 12 megabits per second (Mbps) - around three times the speeds recorded in 2008 and up by a third in the six months from May to November.

But "black spots" still exist across the country and users face a "postcode lottery" in terms of the service they receive, it was claimed.

More than three years ago, Prince Charles warned of the emergence of UK "broadband deserts."  Apparently he was right. 

IP may be in the "telephone" system, but many premises still only served by POTS

How the Humble Telephone Is About to Bring Internet to the Masses (Again) - NationalJournal.com: You aren’t going to wake up one morning and find every home connected to Verizon FiOS. In fact, even after the IP transition, many houses are still going to be connected to their local switch by copper.

Indeed they are.  The last mile (or more properly the first mile) often lacks the infrastructure to deliver IP-based services, leaving many American homes to Plain Old Telephone Services (POTS) that has been around for decades.  And two percent/6 million Americans involuntarily left off the Internet grid?  That seems an awfully low number given a 2012 U.S. Federal Communications Commission estimate putting the number at nearly 20 million Americans.

Online-Only TV Shows Join Fight for Attention - NYTimes.com

Online-Only TV Shows Join Fight for Attention - NYTimes.com: The companies are, in effect, creating new networks for television through broadband pipes and also giving rise to new rivalries — among one another, as between Amazon and Netflix, and with the big but vulnerable broadcast networks as well.

As Marshall McLuhan famously said, "the medium is the message."  And the medium is fiber to the premise.

Georgia House Defeats Bill to Ban Municipal Broadband Networks | News & Opinion | PCMag.com

Georgia House Defeats Bill to Ban Municipal Broadband Networks | News & Opinion | PCMag.com

Market failure and the pointless exercise of "broadband mapping" is finally starting to give way to progress.  It's about time.

Australians Without Broadband Call For Changes To NBN | Internet

Australians Without Broadband Call For Changes To NBN | Internet: Experts have blamed Telstra for failing to upgrade creaking infrastructure because the NBN will limit the return it can get on its investment. Meanwhile many of those without broadband face over three years on dialup or expensive and patchy wireless plans as they are not part of the early NBN rollout.

At least the Aussies can claim they have active construction underway to build fiber to the premise infrastructure -- albeit not fast enough for areas that must still rely on early 1990s era dial up over twisted copper pair and data capped mobile wireless service.  The United States does not: only the travesty of a "national broadband plan" that exists on paper only.  There, the wait to get off dial up may take even longer than for the folks down under unless American communities take the initiative to build their own community fiber networks.