Hasta La Gadget!

Europe’s already extensive broadband coverage may be expanding even further, now that Eutelsat’s Ka-Sat satellite has officially gone into service. The new craft, which launched from Kazakhstan in late December, uses spotbeam technology to generate areas of connectivity that are about 250 kilometers wide, with each beam carrying a total capacity of 900Mbps. Unlike the Hylas 1, its reach will extend far across the continent, providing Tooway’s high-bandwidth services to 13 million households in remote locations. Subscribers will have download speeds of up to 10Mbps and upload rates of 4Mbps, though they’ll still have to put up with latency on the order of 250ms, making life even more difficult for Eastern European OnLive gamers. Of course, this access won’t come for free, but Ka-Sat’s 82-beam network structure significantly lowers its operating costs, allowing Eutelsat to offer prices that are on par with market rates. According to company CEO Michel de Rosen, customers should expect to pay around €30 for basic service, in addition to €250 they’d have to spend on a 77cm satellite dish. That’s not necessarily a small amount of cash for low-income families to fork over, but at least they’ll have an option that didn’t exist before. Head past the break for a video about Tooway’s Ka-Sat services, along with a full PR.

Continue reading Eutelsat’s Ka-Sat satellite goes into service, provides broadband to 13 million homes across Europe

Eutelsat’s Ka-Sat satellite goes into service, provides broadband to 13 million homes across Europe originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 May 2011 11:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve repeatedly hammered Time Warner Cable (and its big-cable cronies) for crying to the North Carolina legislature about municipal broadband. TWC claims it can’t compete with taxpayer-backed ISPs such as Wilson, NC’s Greenlight — and that it shouldn’t have to. In fact, Greenlight and four other municipal providers came about specifically because corporate players refused to provide inexpensive, fast broadband. And now that local governments have proven they can provide it, the cable companies have cried foul, pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into select political pockets all the while. That’s the drama so far, and now a bill restricting municipal broadband — mandating that providers pay taxes similar to private companies, for example — has landed on the desk of Governor Bev Perdue. She won’t veto the bill, meaning it will soon become a law; for whatever it’s worth (read: not much), she also refuses to sign it. The reason? Here it is from the horse’s mouth:

I will neither sign nor veto this bill. Instead, I call on the General Assembly to revisit this issue and adopt rules that not only promote fairness but also allow for the greatest number of high quality and affordable broadband options for consumers.

The legislation strikes a blow against public ISPs in a country that ranks ninth in the world for broadband adoption and download speeds. And that, apparently, is what “fair competition” looks like in the US.

[Image courtesy of IndyWeek]

NC governor will let cable-backed bill restricting municipal broadband become law originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 22 May 2011 02:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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GigaOM got to peek inside AT&T’s Foundry innovation center in Texas this week, and the tour came with a special treat — a first glimpse at how AT&T’s upcoming LTE network might perform when the carrier flips the switch later this year. Where Verizon’s existing network promises download speeds of between 5 and 12 megabits per second (though we’ve gotten far better and worse in practice), the publication witnessed a connection with 28.87Mbps download and 10.4Mbps upload speeds, using a MIMO antenna passing bits through both 700MHz and AWS frequencies. “But,” you protest, “isn’t LTE capable of more?” Sure, but an AT&T executive told the publication that these were meant to be real-world numbers. Still, considering all the factors and where the test was held, it’s probably best to break out the table salt for now.

AT&T demos speedy LTE, calls 28.8Mbps downloads realistic for real people originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 May 2011 19:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The FCC may be sticking with its target of 4Mbps broadband for everyone in the United States, but it looks like the CRTC thinks Canada can do one (megabit) better. The regulatory agency has just set its own target of 5Mbps download speeds and 1 Mbps upload speeds for all Canadians — a goal that it says must be met by 2015. Those speeds, the agency notes, must be actual speeds not advertised ones, although it’s not yet going as far as to declare internet access a basic service to ensure that happens. The CRTC says instead that it prefers to rely on “market forces” for the time being, rather than subsidies that would come with such a declaration. Of course, while 5Mbps is faster than the FCC’s target, it’s still well short of some of the more ambitious broadband goals of other countries around the world — Finland, for instance, has already declared that 1Mbps broadband a legal right and is promising to bring 100Mbps speeds to everyone by 2015.

CRTC sets target of 5Mbps broadband for all Canadians by 2015 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 04 May 2011 18:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tomorrow is May 2nd, 2011, and you know what that means — tomorrow is the day that AT&T will impose data caps on DSL and U-Verse Internet, and begin tallying up overage fees. At least, that was the plan on March 18th — when the company formally announced 150GB DSL and 250GB U-Verse caps — but even if you’re a paying customer who chows down several hundred gigabytes in a month, you may not have to worry about paying extra right away. AT&T specified that folks like yourself will have access to an online tool to self-police your usage before the company even begins to calculate the cost of your formerly all-you-can-eat bandwidth buffet, and as you can see in the picture above, the tool isn’t quite ready for public consumption across the entire country. Scoot on over to our source link, enter your AT&T ID, and if you see the same, perhaps you won’t have to cancel your 700-hour Star Trek marathon quite yet.

PSA: AT&T DSL and U-Verse landline internet caps begin tomorrow, if you can see this website originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 01 May 2011 13:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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