Hasta La Gadget!

You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.

Comments

China has been reporting some serious growth in its ability to provide broadband service to its people as not only did they add 51 million new Internet users in 2012, but they’ve also announced a new policy that would demand all new residences be equipped with fiber network connections starting April 1.

In addition to expanding their residential broadband coverage, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology plans to expand their fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) connections to support 35 million households in 2013. This move will give over 70 percent of Chinese residences 4M broadband connections or faster. Ultimately, China plans to make broadband Internet available to 250 million users by 2015, which we’re sure they’ll reach that mark if they continue their current rate of growth.

By the end of the year, China expects to have 180,000 new 3G base stations and 1.3 million Wi-Fi hotspots. Meanwhile, here in the U.S., some cable companies believe they shouldn’t be offering better Internet service due to the belief their customers don’t want it.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Woman Allows Internet To Name Her Baby For $5,000, Google Testing New Navigation Grid To Replace Black Bar Eyesore,

As odd as it may seem, Cuba is working its way into headlines today. We’re hearing reports that Cuba has finally fired up its underwater fiber optic cable that stretches all the way to Venezuela, perhaps giving some residents their first taste of fiber optic Internet. The report comes from Internet tracking company Renesys, which says that in recent days, Cuba’s ping times have been improving.

That improvement in latency could be explained by the activation of the line, with Renesys pointing out that Telefonica recently began providing Internet service to Cuba. More specifically, Telefonica began providing service to ETECSA, Cuba’s state-run communications company, on January 14. That is the date Renesys thinks the ALBA-1 cable, which has been finished and ready for prime time since 2011, was turned on.

Interestingly enough, the findings suggest that the cable is only accepting traffic in one direction for the time being. It seems that Cuba is receiving traffic through the cable, but outgoing traffic is still sent through the island’s slower satellite Internet service. It’s also worth pointing out that latencies still aren’t where they should be, as Renesys says that routing speeds could still be much better, despite the fact that they’ve improved thanks to Telefonica’s service.

So, while we haven’t heard anything official about the line, it’s at least somewhat likely that the cable is enjoying some traffic. Unfortunately, the line wouldn’t be too much use to most residents of Cuba, as unrestricted access to the Internet is a rarity there. We’ll be keeping an ear to ground for more on this, so stay tuned.

Cuba reportedly fires up underwater fiber optic cable for first time is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

While China is demanding new residences have fiber-optic connections starting April 1, 2013, here in the U.S. we’re still struggling to make our Internet speeds as good as they are in other countries, including China. If you want gigabit internet speeds, then you’ll have to move to Kansas City where Google Fiber is currently supplying gigabit speeds to residents who choose to use the service. That’s not good enough for FCC Chairman Julius Genachoski as he has issued a challenge that could bring gigabit internet by 2015.

Genachoski has issued the “Gigabit City Challenge” where he would like all 50 states in the U.S. have at least one gigabit community by 2015. He’s hoping this challenge will help spark more communities to adopt gigabit internet, which would result in the development of “next-generation applications and services that will drive economic growth and global competitiveness.”

According to the FCC, there are currently 42 communities across 14 states with fiber-based internet, which is certainly a good start. But 14 states out of 50 in total still isn’t even half of the country, which is staggering considering just how much people rely on the Internet these days.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Chrome 25 Now Supports SSL By Default, Opera Unveils New “Ice” Mobile Web Browser,

I know hordes of Internet geeks out there like me were hoping that Google would roll out its insanely fast gigabit Google Fiber Internet service all around the country. I’ve been wishing that Google had plans to make the service widely available after it saw how successful it was within Kansas City. However, new details have surfaced that all but rule out a broad rollout of their crazy-fast Internet speeds – at least any time soon.

According to a report from Business Insider, Telco analyst Jason Armstrong of Goldman Sachs published a note estimating it would cost Google nearly $140 billion or more to deploy its epically fast Google Fiber service to the entire United States. If Google chose to target only major metropolitan areas in the US, the price would be a slightly more modest $70 billion.

Google is certainly worth a lot of money, but the search giant has under $45 billion in cash on hand. That’s a far cry from the $70 billion mark needed to service major metropolitan areas. Unless it takes many, many years to build out the network, Google would need some large partners or a massive loan to equip any significant portion of the country outside of Kansas City with Google Fiber service.

The report estimates that if Google were to go a more conservative route, spending about 25% of their annual $4.5 billion Cap Ex on the project, they could roll out the service to only about 830,000 homes per year, or 0.7% of US households. At that rate, they wouldn’t be able to cover the whole country for about 142 years.

[via BGR]