Tag: ISP

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Romanian ISP to roll out $18 a Month Gigabit Fiber

1381245927--ofertaWell color me jealous… Again…

Not only are people in Kansas City lit up, folks in Austin will finally receive some actual competition, and Provo is about to flip the switch, but where else in the world will people get amazing fiber-optic-to-the-home internet connections?

Romania.

Romanian ISP RCS & RDS is rolling out new fiber and upgrading their backhaul. Not only will their customers have 500Mbps and 1Gbps tiers, the top service will only cost the equivalent of $18 a month. Yup. 1000Mbps data will cost less than one Andrew Jackson a month. Yikes… Kinda kicks that TWC “50 megs innernet” right in the junk…

(via Reddit)

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AT&T partners with The Trevor Project – ‘Love is Changing History’ films to be submitted to Library of Congress

jenny love making history trevor project film att pauley perrettTech as social awareness. I love it.

“Love is Changing History” is a new project headed up by AT&T built around sharing personal stories from the LGBTQ community. Two online films co-directed by Lance Bass and Pauley Perrette will be posted online and viewers will be encouraged to share the films, and their own experiences. All of this media will be collected and submitted to the Library of Congress.

We’re at a generational shift, and acceptance of the various gay and bisexual communities has opened the doors for some historic changes in social and political behavior. Now seems like an appropriate time to chronicle the human condition as society evolves.

For every person who shares one of the films, or the “Love is Changing History” website, AT&T will donate $1 to The Trevor Project, up to $100,000, to help fund their series of suicide prevention and crisis outreach centers for LGBTQ youth.

The first film ‘Jenny’ is already live (embedded below), and the next film ‘Two Dads’ is listed as “Coming Soon”.

The project is already tracking AT&T’s donations, and for more info, please check out:  http://www.loveischanginghistory.com/

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Google Fiber Lights Up Provo This Month

googe fiber provo video broadband comparisonHow excited are people for faster internet access? They’re lit up enough to be producing their own commercials.

No seriously, we could be looking at the beginnings of some real groundswell awareness here. The numbers are so huge, they’re difficult to visualize. Throughout most of California, the fastest service we might have access to is 50Mbps download and 6Mbps uploading, but my sustained data rates are usually lower than that. Right now, people are sharing Google Fiber speed tests which crush the best I can get. It’s not even close. I’m seeing downloads more than 20 times faster, and uploads 180 times faster.

Think about it every time you upload a photo on social media, or a video to YouTube. Would you want a 5Mbps data rate or a 900Mbps data rate? Think about every time you fire up Netflix while everyone else in your house is using their own smartphone or tablet or game console. Would you want “50 megs innernet” or 900 megs to feed all those glowing rectangles?

See those numbers start to get big, so the people of Provo shot this handy little video to help you visualize the differences between the service you spend a lot of money on, and the service Google offers for pretty much the same price.

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CBS & TWC mend fences in time for NFL season. CBS shows to air again tonight.

CBS Time Warner Cable agreement blackout somegadgetguy television distribution tvIn a move which I’m sure was shocking to no one, CBS and Time Warner found a way to set aside their insurmountable differences to work out an agreement JUST in time for the start of the NFL season. How fortuitous. I mean that’s just really good timing on their part.

CBS content should begin airing again for TWC subscribers starting tonight, around 6pm in fact. My DVR is very much looking forward to this reunification, and now I might finally find out how that Ted guy met the mother of his children.

In all seriousness however, details on the agreement are scarce, most likely to avoid any company overly losing face in the marketplace. This way both can turn to their customers and claim a victory.

This fight really has underscored a broader topic in telecommunications and media distribution. As networks pay more for content like airing NFL games, what rights and responsibilities do they have in broadcasting that content? To recoup their costs, where should they be allowed to display that content, and what influence should Cable and Satellite companies have over their ability to negotiate these deals? It’s a complicated dance.

We’ve seen a lot of consumer desire, especially among “cable cutters” to see offerings like HBO Go sold as a standalone web property like Netflix. Cable packages never brought us that dream of à la carte channel pricing, but a company like CBS might be able to make an end run around traditional distribution to serve customers directly. Though I’m sure Comcast, TWC, Verizon, etc loathe the idea of becoming “dumb pipes” to funnel competing content.

While I’m happy to have CBS back on my cable, this is just the beginning of a much larger conflict for viewers.

Is it weird to anyone else that both companies use an eye in their logo? Just me? Full CBS press release after the jump.

Continue reading “CBS & TWC mend fences in time for NFL season. CBS shows to air again tonight.”

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