A research study conducted by the Insight Research Corporation suggests that between retail and corporate consumers, more than 37 billion dollars over the next 5 years will be spent with Carrier Ethernet providers. And, since almost major data carriers are already offering Ethernet services, the market should be growing at around a 25% compounded yearly rate from 2010 to 2015. This type of growth rate would result in increased spending from over $3 billion for 2010 to over $9 billion in 2015.

According to the report, demand for Ethernet in the US hasn’t seen a drop, even through the recent economic down-turn. The Ethernet report also predicts increased demand to peak sometime in 2011, where growth rates for for revenune should hit somewhere in the neighborhood of 29 percent on a compounding annual basis. Included Ethernet services are being described using many names including: Ethernet, GigE, Ethernet private line, virtual private LAN, Ethernet virtual private line, Gigabit Ethernet, Layer 2 – virtual private network, metro Ethernet, native LAN, and transparent LAN.

“The momentum behind sales retail business Ethernet services is being driven by a growing customer demand for bandwidth and the real advantages of Ethernet cost in terms of providing flexible bandwidth and scalability that is superior to many competitive services, “says Robert Rosenberg, president of Insight Research. “The driving force behind sales Wholesale Ethernet improves interoperability between operators greater confidence in emerging economies and newly adopted standards, and changes in more than carriers of a more favorable stance Wholesale “concluded Rosenberg.

AT&T [NYSE:T] acquires the wireless spectrum underlying FLO TV from Qualcomm [NASDAQ: QCOM] for $1.92 billion. The spectrum is in the Lower 700 MHz frequency band and spans more than 300 million consumers across the U.S. AT&T has plans to deploy this new spectrum to supplement their 4G mobile broadband network rollout, leveraging the additional capacity for rich media content. The expectation is for AT&T to begin deployment in the second half of 2011 as compatible network equipment and devices hit the market.

Qualcomm reportedly dropped $683 million to acquire the FLO TV spectrum, which encompasses 12 MHz of D and E block spectrum covering 70 million plus people in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City, Philadelphia and Boston, along with 6 MHz of D block spectrum that covers 230 million plus people across the rest of the U.S. As reported, Qualcomm has invested a total of approximately $800 million (including spectrum, network and marketing) to launch FLO TV, but less than 1 million customers have signed up for the service.

FLO TV offers both simulcast and time-shifted content from NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, MTV ESPN, CNN and others. Qualcomm first made public their plans to divest FLO TV in late July. Chairman and CEO Paul Jacobs said at the time the company was exploring “a number of alternatives” for the unit. Qualcomm will terminate their version of the FLO TV service March 27.

On Dec 15, 2010 Google announced they will be delaying their decision on which city or cities will get to sample its 1Gbps broadband network until early in 2011. They said the reason for this was that they simply had too many applicants.

Earlier this year Google announced its plans to begin construction of a fiber network to support Internet data at speeds of over 1 gigabit per second. That’s more than 100x faster than most current residential broadband connections, paving the way for much improved application delivery, especially in the video and gaming sectors.

Google intends to test an initial offering of this network for 50,000 to 500,000 people in the U.S. Google accepted volunteer bids from municipalities, triggering a frenzied competition for the initial free service release. Even politicians jumped into the action with almost reckless abandon to garner Google’s attention. The bidding was closed last March, but not before over 1,100 communities and 194,000 individuals had applied.

Initially, Google announced they were planning to announce their choice by the end of this year, but with only two weeks left in 2010, Google has yet to pick a community or communities. “While we’re moving ahead full steam on this project, we’re not quite ready to make that announcement,” said Milo Medin, Google’s new VP of Access Services. Medin went on to say, “We’re sorry for this delay, but we want to make sure we get this right.”

Google now expects to complete the selection process in early 2011.

This update comes almost 2 months after Google signed a deal with Stanford University to offer a broadband network supporting speeds of up to 1 Gbps for 850 homes owned by faculty and staff. This particular experiment is slated to begin in early 2011.

Google plans to deploy 1 Gbps fiber to a single community to test next-generation ad delivery and further illustrate the benefit of an open-access model.

Google claims to have received over 1,100 community applications along with almost 200,000 responses from individuals. Google’s plan to offer this service to such a limited number of test subjects (announced to be between 50,000 and 500,000), means there will be many unhappy entrants. Google has begun scheduling site visits to narrow down the choices and expect to choose the official test location by year’s end.

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Akamai (a leading content delivery network provider) announced average US broadband speed declined by 2.4% in the 3rd quarter of 2009 compared to the same quarter year prior. Delaware currently leads all US states with an average of 7.2 Mbps, although that is less than half that of South Korea where the average speed is almost 15 Mpbs. The US is currently in 18th place Worldwide with an average speed of 3.9 Mbps…behind Japan, Romania, Hong Kong, and Sweden among others.

[Via Read Write Web]

FCC chairman Julius Genachowski has made it clear in the past that he see’s a need for universal broadband. In his remarks at the NARUC conference (PDF) yesterday, Genachowski offered even more specific thoughts on the subject, the mention of a ’100-Squared’ initiative probably being the most interesting. The plan would be to bring 100 mbps bandwidth to 100 million households across the US.

Limitations of current networks and technologies make 100 mbps an aggresive goal for wide-spread access in the US. To gain this level of access currently, consumers require access to DOCSIS 3.0 cable internet or a fiber network like Verizon’s FiOS service. The fact that these technologies aren’t widely available, along with the fact that end-user speeds vary greatly depending on where they are implemented is what makes this a truly aggressive goal.

In a related statement, Genachowski also touted Google’s plans for a gigabit fiber network as the sort of innovation that needs to be focussed on. This is just another example of the FCC publicly releasing more information about their US broadband adoption goals as we near the official announcement of the FCC’s National Broadband Plan, which is due to be presented next month.

Read the full story here.

AboveNet, Inc. (NYSE:ABVT), a leading provider of high bandwidth connectivity solutions, announced that it has linked its network with the New York metropolitan area colocation facilities of Telx, a leading interconnection and colocation provider in key North American markets.

February 17, 2010 – Supporting today’s explosive surge in bandwidth demand, AboveNet’s network opens up a new range of choices for companies that need ultra low latency connectivity for their mission-critical business and financial data applications. Now Telx’s New York area customers can leverage AboveNet’s high-speed links between Telx data centers and to hundreds of carrier and enterprise customers.

“Here in the world’s financial epicenter, companies including the leading capital markets firms have zero tolerance for network interruption, and they demand physical path diversity to ensure the highest reliability and lowest latency for their customers,” said Bill Kolman, Vice President of Sales for Telx. “AboveNet and Telx deliver this level of performance and offer customers the power of choice.”

“AboveNet has a proven track record of delivering highly scalable high bandwidth solutions to financial services, media and entertainment, and other enterprise companies,” said MaryBeth Nance, Executive Director of Business Development & Marketing at AboveNet. “Our customers can now extend into Telx’s colocation facilities in New Jersey, and source the best data center and fiber optic networking solutions to help them optimize key IT infrastructures.”

AboveNet’s fiber optic network connects Telx’s four primary New York metro area data centers at 111 8th Avenue, 60 Hudson Street in New York, 300 Boulevard East in Weehawken, N.J., and Telx’s newest facility at 100 Delawanna Avenue in Clifton, N.J., using diverse fiber routes with two separate Hudson River crossings.

AboveNet has also extended its dense metro optical network within the Telx suite at 100 Delawanna Avenue where it will establish a point of presence (PoP) for serving customers. This enables AboveNet’s customers to easily distribute applications or other critical infrastructure components to Telx’s Clifton, N.J. data center, and provides business continuity, disaster recovery and storage options for Telx’s New York-based customers.

About AboveNet, Inc.

AboveNet, Inc. provides high-bandwidth connectivity solutions for business and carriers. Its private optical network delivers key network and IP services in and among top U.S. metro markets and globally. AboveNet’s network is widely used in demanding markets such as financial services, media, health care, retail and government.

About Telx

Telx is the leading provider of interconnection, colocation and business exchange services in strategic, high demand North American markets. With 15 premier facilities, Telx increases speed to market and reduces connectivity costs by providing direct connections to the industry’s highest performance networks and access to more than 750 leading telecommunications carriers, ISPs, content providers and enterprises. Telx is a privately held company headquartered in New York City with four facilities in the New York Metro area, two facilities in Chicago, two facilities in Dallas, three facilities in California, (Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Clara) and facilities in Atlanta, Miami, Phoenix and Charlotte, N.C. For more information about Telx, visit www.telx.com.

[Via AboveNet]

In July of 2009, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University would be conducting an independent review of existing studies pertaining to broadband deployment and usage around the world.

The FCC’s mission for this project was to compile as much existing data as possible to help guide them in their efforts to develop the National Broadband Plan. The Berkman Center’s Final Report was submitted to the FCC on February 16, 2010.

A copy of the full report can be found here