Archive for November, 2010

The blogosphere has been buzzing since last night, with all manner of “experts” offering opinions about the dispute between Comcast and Level 3 over their commercial arrangement for the exchange of Internet traffic.  While I am a bit hesitant to add to the ruckus, I think it is important to refute the misguided notion that this business dispute is really a “net neutrality” problem that can and should be solved by federal regulation.

Recently, Hank Hultquist of AT&T posted some interesting food for thought on the evolution of voice services.  His general premise is that the traditional public switched telephone network (PSTN) is as outdated and old-fashioned in the telecom world as the Edsel is in the automotive realm.  Instead, we are moving to a world where voice service will be merely another application riding on a “broadband autobahn” of Internet protocol (IP) networks, and these IP networks will seamlessly interconnect without the need for pesky rules or government intervention.

Last week, the Internet Engineering Task Force (i.e. the “IETF”) held their meeting in Beijing, China.  The IETF’s mission is “to make the Internet work better by producing high quality, relevant technical documents that influence the way people design, use, and manage the Internet.”   As the Internet is global, the IETF meets three times a year at various locations around the world.

It’s that time of the year again to submit your white paper abstracts for The 2011 Spring Technical Forum.  The Cable Connection – Spring Technical Forum is an cable industry summit for technology and engineering leaders, hosted by the collaborative efforts between NCTA, SCTE and CableLabs®.

Online safety and Internet literacy are still a big challenge for many broadband users.  Cable ISPs and content providers have acknowledged this for some time and worked to address the issue in a lot of ways.