George Ou
Latest from George Ou
Netflix is Good for Broadband Providers Under Free Market
The CEO of Comcast turned some heads today when he had some nice words to say about Netflix being good for his business. Conventional wisdom seems to be that Netflix is not only a bandwidth hog that clogs the broadband provider’s infrastructure, but that it also competes with the broadband providers’ TV business. The reality ...
High Profile Support for AT&T T-Mobile Merger
The New York Times reports that large industry players and companies like Microsoft, Research In Motion (makers of Blackberry), Qualcomm, Facebook, Yahoo, Oracle, and 10 major Venture Capital firms are backing the merger between AT&T and T-Mobile. GeekWire also posted a copy of their letter in support. It is notable that this group has traditionally ...
A Rational Discussion of Cell Phones and Towers
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a division of the World Health Organization (WHO) has classified cell phones as a possible carcinogen. This new classification has resulted in a number of alarming news headlines, but the new IARC classification needs to be put into context. The IARC has not done any new studies, they ...
Is Sprint Hypocritcal on Spectrum Hoarding?
Large carriers like AT&T have frequently been accused of spectrum hoarding. In AT&T’s case, critics base their claims on the fact that the company has one of the largest holdings of spectrum of any wireless carrier. One of the is Sprint. Yet based on data from Bernstein Research, AT&T owns the fewest MHz of spectrum ...
Skype to Kill Asterisk VoIP Integration
There are reports that Skype will no longer license Asterisk integration after June 26 2011. Asterisk is one of the most popular open source software platforms for Voice over IP (VoIP) communications. Asterisk runs on commodity computers or purpose built hardware acting as a Private Branch Exchange (PBX) which serves as a centralized phone controller ...
99% of Google Android Devices Vulnerable
Google’s ClientLogin Application Programming Interface (API) has been found to be insecure by researchers from Germany’s University of Ulm. This means that most Google Android phones leak temporary user authentication credentials called “AuthTokens” which are valid for 14 day periods. The leak occurs because AuthTokens are transmitted without any encryption in Google Android prior to ...
New Netflix Settings Manage Bandwidth Caps
Netflix has added some manual control features to the quality of Netflix video streams for Canadian customers who want to stay within their usage caps. To see how this might apply to some US broadband plans with 250 GB or 150 GB usage caps, I’ve generated the following table for daily and monthly allowances. The ...
Intel Launches 25 Nanometer Era with New SSDs
Intel launched their new 320 series line of Solid State Storage (SSD) 2.5 inch drives built on the latest 25 nanometer (nm) manufacturing process (Intel Press Release). The new SSD drives bring double the capacity, double the sequential write speeds to 220 megabytes per second (MB/sec), and lower prices per GB. Note that the sequential ...
Bad Journalism on Alleged AT&T Metering Problems
After some people in a discussion forum raised the possibility that AT&T’s new broadband usage meters may be inaccurate, Karl Bode of DSL Reports reported the complaints and then checked with AT&T representatives. AT&T responded to Bode with the following statement. “We’re happy to work one-on-one with any of your readers to walk through the ...
Spectrum Hoarding Cannot Justify TV Spectrum Waste
Dennis Wharton of the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) is irked by the wireless industry comments to eliminate spectrum waste and he wants to draw attention to the wireless industry’s own dirty laundry. Wharton points out that Dish Network and Time Warner Cable might be hoarding some of their auctioned spectrum to speculate on future ...