George Ou
Latest from George Ou
Wireless Data Adoption Up, but Prices Down
The CTIA has released its survey results for 2010 (Year-End 2010 Top-Line Survey Results PDF). The survey has some of the most comprehensive data on the wireless industry as it covers 95.5% of all wireless subscribers in the country so it should be a valuable resource for analysts. Here are some of the more interesting ...
Comodo Compromise Demonstrates Need for DNSSec Migration
Comodo, a company you probably never heard of which holds one of the many master keys to the Internet’s SSL X.509 Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) system, admitted that their root certificate authorities have been compromised by attackers. Those attackers issued themselves SSL certificates for seven companies including Google, Skype, and Yahoo so they can fully masquerade ...
Google the Long Distance Phone Company
In a newly announced partnership with Sprint, Google potentially stands to gain 50 million US customers for its web integrated voice service, voice mail, and long distance calling. In the context of Google’s growing dominance in smartphones with Android OS, Google is shaping up to be a significant player in the phone market. [Cross-posted at Digital Society]
How to Recover 254 MHz of Radio Spectrum
Wireless technologies and available radio spectrum are a crucial component of our national broadband plan, and it is critical that we can find 300-500 MHz of spectrum between the 300 to 3700 MHz frequency bands. That requires getting existing spectrum users to be more efficient and give up some of the currently wasted bandwidth, and one ...
Twitter Adds HTTPS Mode, but No HTTPS Sign-in
Twitter is responding to mounting pressure after some high profile account compromises by allowing customers to opt-in to always-on secure HTTPS SSL mode. Unfortunately, I doubt most people will go to the trouble of opting in by going to the security settings. Since HTTPS is virtually cost-free to operate continuously for websites that already support ...
The Insignificance of a 250 GB Usage Cap
Now that AT&T is following the footsteps of Comcast by instituting a 250 GB per month usage cap on their broadband service (150 GB for slower DSL customers), some of the concern that we are hearing isn’t justified once we examine the facts. These caps are large enough that they are irrelevant to 98% of the ...
A Clear Example of Why Broadband Transparency is Crucial
When it comes to wireless broadband services, the economics dictate some tough trade-offs for the benefit of mobility and wider coverage. The wireless towers can cost several hundred thousand dollars in equipment and several hundred thousands more for the land to install the tower. Then there’s the cost of back-haul connectivity and the radio spectrum licensing which all has ...
New speedtest.net Lets Users Save Test Data
Ookla, the company behind the popular speedtest.net broadband performance testing service, has released a new edition of the service this week with a few new features. The already useful service is now even more useful with user accounts that allow users to save and share their test history data which is extremely useful for performance ...
Google and AT&T Agree on Junking Old Phone System
Pigs have apparently begun to fly as Google and AT&T seem to agree on something. Both companies expressed a desire to get rid of the legacy analog phone network so in December 2009, AT&T wrote a letter to the FCC advocating the abandonment of the old telephone system. Google is adding a feature to their Google Voice software that ...
Netflix Streaming isn’t a Substitute for Subscription TV
A number of media pundits like Cecilia Kang are all over this notion that Netflix is somehow the biggest threat to the cable and telephone companies when the facts simply don’t support that theory, at least not for the foreseeable future. That’s because Netflix does not provide a substitutable service for Multichannel Video Programming Distributors (MVPD) services ...