My Thoughts on Technology and Jamaica: Verizon, NEC and the Dawn of the Terabit Age - Audia's FlashDance and Surf's Up

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Verizon, NEC and the Dawn of the Terabit Age - Audia's FlashDance and Surf's Up

Fortune favours the bold
(Audentis fortuna juvat)

Virgil, Aeneod, X

Looks like people in Jamaica making less phone calls and eating less pork. So says the article “CB to spend JA$400 to get more pork eaters”, published Wednesday, April 06, 2011, The Jamaica Observer, The Jamaica Observer, and the article “Mobile competition pushed up subscribers, but revenue fell”, published Wednesday, April 06, 2011, The Jamaica Observer.

Something my deceased SDA Star Wars princess Audia Granston would cheer about, being neither fond of or having any love for pigs as she would FlashDance (1983) for me, Irena Cara Flashdance Style!

The “less phone calls” bit is a slight bit of over-simplification, as it is really a reduction in earnings across the board for all three (3) Telecom Providers by 21.2% with the Telecom Providers raking in JA$7.2 billion between March 2010 to March 2011.

This reduction was chronicled by the OUR (Office of Utilities Regulation) in their Quarterly Report which is odd, as there was a 9.3% increase in the subscriber base, now standing at two million nine hundred and seventy thousand (2,970,000) subscribers. Guess people are finally getting wind of the fact that Cross-Network Calling costs are ridiculous!

This is evident by the only bright spot in the OUR’s Quarterly Report: SMS and On-Net Calling. SMS (Short Messaging Service) saw a 63% year on year increase in mobile and the 40% year on year increase in On-Net Calling, an indication of an ongoing Recession with Jamaicans exercising their options to reduce their spending on Mobile Services.

People, depressing stuff in Jamaica: Economy now stable, but growth stagnant.

So if the whole world is still gripped in a Recession on the eve of Senator Barack Obama’s declaration of his interest in a second term as stated in my blog articles entitled “Obama and Dr. Pell's Moon Enterprise - Fly Me To the Moon, I'll Drink to That”, why is Telecom Provider Verizon and NEC planning to increase Internet speeds and capacity even further?

So says the article by Stacey Higginbotham of GigaOM entitled “Go, Go Verizon! Carrier and NEC tests a Terabit Backbone”, published April 5, 2011, 11:45am PT by Stacey Higginbotham, GigaOM.

Telecom Provider Verizon Customers, bow down and worship Telecom Provider Verizon!!

This by the way, for the record, is the same Stacey Higginbotham of GigaOM  that broke the story of a company called Infinera that had developed a 1Tb Router or MGW (Media Gateway) that could handle Terabit speeds as stated in the article “The Terabit Age is almost upon Us”, published March 10, 2011, 2:00pm PT by Stacey Higginbotham, GigaOM.

Obvious this was a toy for the Telecom Providers to deliver more bandwidth. So I must admit, I had not paid it much mind, as it appeared but a technical signpost of a coming improvement in long-haul Fiber Optic Network Capacity upgrade technology that Telecom Providers that own Undersea Fiber Optic Cables would eventually implement.

Telecom Provider Verizon had finally unveiled a 100MBps Network in 2010 as stated in the article “Verizon intros 150MBps Broadband on Fios”, published November 22, 2010 3:31 PM PST by Marguerite Reardon, CNET News - Signal Strength, CNET News. My blog articles entitled “Digicel and WiMaX 4G Mobile - Sprint, My Brother's Keeper”, expressed my surprise at Telecom Provider Verizon offering of 100MBps speeds.

I am still surprised at Telecom Provider Verizon FiOS offering by the way. US149 for a thirty (30) Day subscription is pretty hefty at the time, but the price may seem a small sacrifice for those geeks desiring faster Internet.

Especially after initially saying that they did not foresee a demand for such speeds any time soon from customers as stated in the article “Verizon demos 1GBps FIOS connection”, published August 16, 2010 2:55 PM PDT by Marguerite Reardon, CNET News - Signal Strength, CNET News.

Again possibly speculation on Telecom Provider Verizon part due to the Recession-riddled Economy and customer reluctance to buy into higher Speed FiOS Broadband.

So just like I had asked the question initially as to why Triple Play Provider FLOW was pushing the 100MBps envelope as stated in my blog articles entitled “FLOW and 100MBps Wired Broadband - Gossip Girl”, this push for terabit speeds in the tests conducted by Telecom Provider Verizon with NEC is exciting stuff.

Telecom Provider Verizon Customers, bow down and worship Telecom Provider Verizon!!

Consider this fact: Telecom Provider Verizon began testing 100MBps speeds in 2007 and rolled out the service in 2010, after Triple Play Provider FLOW had launched their 100MBps offering as noted in my blog articles entitled “Digicel and WiMaX 4G Mobile - Sprint, My Brother's Keeper”.

That was a span of three (3) years, folks!! Three (3) years!

So, if my math is right, should I start writing up an article for 1TBps Speeds by 2014?

After all, we haven’t even experienced 1Gbps speeds as yet, as Telecom Provider Verizon is yet to roll out this service, being as it was a part of their test back in August 2010 as stated in the article “Verizon demos 1GBps FIOS connection”, published August 16, 2010 2:55 PM PDT by Marguerite Reardon, CNET News - Signal Strength, CNET News.

Telecom Provider are anticipating making more money from M2M (Machine-to-Machine) services as  stated in my blog article entitled “AT&T, NFC and M2M - Cashless Society and the Internet of Things” and opined on Geezam Blog entitled “NFC and M2M - Cashless Society and the Internet of Things”.

True, “cord cutting” is on the rise, according to the statistics of Convergence Consulting Group, which projects the cord-cutting phenomenon at about two million seventy thousand (2,070,000) customer total from 2008 to the end of 2011 as stated in the article as stated in the article “Study: More TV viewers in U.S. 'cutting the cord'”, published April 6, 2011 9:00 AM PDT by Don Reisinger, The Digital Home - CNET News.

Though, measly, it is significant, as this Advertising and Marketing Consultant noted that it was the period 2008 to 2009 saw five hundred thousand (500,000) such folk, with another one million (1,000,000) households joining them in 2009 to 2010.  Thus 2010 to 2011 would add another five hundred and seventy thousand (570,000) customers to their ranks.

Not in any way impressive or significant in a Northerly neighbour of a population of nearly four hundred million (400,000,000) people, either

But I know of no other firm tracking these stats. So their full report at the end of the year while you are celebrating New Years in 2012 and gearing up for London Olympics 2012 would be a must-read for me.

Indeed, a very interesting read for me, having written a good number of articles predicting this phenomenon. Articles such as my blog article entitled “FLOW, IPTV and the coming of Net2Vu - Johnny Mnemonic” and my prior article entitled “Internet, Apple iTV and Cable - Pirates of the Caribbean”.

So I guess as with the case of Triple Play Provider FLOW going ape over elecom Provider CLARO’s as-yet-to-be-announced LTE (Long Term Evolution) Network and bumping up speeds to 100MBps as I had explained in my blog article entitled “LIME vs Digicel - The Truth About Charlie”, it seems the same is happening with Telecom Provider Verizon.

Just as, too, Triple Play Provider FLOW is swimming out to catch the first wave of the coming of the boom in Streaming as stated in my blog article entitled “FLOW, IPTV and the coming of Net2Vu - Johnny Mnemonic”, so too, this push for 1TB speeds by Telecom Provider Verizon with NEC in tow as their Telecom Equipment Supplier of choice may be their push out to catch some good waves, Surf's Up (2007), in this the Dawn of the Terabit Age!

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