Author: Tom Nolle

Cisco announced that it would support OpenFlow, the protocol that’s sometimes seen as the pathway to an open-source router market that could kill Cisco off.  The move only demonstrates how useless it is to read stuff these days!  In a neutrality-driven world with no settlement for QoS among ISPs and no regulatory basis for creating…

Google’s numbers for the quarter were very good, beating estimates and highlighting its mobile ad performance, but the company was short on details of how the earnings were derived.  My personal view is that Google is doing well with search and still working things out elsewhere.  Sure mobile is doing well, but it’s likely that…

Comcast’s ambitions attempt to create a network-view model at the earliest possible point in movie distribution, the same time a film is in theaters, has apparently been pulled back under a protest from studios.  The thought was to set the price high enough that people would have easily been able to get a better deal…

A ComScore report shows that traditional PCs still account for over 93% of online traffic, with mobile phones at about 5% and tablets the rest.  Among the appliances, Apple’s iOS devices represent most of the web traffic.  I think this is an interesting data point when you consider the evolution of the Internet and Internet…

Netflix has abandoned its plan to separate the streaming and DVD businesses, something that shareholders and the Street (not to mention customers) are sure to be happy with.  I’m not sure that this was as bad an idea as it seemed, though.  The problem with all the streaming players, as I’ve noted in prior blogs,…

There are signs that the networking industry is doing a bit more weaving and bobbing as it looks for a position that sustains revenue and profit growth.  One big item is the story that Sony is going to buy Ericsson out of their long-standing handset partnership.  The deal here, so the story goes, is that…

Apple’s iPhone 5 proved to be media hype; the company actually released only the also-rumored iPhone 4S.  While Apple fans were quick to get behind the more limited announcement, Wall Street took Apple’s shares down in disappointment over the failure of the company to do something revolutionary.  The 4S looks exactly like an iPhone 4,…

Europe continues to move toward a more radical telecom regulatory posture, with EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes proposing that the unbundled copper rates for operators who fail to develop credible FTTH plans be reduced.  The goal is to provide an incentive to move beyond the basic copper infrastructure, and making copper less profitable would seem a…

One of the recurring claims in the modern world of networking is that broadband and the Internet create jobs, improve overall health, education, etc.  The latest manifestation of that focuses on FTTH, and it was a recurring theme at BBWF.  The question is important because broadband in many areas depends on public-policy subsidization, and without…

Well, Amazon finally announced its tablet.  The event itself might have offered some clues because Apple would have done this in the Superdome and Amazon had something that looked more like a high-school auditorium. Bezos set the tone for the launch with a long praise-fest for the Kindle and the ebook and e-ink concept.  Then…