News roundup March 2017

A final roundup of March’s broadband news and developments:

• Akamai published its State of the Internet report for Q4 2016: global average connection speed increased 12% to 7.0 Mbps in the fourth quarter, a 26% increase year over year. Average mobile connection speeds ranged from a high of 26.8 Mbps in the United Kingdom to a low of 2.9 Mbps in Venezuela.
• Ars Technica reported that more people in the US now subscribe to Netflix than have a digital video recorder (DVR) in their households, underlining how TV content is increasingly being watched on non-TV devices: 54% of US adults report they have Netflix in their households compared to the 53% of US adults that have a DVR.
• NCTA – The Internet & Television Association reported that the average price per megabit has decreased by 90% over the last decade as broadband speeds have increased.
• The United Nations Broadband Commission for Digital Development called for innovative industry collaboration and new public-private partnership models to spur the roll-out of broadband around the world. Currently, some 5 billion people are without mobile broadband access, holding back progress towards the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
• The House of Lords Communications Committee published Growing up with the Internet, a new report calling for the Government to establish a Children’s Digital Champion to ensure coordinated and sustained action from Ministers across all departments and to present robust advocacy on behalf of children to industry. According to the report, the internet does not take sufficient account of the fact that the needs of children are different to those of adults, and the current regime of self–regulation is underperforming.
• Network World reported that Dutch researchers have demonstrated a wireless network based on infrared rays that can move data at speeds of 42.8Gbit/s.
• Telecompaper reported that Nokia and Facebook have successfully completed of a series of field trials of new optical digital signal processing technologies over a 5,500 kilometre transatlantic subsea link between New York and Ireland. Tests showed an increase of almost 2.5x more capacity than the stated optical transmission capacity of the system.
• ZDnet reported that a new subsea cable between Australia and New Zealand has been switched on by Telstra, Spark and Vodafone: The $100 million 2,288km submarine cable extends from Ngarunui Beach in Raglan to Narrabeen Beach in Sydney and is made up of two fibre pairs with a total capacity of 20Tbit/s.
• Google Fibre published a Community Impact Report illustrating how the programme has improved broadband access and supported local communities in the cities where the service has been deployed.
• The White House announced that Charter Communications is planning to invest $25 billion in US broadband infrastructure and technology in the next four years (more here).
• The Financial Times suggested that the likely removal of a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulation limiting the freedom of cable a telecoms companies to trade personal customer data to advertisers is a foretaste of how US net neutrality regulations are likely to be rolled back.
• Ofcom confirmed its priorities for 2017/18; major work includes continuing to implement the conclusions from its Strategic Review of Digital Communications and awarding further mobile spectrum (2.3GHz and 3.4GHz bands) to help meet the growing demand for mobile services.