Category Archives: Telecommunications

Internet more affordable and widespread, but world’s poorest still shut off from online opportunities: ITU

[news release] The cost of Internet services has inched downward across the globe in 2022, according to Facts and Figures, the annual worldwide overview on the state of digital connectivity from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

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Analysis: European telcos set to win fight with Big Tech, could set global agenda

European telecoms providers are set to win their decade-long fight to make Big Tech pay for network costs, thanks to sympathetic EU regulators and the bloc’s efforts to rein in U.S. tech giants, according to industry and regulatory sources, in the EU’s strongest move yet to set a global standard.

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Did internet speed impact exposure to COVID-19?

When the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a global pandemic in March 2020, slightly more than half of the world’s citizens had access to the internet. Connectivity allowed many people to work, receive services, and socialize without physical contact—a key factor in limiting the virus’s spread. Did people with internet access, then, benefit from reduced exposure to COVID-19?

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Big Tech should share Europe network costs, France, Italy and Spain say

France, Italy and Spain are stepping up pressure on the European Commission to come up with legislation that ensures Big Tech firms partly finance telecoms infrastructure in the bloc, a document showed on Monday.

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Preserving the Internet by Vinton G. Cerf

The Internet has become a global, complex, layered, and increasingly indispensable ecosystem. For purposes of this column, “Internet” includes the underlying digital transport infrastructure including subsea and land-based fiber and cable, orbiting satellites, the networks of routers, the Domain Name System, datacenters and their networks, edge devices of all kinds (laptops, desktops, pads, smartphones, Internet-enabled devices, and sensors), the World Wide Web, content distribution systems and, for all I know, the kitchen sink.

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Australia installs first space laser optical ground station in southern hemisphere

Recently, my colleagues and I swung a half-tonne telescope onto the roof of the physics building at the University of Western Australia.

For a tense moment, my career hung from a crane hook.

The telescope is the first of its kind in the southern hemisphere and represents a new generation of space communications using lasers.

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Undersea cables bring Pacific nations online, but there are concerns China is trying to tap in

Across the Pacific, undersea cables weave between island nations, bringing them online and, in some cases, connecting them to Australia, but some governments fear this interconnectivity comes with risk.

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