Google Fiber, when are you coming to our town?

This blog post is an alternative, easier-to-follow, representation of an article on Mashable.com, How Does Your Internet Service Stack up to Google Fiber?

Property	AT&T	Comcast	Google	Time-Warner	Verizon
Name	Max Turbo Internet and U-verse U450 TV	Xfinity Extreme 105 Internet and Digital Premier TV	Gigabit + Fiber TV	Signature Home Package	FiOS 300 and Ultimate HD
Price/mo	$188	$180	$120	$199	$318
Internet access speed	24 Mbit/s down, 3 Mbit/s up	105 Mbit/s down, 10 Mbit/s up	1000 Mbit/s down, 1000 Mbit/s up	105 Mbit/s down, 10 Mbit/s up	300 Mbit/s down, 65 Mbit/s up
Monthly Data Cap	250 GB	300 GB	Infinite	60 GB	Infinite
Channels	430, incl. Cinemax, HBO	> 300, incl. AMC, ESPN, HBO, Showtime	162, incl. Showtime	350; premium extra	380, incl. ESPN, NFL RedZone, Showtime
DVRs, Recording	1, 4	1, 2	1, 8	1, 2	1, 2
DVR - hrs	65 HD	60 HD	500 HD	150 HD	60 HD
Availability	22 states	39 states, & Washington, DC	Kansas City, KS & Kansas City, MO	29 states	12 states, & Washington, DC

Do We Know What Net Neutrality is?

There has been so much misunderstanding about net neutrality in the press — you can sense it even in the transcript below — that I felt it appropriate to transcribe excerpts from an Eric Schmidt interview at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco recently. The logic provided by Eric Schmidt appeals to anyone's sense of what net neutrality should be.

In particular, the ability of a service provider to charge differently for different grades of service must be maintained. (Similar to First Class and Economy class on air flights).

[Aside. It is interesting to note that many of the noteworthy cloud-based services — e.g., AWS, Cisco Webex/Umi, Google Apps, Salesforce.com — work just fine, even though they are all delivered through "economy" class Internet access in the last mile. End of Aside].

The interview is conducted by John Battelle and Tim O'Reilly. The link for the net neutrality discussion portion, using 'start' and 'end' parameters, of the video is provided below:

Service Provider Network Evolution.

The transformation of Telecom Italia through what appears to be a central role of Metamuse's NetCool is incredible. You will find some details of this work at http://www.tmforum.org/browse.asp?catID=1118&sNode=1118&Exp=Y&linkID=28584.