Connectivity, Communications & Cloud News - Page 14

The latest and most important Connectivity, Communications & Cloud news - Page 14.

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Australian telco Telstra will have 1Gbps over 4G available this year

Anthony Garreffa | Feb 21, 2016 6:00 AM CST

Australian telco giant Telstra has had the trophy for fastest LTE in the world a few times now, with the company teasing Australians that it will have its 4G networking capable of pumping 1Gbps (or over 100MB/sec) to smartphones and tablets across Australia.

Right now, Telstra has seen real-world speeds over 800Mbps in the country, recently switching to Category 9 and Category 11 carrier aggregation technology in cities like Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Once the company rolls out its LTE Category 16 technology to metropolitan 4G and 4GX towers, it will be capable of pumping out up to 1Gbps. Not only that, but Australians will have the ability to upload at a blistering 150Mbps, too.

Telstra will use a combination of its 700MHz, 1800MHz and 2600MHz frequency bands to link together using carrier aggregation, in order to reach the 1Gbps speeds. Netgear has been a longtime partner of Telstra, where they'll be working together to develop the world's first LTE Category 16 hotspot, which is will feature the world's first use of Qualcomm's impressive Snapdragon X16 modem. The Snapdragon X16 features 4x4 MIMO technology, and 256QAM modulation, which supports up to 20 different Wi-Fi connections, simultaneously.

Continue reading: Australian telco Telstra will have 1Gbps over 4G available this year (full post)

Apple boasts solid figures, 11 million music subs, 782m iCloud users

Chris Smith | Feb 15, 2016 9:34 AM CST

Apple has decided to reaffirm its global technology presence recently, with a podcast including executives Craig Federighi and Eddy Cue explaining of Apple's large and growing userbase in Apple music and iCloud services.

With Apple music sitting at 11 million subscribers, this can be compared to Spotify's recent data (from June 2015) stating that it has 20 million paying subscribers in total. While Spotify currently sits ahead, ZDNet explains that it took Spotify six years to reach the 11 million subscriber milestone, with Apple doing this in a fraction of that time.

As for iCloud users, it is claimed that there are a massive 782 million total worldwide. This impressive number sits alongside crazy data like the fact that 200,000 iMessages are sent every second and there are 750 million transactions weekly on iTunes and the App Store.

Continue reading: Apple boasts solid figures, 11 million music subs, 782m iCloud users (full post)

Netflix completes migration to Amazon Web Services at last

Sean Ridgeley | Feb 11, 2016 7:02 PM CST

After seven years of effort, Netflix has finally completed the migration of its database and infrastructure to the cloud -- Amazon Web Services, specifically.

"Our journey to the cloud at Netflix began in August of 2008, when we experienced a major database corruption and for three days could not ship DVDs to our members," Netflix explains in a new blog post. "That is when we realized that we had to move away from vertically scaled single points of failure, like relational databases in our datacenter, towards highly reliable, horizontally scalable, distributed systems in the cloud."

The company says it chose AWS for its great scale and broad set of services and features.

Continue reading: Netflix completes migration to Amazon Web Services at last (full post)

ViaSat teams with Boeing for 1Tbps satellites, launches in 2019

Anthony Garreffa | Feb 11, 2016 6:25 AM CST

We all know the pain of being on a plane without Wi-Fi, but US communications company ViaSat could change all of that. The company has teamed up with Boeing to launch three new satellites that would have massive bandwidth.

The companies will be launching new satellites that will feature twice the total combined network capacity of all of the connected satellites flying through space. The two companies have already started this work, with two of the three ViaSat-3 satellites. These new satellites will have more than 1Tbps of capacity, each.

ViaSat will be in control of designing and manufacturing the payload while Boeing will be taking care of developing the "associated satellite bus platforms" for its 2019 launch. The first two satellites will take care of the Americas, Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) while the third satellite will cover Asia.

Continue reading: ViaSat teams with Boeing for 1Tbps satellites, launches in 2019 (full post)

Telstra apologises for service outage, offers free data for one day

Ben Gourlay | Feb 9, 2016 3:48 PM CST

For around five hours yesterday, Australia's biggest mobile network was thrown into disarray courtesy of an "embarrassing human error" courtesy of a technician who "reconnected the customers to [a] malfunctioning node rather than rather than transferring them to the nine other redundant nodes". While the problem is now fixed, the company has announced plans to offer an apology to customers, whether they were affected by the outage or not.

The company last night announced a plan to offer customers free data for one day, this Sunday the 14th February. The post states that "customers don't need to do anything to receive the free data, it will happen automatically for all of our mobile customers.", whilst also offering a layman's description of what caused the outage in the first place.

Despite the inconvenience, I guess Telstra's customers will be feeling the love this Valentine's Day. In turn, I'm sure they'll be loading up some torrents in appreciation.

Continue reading: Telstra apologises for service outage, offers free data for one day (full post)

Telstra outage in Australia caused by 'embarrassing human error'

Anthony Garreffa | Feb 9, 2016 12:23 AM CST

For most of Tuesday, Australians were angry at the biggest telco in the country over a nationwide outage that affected up to 16.7 million mobile services attempting to make phone calls or use data.

Well, a Telstra spokeswoman has explained: "This is an embarrassing human error. It's not OK. We do not like causing that level of inconvenience to our customers". Yes, all of that outrage over the outage, from a single person making a mistake. The Telstra spokeswoman added that there would be a full investigation and that some customers would be offered free data as compensation.

As for the issue, it all began when one of the nodes used for managing voice calls and data traffic between devices, and Telstra's network started malfunctioning. The Telstra spokeswoman explained: "We took that node down, unfortunately the individual that was managing that issue did not follow the correct procedure, and he reconnected the customers to the malfunctioning node, rather than transferring them to the nine other redundant nodes that he should have transferred people to".

Continue reading: Telstra outage in Australia caused by 'embarrassing human error' (full post)

Google giving out 2GB free Drive space for Safer Internet Day

Sean Ridgeley | Feb 8, 2016 2:03 PM CST

Safer Internet Day is upon us. Well, almost -- it's actually tomorrow, but Google is getting ahead of the game and encouraging its users to review their security settings as of today. In return, they'll reward you with 2GB free storage on Google Drive. Even better, it stacks with any previously rewarded extra storage, meaning you can have as much as 19GB total free storage as of today.

Reviewing your settings is simple: click here, then review your phone number, security question, connected devices, and account permissions, changing them or alterting Google to suspicious activity as necessary. Once done -- bam, free storage.

Continue reading: Google giving out 2GB free Drive space for Safer Internet Day (full post)

Google Fiber at 1Gbps being offered for free to select US residents

Anthony Garreffa | Feb 4, 2016 9:52 PM CST

Well... Google is offering its super-fast optic-based 1Gbps Internet service for free to residents living in public housing, once the company hooks its Fiber lines up to the properties.

The news is coming directly from Google, from their new blog titled "Connecting Public Housing at Gigabit Speeds". It all started in July 2015 when Google partnered with ConnectHome - a joint initiative led by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the White House, where it wanted to speed up Internet adoption for families with school-aged children, living in public housing.

Soon, public housing tenants will be able to access 1Gbps up/down from Google, for free. Google will begin its free 1Gbps Fiber rollout starting with residents in West Bluff, an affordable housing community in Kansas City, Missouri. Around 100 homes have been connected to the service, but Google is working with nine low-income property regions that would eventually connect over 1,300 local families.

Continue reading: Google Fiber at 1Gbps being offered for free to select US residents (full post)

Google is using drones to zap high-speed 5G internet from the skies

Derek Strickland | Feb 1, 2016 3:30 PM CST

Google has a new ambitious plan to use solar-powered drones to zap high-speed internet from the heavens down to Earth.

Google is using drones to zap high-speed 5G internet from the skies

According to reports from The Guardian, the secret project is called SkyBender, and is centralized in New Mexico's Gateway to Space terminal. Google's Project SkyBender is using solar-powered Solara 50 UAVs from the Google Titan division to experiment with high-speed millimeter-wave radio transmissions. The drones essentially beam the transmissions from the skies down to one of two targeted transceivers, bestowing wireless internet to a given area.

High-frequency millimeter-wave transmissions may ultimately pave the way for 5G technology; the signals are up to 40 times more efficient and powerful than 4G LTE, and can transmit up to multiple gigabits of data per second. "The huge advantage of millimetre wave is access to new spectrum because the existing cellphone spectrum is overcrowded. It's packed and there's nowhere else to go," said Jacques Rudell, a specialist from the University of Washington.

Continue reading: Google is using drones to zap high-speed 5G internet from the skies (full post)

Microsoft to give $1bn of cloud services to nongovernment mediums

Chris Smith | Jan 20, 2016 10:34 AM CST

Set over a three-year period, Microsoft will be giving a cool $1 billion worth of cloud services to not for profit organizations and researchers, helping alleviate financial stress for companies and individuals who cannot otherwise afford the technological assistance that 'the cloud' has to offer.

Brad Smith, Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer, wrote that this helping hand will be spread over approximately 70,000 organizations before the end of 2017, with his company looking to donate around $350 million worth of cloud services to companies before the end of 2016.

This news follows the World Economic Forum at Davos in Switzerland, with experts questioning the global advantages of cloud services if poorer nations cannot access the helpfulness that it brings.

Continue reading: Microsoft to give $1bn of cloud services to nongovernment mediums (full post)