Technology Futures

Early reports from beta tests of Starlink, the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Internet service are very promising, with excellent bandwidth and lower latency than the traditional Viasat and Hughesnet systems. Lower latency is important because it means that some voice and video services like Skype and Zoom may be more usable. It could be a game changer for rural and remote rural areas of the U.S. There are many rural areas that it is going to take time to deploy fiber. In the meantime, Starlink could be a good bridge solution.

Stop the Cap points out that Comcast is rolling out data caps in many parts of the East Coast. If you want to keep your "unlimited" plan, you can pay an extra $30/month. Bandwidth is so cheap for a company the size of Comcast that the only reason for doing this is to hike profits.

What is driving this is the growth of heavy data users, and certainly Covid work from home users are part of that phenomenon. Ars Technica lays it all out.

I have been saying for years that the ISP business, in the four hundred year history of modern commerce, is the only business that punishes users for liking their product.

WideOpen is pioneering a different approach to broadband and Internet, one where we do not punish our customers for using our network. Give us a call (540-552-2150) or drop us a line (info at wideopennetworks dot us) if you want to learn more about how we are changing the industry.

Alex, I'll take "Things I never thought I would write about" for $500. A network security researcher has successfully hacked a coffee machine and was able to take control of it, make it beep constantly, have it refuse to make coffee, and spill water all over.

Yes, you read that correctly. You can buy a coffee machine that connects to the Internet so that you can use an app on your phone to make coffee. Why, I have no idea, because you still have to put water and coffee in it to, you know, "make coffee."

I suppose there is some very weak argument for being able to stay in bed and turn the coffee maker on with your phone, but as I say, that's a weak argument, since most coffee makers that cost more than $10 have a timer so you can set it to turn on in the morning.

Aside from the pure insanity of putting a single board computer in a coffee machine, the lack of security controls that the researcher found is unfortunately typical of many Internet of Things (IoT) devices. The coffee machine connects to your home WiFi network and then to the Internet so it can get updates (don't get me started on why a coffee machine needs "updates).

This hack was done on an older coffee maker, and the manufacturer has indicated the security has been improved on the device. But as more and more people add IoT devices into their home and office networks, the potential for mischief, innocuous and serious, just increases.

The City of Huntington, West Virginia wants better broadband and had been begging the incumbents for years to improve service, with no success. The Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) granted the City $2.5M in funds to start building a Gig fiber network, and that woke the incumbents from a deep sleep.

And of course, the incumbents claimed everything was just fine and that there was no need for a new "Gig" network because they could provide "up to" 2 Gig for residential customers and "up to" 10 Gig for business customers. Of course, the always amusing "up to" numbers are always referencing the download capacity of the incumbent networks and never include the critical upload capacity, which has become much more important as more people and businesses are trying to get work done from home.