Firefox Market Share Drops

If you are a user who has come to value Mozilla Firefox, you might not be so happy to learn that Firefox has lost a bit of market share against Chrome for three straight months, according to the latest statistics from NetMarketShare. Chrome now has about seven percent global market share.

Many observers would suggest that Google's Chrome is likely to continue doing so, mostly at Mozilla’s expense. Firefox still has about 23 percent share of the global browser market, while Apple's Safari, for example, has just a bit over five percent.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer saw its usage share rise a slender 0.42 per cent in June 2010, presumably on the strength of Internet Explorer 8, which boasts improved security and apparently is benefiting from a rather extensive marketing campaign. Microsoft has 61 percent share of the global browser market.

Firefox market share drops as IE makes slender gain

Rural Broadband Stimulus "Not Enough"

"Broadband is capital intensive, and the level of available (stimulus or other support) funding in the future will influence the ability to achieve big leaps in the level of broadband availability and the rate of upgrades," said Chris Campbell, director of the Vermont Telecommunications Authority.

He's absolutely right: the "broadband stimulus" always was too small to make much of a direct change in rural broadband adoption.

But that's only acknowledging the disparity between urban, suburban and rural communications infrastructure. The costs of deploying modern, up-to-date terrestrial infrastructure always are quite high in the most-rural areas.

In fact, in the most-rural areas, it is virtually impossible to create a self-funding business case, which is why we have subsidy programs of various types.

Of course the broadband stimulus was not enough. Nothing other than permanent subsidies will ever be enough if you are talking about terrestrial, fixed networks.

Stimulus to increase rural broadband may not be enough | The Burlington Free Press

Martin Geddes on Socio-Economic Impact of Cloud Communications

"Telcos in particular are selling very outdated products, particular with voice, that needs substantial rethinking if it's going to have a viable business model going forwards, consultant Martin Geddes says.

If you want to know what might happen next month, or even next year, or if you want a technology tutorial, Martin Geddes is not necessarily what you will be looking for.

If you want to know the deeper, broader trends that shape communications, and what service providers might have to do to re-architect their business models, you might not be able to do better than to listen to Martin.

Here's an audio and written version of his latest musing on the future service provider business model.

Martin Geddes Interview: Cloud Communications and Future of Telecom

Apple Pulls "Other Phones Suck" Videos

Apple apparently has taken down the videos it has been showing of other smartphones experiencing signal indicator drops when held.

Apple gives up trying to make other phones look bad, pulls testing page

Backhaul Portion of Harbinger Capital Plan is Where Questions Might be Asked

Of several questions that might be raised about the Harbinger Capital plan to create a new national wholesale fourth-generation mobile network using the Long Term Evolution air interface and satellite backhaul, nothing is more important than the ability to attract enough capital to build the network, and the ability to get at least a few  anchor tenants.

The other issue is how the backhaul can be optimized in terms of latency performance. Putting a fleet of satellites into low-earth orbit is one way to reduce latency. Doing so for birds located in geostationary orbit will be more of a trick. Streaming video won't necessarily be an issue.

But interactive applications, such as gaming, voice, videoconferencing and enterprise apps, might be. The ground-based LTE network is a clever idea. Apparently wholesale customers will be able to lease ground segment separately from satellite backhaul.

But that will pose some issues for would-be wholesale customers as well: how to create the fiber backhaul network supporting all those LTE sites. A rational observer might conclude that a would-be anchor tenant would be better off leasing capacity from Clearwire, which will have the backhaul in place as a necessary part of building out its radio sites, without the satellite latency issues to contend with.

Perhaps there is some clever way to use the proposed Harbinger network's satellite backhaul only for apps where latency is not an issue, keeping latency-sensitive traffic confined to the terrestrial fiber networks. Maybe using it for video on demand only is one such approach.

The issue would seem to be that satellite transponders are optimized for point-to-multipoint video distribution. "On demand" services can be provided, but do not play to the network's advantages.

At some point, complexity becomes the enemy, though. Ways to seamlessly integrate other terrestrial 4G and 3G networks with a separate satellite network potentially are workable. But the cost and complexity might be relatively high.

If demand proves robust enough, one could conceive of a telemetry network build around the Harbinger network that is designed specifically for applications that are latency in-senstive. But Harbinger would not be the first company to attempt a business model for applications and customers that proved not to be sufficient.

http://www.o3bnetworks.com/video/video_03.html?height=315&width=400

Fiber Connections: Australian Company Can't Give Them Away

Only half of the homes and businesses in the three Tasmanian towns involved in stage one of the Australian National Broadband Network rollout have chosen to connect to the network. The connection is free, and puts into place the network that will completely replace the old copper network within eight years.

The connection also is the equivalent of a "dark fiber" connection at the moment. At some later point, retail providers will lease capacity and try to sell services to consumers. But none of that is "live" now.

The opposition will prove expensive at some point. Any business or home that does not opt to get the free install now will have to pay for a "live" connection in the future.

Apparently, people simply do not understand the proposition. It's an interesting development.

Premier considers NBN 'opt out' option - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Typical Small Business Search Advertiser Spends $2231 Per Year

Small businesses have dramatically increased their spending on search advertising over the past year, up 159 percent, in fact.