Andrew Orlowski

Collected Journalism

Tag: pipes

  • Fixing the UK’s broadband crisis: Spiked’s Traffic jam debate

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    If you throw a rock in the air in London on any day of the working week, chances are it will land on a New Media conference. These are primarily social gatherings for the same group of academics and media hangers-on, and you can bet they’ll be Twittering.

    (I’m often invited – usually it’s because they think I’ll oblige them by saying something stupid, like “The Internets is Evil”. It isn’t hard to decline.)

    But apart from the inanity and … Read More

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  • How the iPhone puts a bomb under mobile networks

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    If you think everything that could have been written about the iPhone already has been written, prepare to be surprised. One vital aspect of Apple’s strategy has been overlooked – with multi-billion consequences for complacent network operators.

    Over at Telco 2.0, the blog of analysts STL Partners, we learn that networks who partner with Apple must install Apple gear at the data centre to support its services – specifically, the Push Notification service that wakes up the Jesus Phone. Forget … Read More

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  • EU plans to regulate online niceness (and ISPs)

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    Europe’s most powerful quango, the European Commission, says it wants to accelerate a “single market” for online music, film, and games – and is threatening legislation to bring it about. Although the EU’s Telecoms commissioner Viviane Reding sees the market for digital entertainment quadrupling (to €8.3bn by 2010), she feels the bureaucrats need to get involved anyway.

    In a statement issued yesterday, the EC identified four areas for action – with the most ominous being a good behaviour pledge for … Read More

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  • Obama mounts ‘Neutrality’ bandwaggon

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    Politicians long ago gave up on politics. Instead of articulating great ideas, the choice that faces voters today is between identikit managerial bureaucrats who’ve never had a job outside politics. Most of their adult lives have been spent in the hermetic world of wonkdom. So it’s little wonder, then, that they have trouble distinguishing between fiction and reality.

    And it’s no surprise at all to hear that a virtual Presidential candidate is throwing his electrons behind a virtual cause, to … Read More

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  • VoIP is Dead. It’s just another feature, now

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    Business-wise, Skype is a basketcase. But that’s just one of the things that makes it one of the most emblematic companies of our time – a real, Ur-Web 2.0 company.

    Like so many internet companies, Skype has millions and millions of users. Like these internet companies, too, it can’t make very much money off all these users. Hello, Facebook! And like these internet pin-ups, it owes a great deal to utopian power fantasies.

    But what makes Skype so very of … Read More

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  • We sneer at your global standards, and your economies of scale…

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    More dismal news for the US consumer. After the simultaneous failure of Municipal Wi-Fi projects in three major US cities – something we predicted four years ago – faster, cheaper mobile data looks further away than ever.

    So why are Google lobbyists advocating for the next wave of collapsing wireless initiatives – rather than helping things?… Read More

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