In an interesting semi annual survey, the CTIA has released their most recent telephone usage statistics. Did you know that 740 billion text messages (yes, with a “b”) were sent in the last six months alone? And that’s only counting US subscribers. The number works out to 11.7 text messages per day, per citizen in the US.

Someone else is certainly using up my quota. I barely send one text per month. I’m holding this thing called a “telephone” and want to tell someone something…so I call them. I guess I’m just weird.

There are also far more cell phones available, with “about 276,610,580 wireless subscribers in the U.S., up about 14 million from last year, and more than double the number in 2002.” And even as this is happening, the number of landlines (hardwired home telephones) keeps dropping. But even as we buy more phones (and give way more money to those ever-growing wireless carriers) we’re talking less…or at least we’re making shorter calls. The “average length of a voice call was just 2.03 minutes” in this last survey, which is shorter than at any point during the 21-year history of record keeping.

Are we all just spending more time on the Internet? Are we staying in touch via Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking services, and bypassing voice communications? We’re all typing a whole lot more, that’s for sure. The same statistics suggest that, by volume, the US texting population is writing “the equivalent of about 656,000 [100,000 word] books.” That’s a lot of output. And it doesn’t even count the amount of text generated online using email, social networking, and other means.

We live in a very interesting age. We’re better connected with one another than ever before, but apparently we spend a lot less time talking. Maybe it’s time to get out from behind all those keyboards and get some “face time” with friends and family. The holidays are coming up, after all.

In an interesting announcement, it turns out Microsoft and several other companies have actually started a prototype “white space” network in Virginia, offering limited access to specific groups of users.

“But,” I hear you cry, “what the devil is a ‘white space’ network anyway?”

That’s a valid question. I’d barely even heard of them until very recently. Here’s the basic idea.

Traditional WiFi networks operate within a specific frequency range and are generally considered fairly short range devices. Typically they operate over distances of 120 to 300 feet, and require lots of antennas (access points) to cover even a large building like an airport or office complex.

By contrast, “white space” networks are designed to operate in unused areas of the frequency spectrum traditionally allocated to TV networks. When these frequencies were allocated way back in the 1950s or so, lots of unused space was left for future growth and to ensure channels didn’t “bleed over” onto one another accidentally. That space has never been used, and a consortium of IT companies apparently persuaded the FCC to open up these spaces to network development a year or so ago (this was news to me).

Because the frequencies used are much lower than the current crop of WiFi channels, the signal travels further. Much further, in fact. Google’s Larry Page called white space networks “WiFi on steroids,” and has been pushing the project for several years. The objective is clear: lower frequencies, greater distance, and higher power mean fewer antennas to install in a given area. This could make rural broadband, or even city-wide “WiFi” coverage, much easier to achieve over time.

We’ll see where this goes. It sounds like a really good idea, and increasing coverage will help everyone (except highly annoyed television companies who fought tooth and nail to prevent release of these frequencies) who wants to do wireless networking. Maybe in a few years metropolitan and rural areas will finally have ubiquitous access to fast connections…the final death knell for phone-line modems.

High tech businesses often need to take chances. Opening new markets can be risky business, especially when significant investment of capital and infrastructure is involved. The idea of “if we build it, they will come” works in the movies, but isn’t a guaranteed strategy in real life. As often as not, investing in all those assets put a company in a deep hole they may not climb out of.

According to Verizon, FiOS is not one of those cases. It’s working, it’s popular, and it’s expanding…despite the fact that cable and other providers said it’d never fly and predicted Verizon would regret making the investment. While Comcast is offering 5 or 10Mbps service to most markets (unless something has changed), Verizon is offering 50…with plans to upgrade some areas to 100 in the next few years.

As is often the case, Verizon’s competitors relied on spreading FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) in the hope they’d dissuade customers from going over to FiOS. The home broadband market is huge and still growing, so everyone wants a competitive advantage. In the high tech area, the name of the game isn’t just gaining such an advantage…it’s keeping it over the long haul. That’s why Verizon is constantly expanding bandwidth. If people are happy with 5Mbps, they’ll be happier with 10. And if you say you’ll be up to 50 in just a few years, it gives them incentive to stay aboard. But you also need to deliver. Empty promises are guaranteed to drive customers away.

As CTO Dick Lynch said, competitors “claimed that their networks had been fiber for a decade, and they distributed misleading messages about the quality of FiOS. Their communications strategy was to create confusion and apathy and some people fell for it.”

Sure, lots of cable and other telecom companies have fiber…but not all the way to the house. That “last mile” is very expensive to install, and few wanted to make the investment. Verizon did, and it’s been a rousing success. And now they have households that can obtain constant bandwidth upgrades with no new investment in cabling.

My only question is when Verizon will finally get FiOS to my street. Come on guys…I’ve been waiting over a year already!

The subject of Net Neutrality has been discuss among both lawmakers and technophiles over the last few years. If you’ve been living under a rock, the basic idea is this: ISPs should not be allowed to use “biasing” or other means to manipulate, block, or otherwise affect user traffic. Under the strict definition of “neutrality,” an ISP would not be permitted to, for instance, provide slower service to customers when they request a URL from a company with which the ISP didn’t have a special agreement.

If you think this sort of thing doesn’t happen, just look at search results from various online phone directories. Look up “auto repair” or some other service in your town. You’ll probably see certain businesses (those that have paid the directory service) show up first, while others are pushed to the bottom of the list if they appear at all. Some ISPs want to apply the same sort of rules to overall user network traffic. If Net Neutrality becomes a reality, they’ll be prohibited from engaging in these practices.

Happily, it seems the FCC might actually be ready to act. In a speech this week, the chairman proposed two new rules that would help ensure ISPs can’t bias traffic unfairly. Under the proposed rules, “carriers should not be allowed to favor certain types of content or applications over others and that they could not degrade traffic of Internet companies that offer services similar to those of the carriers.”

This is good news for users. The Internet was founded on the principle that information should be available equally to everyone. Today’s advertisers already push that envelope by offering location-based ads, biasing in favor of certain companies, and search-engine manipulation techniques that push certain results to the top of result lists. But advertisers aren’t common carriers — ISPs (and telecommunications companies in general) are. Common carriers aren’t supposed to examine, manipulate, or block traffic. ISPs demanded this status in the ’90s to protect them from being subpoenaed for aiding and abetting criminals who might use their services. They shouldn’t be allowed to change the rules now in order to improve their bottom line.

I usually like John Dvorak’s articles on PC Magazine. He’s been around the industry for years and is generally very level-headed. But recently he let loose a very odd commentary in which he said the idea of Net Neutrality (i.e. the concept that ISPs should not be able to “bias” access to one portion of the net or another, based on preferencing and other tricks) is “crap.” I can’t disagree more with this one, though I sort of understand where he’s coming from.

On several occasions in the past, various ISPs have either planned or tried to implement schemes in which they attempted to control, or at least manipulate, how users accessed various online resources. As John says, Net Neutrality “became a concern when a CEO of an ISP began to make noise about Google screwing his company over somehow, and how his company might have to charge Google to even come on the network. The fact is, this guy, who will remain nameless, was an idiot. OK?” But those scenarios are very plausible, and I think they’re predictable, unless Federal rules are established to prohibit them.

Think of it this way: let’s say you’re a Comcast customer, and you try to visit Google’s site…but maybe Comcast doesn’t have an agreement with Google, so your request gets routed to a different search engine altogether. Or you try to visit Amazon.com, only to find your requests being handled very slowly because Amazon hasn’t paid your ISP for “preferred” access to their network. Given the way telecommunications companies are trying to squeeze pennies out of consumers, I think it’s only a matter of time before someone tries this.

John seems to think it won’t happen, or that consumers will vote with their feet by moving to other ISPs who have “fair” access algorithms (this despite the fact that, in many areas today, consumers have no choice but to use one local provider).

He also throws out some serious straw man arguments by asking whether Net Neutrality is “really more important than the pressing issues of poor rural Internet access, DNS attacks, spam, bots, snooping, and virus writers?” I’m sorry, but those topics have nothing to do with fair network access or limiting ISPs from making “most favored nation” style treaties with various online retailers or other sites.

Net Neutrality may be a somewhat ill-defined concept at present, but that doesn’t mean it’s unimportant or a “crap” issue. And John should know better.

Today I received a panicked call from a local medical office having serious network problems. It’s a busy place, growing steadily, and the physicians have been increasing the amount of online work they perform on a daily basis. They’d started off with limited Internet connectivity (as many places do), along with a fairly slow and cheap connection to the outside world. Then, a few weeks ago, they deployed a new online prescription-writing application.

Almost immediately, bad things started happening. Providers were getting spotty connectivity. Prescriptions were failing to print. Everyone was behind on their work because the system wasn’t working properly. Their IT support consisted of a contract with a “PC guy” who installed machines and software, but apparently didn’t know much more than that.

I asked for a synopsis of their network. They didn’t have one, nor any other documentation. I asked how fast their network connection was, and what type. They didn’t know. Exasperated, the office manager asked me to call their PC guy. I did, and he said he thought he’d found the problem. He’d finally thought of testing access from the office against one of the common network bandwidth test sites, and found the speed was only about 600kb/second.

Basically, deploying the pharmacy application broke their network’s back. Their traffic was exceeding their connection speed on a regular basis, causing dropped sessions and failures to print (these were emanating from the pharmacy application’s website, not from a local printer). I called the office manager and suggested she call their ISP with a request for increased bandwidth, since that’s their immediate problem.

This is not the PC guy’s fault. It’s no one’s fault. They simply didn’t understand what they were getting into. What they need is a full assessment of their current infrastructure (servers, security, network, etc.) and a list of suggestions for improvements. It’s the classic case of a system being overrun by its users — like a highway that can’t carry the traffic produced by a new housing development or mall. They understand that…now.

How’s your network holding up? Have you reviewed your company’s business needs lately and verified that your I.T. services are sufficient to handle them? If not, what’s stopping you?

As if it isn’t obvious, the ongoing economic climate is having an impact on the way we work. Companies are shaving expenses to the bone, closing “redundant” offices, and consolidating operations wherever possible. They’re also holding firm on salaries and compensation, which is unsurprising given the glut of high tech workers and dearth of new jobs.

It’s also becoming apparent that more companies are embracing telework, or telecommuting, as the workforce diversifies and high speed home networks become ubiquitous. Cisco, IBM, and others are offering employees the option of working from home one or more days per week. Given rising energy costs and other factors, this just makes sense. More and more employees, especially in high tech industries, are now located in a different city than their immediate boss and even their co-workers. What’s the point of driving to an office when you don’t interact with anyone there?

I work from home on a daily basis, both for my regular employer and as a writer. As a result, I save a pile of cash on commuting costs while keeping my stress level to a minimum. But this also means I’m my own IT manager. I have a small farm of systems that are used regularly for business purposes. I can’t work if they’re down, or if the network is inaccessible for any reason.

Your network, and your machines, are critical if you work from home on either a full or part time basis. They’re business assets, not toys. This means you need to treat them as such. Power protection, regular backups, one or more UPS systems, and other safeguards are key to maintaining uptime. Secure your wireless network with MAC level security, encryption, or whatever level is appropriate for your situation. Treat your home office like a business location. All this makes sense, and it’ll make working at home more comfortable as well. And as a bonus, you can probably write off home office expenses on your taxes.

Cisco found employees who work from home are generally happier overall. They’re not wasting time sitting in traffic, can run errands occasionally, and are more motivated. Telecommuting also saves energy, is better for the environment in the long run, and is simply more efficient than the “traditional office” model. But you have to do it right.

As if mobile phones hadn’t got enough capabilities already — now sites are popping up that allow people to share video directly from their phone. Today a friend passed along a reference to Qik – one of the companies now offering this service. I haven’t actually tried it out yet (i.e. uploaded a video) but think of the possibilities.

With sites like Qik, everyone can be a reporter, submitting video directly from a phone with no need for an intermediate upload to a PC. Going to a concert? Record and upload interesting events immediately. Get into an accident? Take a video of the damage, upload it, and point your insurance company to it so they have the full story.

From the look of their “highlights” page, they have a pretty good product too. The video capture claims to be fast and reliable, unlike many other streaming sites. They claim to support higher quality video and to have latency as low as 1-3 seconds when streaming. This comes down to “making the video truly live in order to enable real-time interaction through chat. We tag the stream at every path it takes, from the instant a person clicks the Stream button to the video appearing on the web. The entire path is then analyzed, weighed against various parameters and optimized to ensure speed of delivery.”

I remember the original Star Trek, and the Tricorder device that was able to record data at high speed for later playback. The original series was set in the 23rd century. Here we are, barely into the 21st, and we’re already very very close to having a similar device.

And if that’s not enough, a group of researchers is making another use of the accelerometers built into devices like the iPhone and BlackBerry. These guys are working on technology that will let you “write” simply by moving your hand in the air. This trick is accomplished “through software that lets cell phone users write notes in the air using their handsets and have the text or images sent to an e-mail address.”

Wow. This is just cool.

Today I was talking to a friend who happens to be a Comcast customer. This guy lives in a fairly rural area, and Comcast is his family’s only option for high speed access. Until 2 years ago, he had dial-up and bad cable. Then the new system arrived and he was able to obtain broadband speeds.

He also ended up with his local TV channels via Comcast, due to the stupidity of government regulations that prevent many cable customers from obtaining such channels via satellite. He’s been a Dish Network customer for years, and will never go elsewhere.

Things worked fine until about two months ago, when they started experiencing random outages. Their Internet connection would die, then restart itself. At the same time, they’d experience image pixellation on the locally provided Comcast channels. A service call was placed. Then the fun began.

The first guy showed up, inspected the house wiring (all installed by Comcast 2 years earlier), and said it was fine. The problem must be on the pole. Two days later a bucket truck pulled up, the pole was checked, and also pronounced problem-free. They said the problem was inside the house, which they couldn’t touch. When my friend said the earlier engineer had cleared the house wiring, the truck operator said “oh those inside wiring guys, what do they know?”

It’s now been two months, and the problem is still not resolved fully. Comcast said they’d completely replace all the wiring and transceivers, so a crew pulled a new line…across the front lawn. Oh, sorry…they weren’t allowed to dig the trench. So they left a long snake of cable across the lawn. Several more weeks elapsed, and the trench guys finally appeared. They dug the trench, and installed a PVC conduit for the new line, then disappeared. The temporary wire is still snaking its way across the lawn, making it hard to mow the spring grass.

This is customer service? Is it any wonder Comcast has a bad name among so many consumers? I had similar problems with them half a decade ago, and sent the company packing in favor of DSL. One would think they’d have learned by now.

This is why competition is good. More communities need multiple vendors, as well as the ability to choose service providers. Hopefully this will soon be the case, as broadband continues spreading into more isolated areas. Single-provider markets inevitably lead to bad customer satisfaction.

As most of you may remember, last year Comcast was dunned on charges of interfering with various Peer-to-Peer (P2P) services, like BitTorrent, by manipulating packets behind the scene. There was huge outrage over this practice, which the company justified as a “throttle” on “excessive” usage by customers using such services. At the time, they promised to stop interfering with these users.

Now it’s being reported that Comcast may be pulling a similar trick in terms of VoIP telephony. According to the article, the company “is being investigated by the Federal Communications Commission over concerns that it is giving preferential treatment to its phone service at the expense of similar services from competitors.” Apparently they’re routing non-Comcast calls over the public Internet while reserving a separate network for their own service.

Not much more information is available at this point, but it certainly sounds like dirty pool. And the company might be fined for it, too — not for this reason, but because it may be a violation of FCC regulations. Calls that traverse the phone network are subject to various Federal and state tariffs, and “if Comcast isn’t routing calls over its broadband network, the phone service could be classified as a telecommunications service subject to regulation and intercarrier fees that phone companies currently pay.”

In all, it’s bad news for Comcast. They’re still recovering from the public relations nightmare experienced when they were caught throttling traffic across their network.

The next few years may be critical for Internet users. Cable and telephone companies are desperate for new revenue, and will try to circumvent network neutrality whenever possible in order to gain an edge over the competition. If you think your provider is throttling, monitoring, or otherwise biasing your network traffic, call your Congressional representative. Take action. Protect your rights, and protect the Internet. If these companies want to be treated as common carriers of data, then they have no right to interfere with what’s traveling over their wires.