Demand for spectrum

In the end, what may end up driving the development of dynamic spectrum access (DSA) technologies (such as cognitive radio) is the demand for spectrum driven by mobile uses. GigaOm has this item that lays out the case as succinctly as I have seen (thought he doesn't mention DSA). DSA can allow carriers to tap into idle spectrum to address temporary over-capacity problems.

LTE vs. WiMAX: The next standards rivalry?

Standards rivalries have always fascinated me. The dynamics are quite surprising sometimes. Until I saw this item over at GigaOm today, I thought that LTE had won the battle for the next generation mobile standard. What this article points out is that this may well be true for the industrialized world, but it is far from the case globally. So are not going to converge on a single mobile air interface (to facilitate roaming) this generation?

Smartphone statistics

This article from the financial blog "Seeking Alpha" does a good job of carefully analyzing smartphone market data. What Sidahmed shows in this article is that interpretation of results is very much in the eye of the beholder. While this is not news to people who have studied statistics, I think this article is a great example of how to do a more careful job in analysis.

YouTube and IPv6

This article over at Network World is interesting. Quoting the article:

IPv6 traffic came into ISPs from all over the world when Google turned up its IPv6 traffic on YouTube," Levy says. "IPv6 is being supported at many different Google data centers. We're talking about a traffic spike that is 30-to-1 type ratios. In other words, 30 times more IPv6 traffic is coming out of Google's data centers than before.

That is some spike! It will be interesting to see if this applications (along with the other IPv6-enabled Google services) will be enough to build momentum for a large scale conversion to IPv6. This is a classic case of standards transition; it will be interesting to observe the dynamics.