Minnesota Struggles To Close Broadband Gap 28% Are Without Broadband Services

Minnesota struggles to close broadband adoption gap
By Sean Buckley

Despite all of the positive talk about the progress the United States has made with broadband, political leaders should look at Minnesota, a state where an estimated 28 percent of consumers still do not subscribe to a broadband service.
Connect Minnesota interactive chart

Click here for an interactive chart of Connect Minnesota survey results

While that figure is lower than the national average of 35 percent, a new survey released by Connect Minnesota this week revealed there are two main reasons why Minnesota residents don't have a broadband connection: a lack of interesting content, and the cost of service. An average broadband connection in Minnesota costs about $49.46 versus the national average price of $45.73 a month.

Keep in mind the U.S. Average without Broadband is 35% with South Carolina being one of the highest listed as 43%


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TeleGeography: Service providers scramble to keep up with colocation space demand

TeleGeography: Service providers scramble to keep up with colocation space demand
By Sean Buckley

Despite the poor macroeconomic environment, data center and colocation space continues to be filled up a rapid pace, driving more service providers to increase their respective footprints organically and through targeted acquisitions.

Results from TeleGeography's new colocation survey revealed that as of September 2011, there was only 16 percent of retail colocation space available in the Washington, D.C. area, down 30 percent from the same period in 2010. Likewise, vacancy rates declined 36 percent in other major markets such as New York and 26 percent in London during the same period.

New York, in particular, saw the largest gain with over 1.3 million square feet of new colocation space being built between September 2009-2011. Meanwhile, service providers in Hong Kong and London added over 400,000 square feet of new colocation space followed by San Francisco, which added 300,000 feet.

Led by major carriers including AT&T (NYSE: T), CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL), Windstream (Nasdaq: WIN) and Verizon (NYSE: VZ) in addition to a host of specialized players like Telx, it appears that the colocation growth trend is going to continue.

"It's unlikely that the pace of expansion will slow anytime soon," said Jon Hjembo, a TeleGeography analyst. "While operators are adding capacity, vacancy rates in a number of metro markets we surveyed remain under 25 percent."



Contact me at tradd.duggan@gt-t.net at GTT Global Telecom & Technology for more Info 720-259-5419: Whether price shopping for local carriers,seeking Dedicated Internet Access (DIA), MPLS. VPLS. Point to Point Networking, IP Transit or better Peering -we have over 700 and 100 On Net POP's in 46 markets! GTT has a suite of offerings that nobody else has. We can help you choose the best of breed technologies and services from hundreds of telecom carriers. We're also globally in 80 countries -covering 800 suppliers and include a suite of our own modular technology and managed services options.

U.S. Dedicated Internet Access Services Market Update 2010 Market Research Report

This research study covers the U.S. market for dedicated internet access services through the period 2008 to 2015. The analysis in the study is segmented by retail (sales to enterprises) versus wholesale (sales to service providers) revenues, and percentage breakouts of revenues by service type. The wholesale portion of DIA is also commonly referred to as high-speed IP transit services in the industry. This is referred to as wholesale DIA in this study. The study provides market share analysis based on revenues for the U.S. dedicated internet access services market only.

This Frost & Sullivan research service titled U.S. Dedicated Internet Access Services Market Update 2010 provides an analysis of key market drivers, restraints, and trends that are impacting the market, The study also presents market share analysis and competitive analysis. In this research, Frost & Sullivan's expert analysts thoroughly examine the following technologies: T1, T3, SONET, and Ethernet.

Market Overview

Migration of Bandwidth-Intensive Applications to the Internet Drives Growth in the U.S. DIA Services Market

The U.S. dedicated Internet access (DIA) services market has undergone some interesting changes over the past 2 years. Both the retail (DIA) and wholesale (high-speed IP transit) market segments experienced negative growth rate from 2008 to 2009, primarily due to the economic downturn. The market revenues did rebound modestly in 2010, with the retail recovering faster than the wholesale market. The need for businesses to access ever-higher IP bandwidth and the growing migration of bandwidth-intensive applications to the Internet is fuelling market spending on high-speed services. The Internet is viewed as a tool to reduce travel costs and help drive higher productivity due to real-time and virtual conferencing, collaboration, and other virtual office applications and services. “The shift to such applications – including video conferencing, web conferencing, Internet training and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) – on the Internet is increasing bandwidth usage as companies apply these various tools to their overall cost reduction plans,” notes the analyst of this research service. “To manage the traffic growth companies are electing to purchase more bandwidth than currently needed, seek burstable options from suppliers or migrate to Ethernet for its scalability component.”

As customers add voice/video applications to their Internet pipes, there is a growing demand in the market for managed Internet services where the service provider offers a richer set of offerings that enhance the overall service experience/framework/component. Some of the services offered include: managed router, network security services (such as customer-premises equipment (CPE) or cloud-based, network management, and software updates) and physical maintenance as covered in the service level agreements (SLAs).

Pricing pressures on the wholesale side for high-speed IP transit services continue to challenge service provider revenues. The economic downturn has only worsened the situation. Although demand for high-speed IP transit services remains high, the price decline has clearly led to reduced revenues overall. Wholesale customers are demanding higher speed ports but the commit rate on those ports is lower than the commit rates for TDM services. “Wholesale customers are investing in Ethernet as it comes at a better price per megabit (MB),” says the analyst. “However, the fact that Ethernet bandwidth is easily scalable has led to reduced commit rates on the ports.” Service providers are trying to address this challenge by keeping the per MB price higher for lower commit rates to ensure high levels of commitment from customers. In the retail DIA services market, demand for traditional services such as T1/T3 and SONET is declining, but the growing demand for Ethernet services is sustaining market growth. The DIA services market is a fairly commoditized market as service providers have traditionally offered just pure bandwidth. This has resulted in a significant reduction of pricing levels for DIA services. Over the past 4-5 years, carriers are emphasizing value-added services and managed services to counter the revenue decline. Hence, this challenge is acting as a driver for companies willing to provide managed services and as a restraint to those who see the DIA space as selling pure bandwidth.

Market Sectors

Expert Frost & Sullivan analysts thoroughly examine the following market sectors in this research:

Wholesale
Retail


Technologies

The following technologies are covered in this research:

T1
T3
SONET
Ethernet



Contact me at tradd.duggan@gt-t.net at GTT Global Telecom & Technology for more Info 720-259-5419: Whether price shopping for local carriers,seeking Dedicated Internet Access (DIA), High Speed Ethernet/BGB or better Peering -we have over 600 and 100 On Net POP's in 46 markets! GTT has a suite of offerings that nobody else has. We can help you choose the best of breed technologies and services from hundreds of telecom carriers. We're also globally in 80 countries -covering 800 suppliers and include a suite of our own modular technology and managed services options.

The Quest For Speed and The Exchange Gateway To Asia

The Race To Zero: Asia
Singapore SGX has commited US$250m to its low latency cause, as algo trading spurs investment in data center infrastructure around the world. SGX details its reach
Published by Ambrose McNevin

One of the key topics of concern for brokers and traders wishing to have high-speed access to trading engines is location – or “just how physically close can you get me to the trading platform”.

In London, with its multiple exchanges, the issue is around staying inside its M25 ring road. Go any further than that trading platform and the milliseconds start to build up and you find yourself stuck in the slow lane.

In New York, the answer is not to be any further than North New Jersey where there is a large concentration of data centers including the Verizon site that hosts Nasdaq and the Mahwah data center built and owned by NYSE Euronext.

In Singapore, there are no such worries about far-flung locations. Being on an island measuring just 10km x 40km means that wherever you locate you can never be that far away from the trading engine.

For the Singapore Stock Exchange (SGX), its US$250m investment in an ultra-low latency trading platform called Reach is about locating in an ultra modern data center with super-fast connectivity to Tokyo, Chicago, New York and London.

Bob Caisley, CIO at the Singapore Stock Exchange, says he believes he is building the fastest trading engine in the world. “Reach is about having the fastest trading engine in the world, at the best data center in Asia with the best colocation facilities,” he says.

Like all trading engines, Caisley acknowledges there may be other trading platforms which will outpace his, but for now, his will be the fastest with an order response time of 90 microseconds.

This quest for speed is behind the exchange’s US$250m investment in Tier IV data center infrastructure which is scheduled for commission at the end of Q1 2011. The fit out is currently underway and SGX believes it can attract algo traders not only for its international derivatives business but its cash equities business which it sees as having huge growth potential for high frequency trading and making Singapore “the exchange gateway to Asia”.



Contact me at tradd.duggan@gt-t.net at GTT Global Telecom & Technology for more Info 720-259-5419: Whether price shopping for local carriers,seeking Dedicated Internet Access (DIA), High Speed Ethernet/BGB or better Peering -we have over 600 and 100 On Net POP's in 46 markets! GTT has a suite of offerings that nobody else has. We can help you choose the best of breed technologies and services from hundreds of telecom carriers. We're also globally in 80 countries -covering 800 suppliers and include a suite of our own modular technology and managed services options.