Clearwire Corporation, a Bellevue, Wash. wireless broadband services company, is teaming up with Intel and NextNet Wireless (a Clearwire subsidiary) to deploy future Intel silicon products for its new WiMAX network.

WiMAX represents an emerging technology that offers high-speed Internet connectivity in fixed and mobile wireless networks. The advantages: a wide coverage area, high-volume technology at low cost and a simple, consumer-friendly configuration that requires little more effort than plug and play. Intel Capital, Intel???s strategic investment program, intends to invest $150 million in wireless technology, hoping to establish a global high-speed wireless standard.

Currently, Jacksonville, FL. is utilizing NexNet technology as a precursor to the full-scale WiMAX networks still in development. With similar features as its soon-to-be parent wireless technology, the Jacksonville network provides high-speed broadband wireless service in most of the Florida community. Residents connect their computer to a NextNet modem via an Ethernet cable, plug it in and enjoy Internet access anywhere within the coverage area. Clearwire's WiMAX also provides simple system configuration and zero software installation hassles, making it one of the first truly affordable wide-scale wireless networks.

For more information on the Intel and Clearwire collaboration, see the Intel News Release

Goodmail Systems Inc. today announced that Comcast, Cox Communications, Time Warner Cable's Road Runner and Verizon are supporting the company's CertifiedEmail trusted class e-mail for users of their e-mail services. Already used by AOL, AT&T and Yahoo!, CertifiedEmail messages are certified to be authentic e-mail from legitimate senders and are specially marked with a blue ribbon envelope so that consumers know which commercial and non-profit e-mails in their inbox are real.

Introduced in 2006, CertifiedEmail is a trusted-class delivery option offered only to qualifying, legitimate commercial and non-profit e-mailers for messages to existing customers and users who have specifically opted in to receive such communications. Once accredited by Goodmail, these senders' e-mail messages are delivered with cryptographically secure tokens which participating ISPs detect. CertifiedEmail messages are labeled with a unique blue ribbon icon in the e-mail program, enabling consumers to immediately distinguish the legitimate messages they want to receive from messages of unknown authenticity or safety. The announcement follows a national poll that indicated the majority of consumers would be more likely to open and read e-mail if the sending company displays a certified icon in the e-mail program.

"With spam and phishing hitting historic highs even in the last six months, we have seen the limits of technologies which attempt to filter out the bad e-mail," said Goodmail co-founder and CEO Richard Gingras. "Consumers want their e-mail system to let them know which e-mail is real and safe to open and act on. They want an end to the frustration of having to guess whether an e-mail is real or not. These ISPs—and the senders that send CertifiedEmail—care about their customers' safety."

Users of participating ISPs need do nothing extra to receive CertifiedEmail. Their existing webmail programs that they currently use to read e-mail will simply show a new icon, a blue ribbon envelope, that means a message is a CertifiedEmail. The icon appears in both the inbox list view and in a special pane above the message when opened. The blue ribbon icon is universal across all ISPs and mailbox providers supporting CertifiedEmail.

For more information, check out the press release.

Planning to upgrade from your current computer to a new model that can handle broadband Internet service? If you are like me, you might be a little confused as to what to do with your old computer. Mine is currently collecting dust in my living room. Thankfully, Staples recently announced that it now makes it easy to recycle used computers and other office technology at any Staples store nationwide. With this program, they are the first national retailer to offer computer recycling in stores every day.

Staples says it makes it easy for customers to recycle e-waste. All you have to do is bring your used computers, monitors, laptops, printers, faxes and all-in-ones to any U.S. Staples store, where the equipment will be recycled in accordance with environmental laws. All brands will be accepted, regardless of whether or not the equipment was purchased at Staples, for a fee of $10 per large item. Staples is working with Amandi Services, one of the country's most experienced and innovative electronics recyclers, to handle recycling of the equipment, following standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

"It's not always easy being green. However, through the leadership of Staples, Americans will see that preventing pollution by recycling unwanted electronics is as easy as it gets," said Stephen L. Johnson, Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "EPA and our Plug-In To eCycling partners are helping make sure yesterday's high-tech gadgets do not go to waste."

"An estimated 133,000 computers are discarded every day in the U.S.," said Mark Buckley, vice president of environmental affairs at Staples, Inc. "We know that small businesses and consumers want to recycle their used office technology but are often frustrated by the lack of convenient options available. By making it easy to recycle, Staples helps customers take action in handling e-waste in an environmentally responsible way."

How the Recycling Program Works

• Customers drop off their old equipment at the customer service desk at any Staples store, 7 days a week during regular store hours; (TV's and large, floor-model copiers are not accepted).


• Staples will recycle any manufacturers' products, regardless of whether or not it was purchased from Staples, and there's no limit on the quantity of equipment that can be recycled.


• A recycling fee of $10 per piece of large equipment is charged to cover handling, transport, product disassembly and recycling. Smaller computer peripherals, such as keyboards and mice, will be recycled for free.


• Staples Easy Tech^SM service is on site in all stores to transfer data from an old computer to a new one for a fee.

Equipment is bagged and sealed when customers drop them off at the Staples customer service desk. The equipment is then picked up and delivered to Amandi Services, who disassembles the equipment into its component parts and uses industry-leading standards for data destruction. Amandi then recycles the raw materials, such as the plastics, metals, printed circuit boards and Cathode Ray Tubes (CRT). The CRTs, which are the most hazardous part of electronics waste, are recycled utilizing Amandi's proprietary technology into a raw material that is used to manufacture new televisions.

Staples is a U.S. EPA Plug-In to eCycling partner and has offered computer recycling in its Seattle area stores for the past two years. In addition to computer and office technology recycling, Staples provides customers with easy, everyday, in-store recycling for ink and toner cartridges, cell phones, PDAs and rechargeable batteries. In 2006, the company recycled more than 17 million ink and toner cartridges and 3,500 tons of electronic waste.

In addition to recycling of technology items, Staples says the comapny's other initiatives to help protect and sustain the earth take many forms, such as offering a wide assortment of eco-friendly products, investing in energy efficiency and renewable energy and educating customers and associates about how they can make a difference. They offer more than 2,900 products made with recycled materials and is one of the largest retail and Fortune 500 purchasers of green power in the country.

To learn more about Staples environmental initiatives, check out www.staples.com/environment.

Fifty-three percent of Internet users would replace their cable and satellite TV with broadband TV, if they could get the same TV channels, according to a new Zogby poll, sponsored by Redback Networks, an Ericsson company.

The Zogby poll asked 1006 Americans how they use broadband services, Internet-connected mobile devices and what video and mobile services they would pay for in the future. 53 percent of Americans would replace cable and satellite with broadband TV. Other findings included 55 percent who said that parents and individuals are responsible for making broadband technology safe and 29 percent who felt parents have primary responsibility to make Internet devices safe for kids.

"These findings help illustrate how people use broadband and mobile devices today and what they anticipate doing in the future. This poll makes it quite easy to imagine a world where all TV and movie content is portable and two billion cell users become 2 billion TVs or 2 billion TV broadcasters," said Alan Lippman, chief video architect of Redback Networks. "Within five years, broadband will be as video-centric as your cable or satellite service, and telephone and high-speed mobile networks may emerge as alternative platforms for triple-play services, delivering greater choice to consumers. There also are emerging revenue opportunities for broadband carriers who meet increasing demand for parental control services."

To read more about the survey, check out the press release.

The Daily Times in Salisbury, Maryland recently ran an interesting article about the importance of broadband Internet service to economic development in the local community.

The article profiles Ian McLaughlin, who says he is able to work from home is because he now travels to and from work via the Internet. He is able to call himself a telecommuter because he has fast, reliable and affordable Internet access—not something everyone in his area can claim. He feels so strongly about the importance of broadband Internet access, he frequently attends local government meetings regarding the subject.

Two separate but connected broadband initiatives are now underway in the area that are seeking to address rural broadband access. One is a $16-million project aimed at building a new fiber optic cable down the spine of the Shore from the Maryland line, past Wallops and south across the bridge-tunnel to Norfolk.

However, some feel that the initiatives will help business more than average Internet users.

"The project being funded from Richmond is not really aimed at domestic uses at all," McLaughlin said. "It is really aimed at putting lower cost high-speed applications here to allow existing business and entrepreneurial-type applications, but also to stimulate new business growth."

The article goes on to give a brief history of broadband Internet access, including the impact of Verizon and NASA on the issue. Also mentioned is the Mid-Atlantic Broadband Cooperative, a group responsible for funding, acquiring and building a broadband network in southside and southwest Virginia, including 700 miles of fiber to 20 counties and more than 60 business, technology and industrial parks.

For more information, check out the full article BROADBAND 101: Broadband important for economic development

Sprint Nextel , Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications and Bright House Networks parent company Advance/Newhouse Communications have launched the branding of Pivot, the integrated service that gives consumers the ability to link their mobile service with their digital home phone, and certain high-speed Internet and digital cable services. Pivot combines powerful wireline and wireless networks to bring more useful capabilities to customers, such as one-button access to the Internet, home and wireless e-mail and mobile TV.

"Pivot was designed to help customers connect to home with an easier, more convenient and more affordable way to keep in touch, stay informed and be entertained. We want to make technology work better and faster for the customer—and with our unique partnership, we can do things our competitors cant," said John Garcia, president Sprint/MSO Joint Venture. "Pivot links your wireless phone with the comforts of home. Our common vision is to give customers anywhere easy access to the entertainment, communications and information services that are already important to them."

Pivot provides customers with the ability to watch live and mobile TV, access home TV listings using a programming guide like the one they use at home, check home e-mail and voicemail from one source, access the Internet, make unlimited calls between their cable home service and mobile phones, and have the convenience of one point of contact for service and billing.

Pivot is now available in eight metropolitan areas: Raleigh, North Carolina.; Austin, Texas; Boston, Massachusetts; Portland, Oregon; San Diego, California; Phoenix, Arizona; Cincinnati and Dayton, Ohio.

Pivot is expected to launch in 40 metropolitan areas in 2007. The capability to program your home DVR from your Sprint phone will also be available to customers in select areas in 2007. The service can be purchased at Sprint retail stores in those markets or by calling your cable company's call center. Currently, four handsets from the Sprint portfolio are featured in the Pivot offering, although the service is available on any Sprint handset.

For more information, check out the press release Innovative Wireless Service Gives Customers the Power to Feel at Home Anywhere.

Bay Area residents are spending more time online and the majority are now using high-speed DSL to do so, according to results of the 2007 Bay Area Council Poll of 600 residents released recently.

In 1999, the average number of hours residents estimated they spent online per week was 11 hours, but that estimate has steadily increased to 16 hours in 2007. San Francisco residents spend the most time online, averaging 18 hours a week, and North Bay residents of Marin, Sonoma, Napa and Solano spend 13 hours online each week, the least amount in the region.

Residents have also been trading up on their connection speeds in their homes, outpacing the rest of the United States. Just five years ago, in 2002, 53 percent of residents with Internet access logged onto with a regular modem, but today modems are used by a mere 11 percent of residents. Instead, the majority (55 percent) now use high-speed DSL, and about another third (29 percent) log on with high-speed cable at their home. The Bay Area, as a region, is far ahead of the rest of the country in broadband access, with a 62 percent adoption rate, versus 42 percent of the total U.S. population in 2006 according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

While hours online and connection speeds have increased, the number of residents who use a personal computer has stayed relatively flat. In 1999, 79 percent or respondents used a PC either at home, work or at school, and today 81 percent report that they do.

The "Digital Divide" was apparent in the Bay Area Council Poll results. While 97 percent of those with an income greater than $80,000 regularly use a computer, only 62 percent of respondents with an income lower than $40,000 use a PC. Likewise, 95 percent of residents in the top income bracket access the Internet, but only 52 percent of those with an income less than $40,000 do so.

For more information, check out the Bay Area Council press release.

Daylight savings is fast approaching and sooner than ever. This year, we spring forward on March 11, three weeks earlier than usual, in accordance with the Energy Policy Act of 2005. While this may be a way to conserve energy, it can cause havoc with your computer if you are not prepared.

If the computer you are currently using in your home was programmed before 2005, when the change was passed into law, your system will not update automatically on the new date. That could lead problems like calendar applications not working properly and important automated processes not taking place on time.

The best way to prepare is go directly to the source to find out what you need to do to set your computer to the new Daylight Savings schedule.

If your computer runs Microsoft Windows, you can visit Microsoft's Preparing for Daylight Saving Time changes in 2007. The site can help you determine if your computer will be affected and the steps you can take to update it.

Apple has created a similar site to answer questions for Mac OS X users.

For more information, check out the Information Week article Microsoft Issues Warning On Daylight-Saving Time Software Flaw.

BigBand Networks Inc., a provider of broadband multimedia infrastructure for video, voice and data, announced that it has signed a five-year agreement with Suddenlink Communications. The cable operator is using the BigBand FastFlow® Broadband Provisioning Manager (BPM) to provision and manage DOCSIS® services such as High-Speed Data (HSD) and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) across a geographically dispersed, multi-vendor network environment.

Last May, Suddenlink closed an acquisition of cable systems that serve approximately 900,000 subscribers in parts of eight states from Cox Communications. Suddenlink closed an additional acquisition in July of cable systems that serve approximately 240,000 customers in parts of four states from Charter Communications. Cox had been using FastFlow to provision its systems, and the new agreement extends FastFlow's coverage to the balance of Suddenlink's cable systems. Suddenlink also uses BigBand's Broadband Multimedia-Services Router (BMR®) and Cuda® cable modem termination system (CMTS) platform for video, voice and data services in multiple locations.

"Suddenlink has very quickly grown into one of the larger cable operators in the U.S., and BigBand's FastFlow made that transition much easier," said Jeff Strout, Suddenlink's vice president of IP engineering and operations. "FastFlow's intuitive user interface gave us extensive visibility into service delivery on our new, multi-vendor networks and made service deployment much easier than we anticipated. The platform is also designed to scale well to support additional growth."

FastFlow and other provisioning management software applications have become increasingly popular for service provisioning as cable networks have evolved from the closed systems of the past to the standards-based, multi-vendor environments of today. FastFlow is interoperable with a wide range of devices from multiple vendors, including cable modems, set-top boxes, multimedia terminal adaptors, and CMTS. Though FastFlow is adept at provisioning widely distributed networks, such as Suddenlink's, the product also performs well in centralized networks.

"Suddenlink's decision to use BigBand's FastFlow BPM in the systems it acquired from Cox, and to expand its use of the product to its other systems is a powerful testament to the solution's scalability and multi-vendor capabilities," said Pirjo Tuomi, senior vice president of worldwide sales for BigBand Networks. "FastFlow is designed to allow cable operators like Suddenlink to make service deployment seamless, and maintain subscriber satisfaction as new services are installed."

For more information, check out the press release BigBand Networks Announces Five-Year Contract with Suddenlink Communications.

Broadband Internet access is gradually becoming a defining characteristic of advanced industrialized economies. In the latest update to ABI Research's online Broadband Subscribers Database, ABI forecasts that the total number of DSL and cable broadband users in the world will grow by an average of 9 percent annually over the next five years to reach 480 million subscribers by 2012.

"The Asia-Pacific region offers a potentially huge market to tap into," says broadband research analyst Serene Fong, of ABI Research's Asia bureau. "In terms of statistical benchmarking, the subscriber base in the Asia-Pacific region will grow substantially over the next five years, and is expected to outperform other areas. Much of the Asia-Pacific growth is expected to be fueled by the flourishing Chinese broadband market."

Broadband DSL will continue to be the fastest growing sector in the industry, as opposed to cable broadband. Asia-Pacific research director and general manager Jake Saunders comments, "DSL is set for stronger growth than cable across the globe mainly because it is able to leverage existing telecommunications infrastructure, leading to lower prices and greater ease of deployment."

ABI Research's "Broadband Subscribers Database", which is updated twice each year, profiles subscriber trends categorized by operator, by country, and by technology. To read more about this research, check out the press release Broadband to Reach Almost Half a Billion Subscribers Worldwide by 2012.

GameRail recently announced that it has completed a direct connection to the Charter high-speed Internet service network. The new connection bypasses the Internet and allows Charter high-speed Internet subscribers in Missouri, St. Louis, and St. Louis Metro East to decrease ping times to online game servers throughout the country by 25 to 75 percent. GameRail's nationwide network directly connects gamers to game servers. Online gamers with broadband Internet service from Charter now have the shortest and fastest path to performance game servers offering the popular titles.

Charter customers can see for themselves the improved performance by simply registering at www.gamerail.com. "The GameRail network is further expanded with Charter Communications' Midwestern footprint. Our network's reach today covers most major peering points with partners servicing broadband subscribers from as far as Fairbanks, Alaska and as near as Chesterfield, Missouri. Access providers and game server hosts continue to jump on the rail in order to offer their customers the best online gaming experience possible" said Blake Ashby, GameRails' President.

For more information, check out the press release Charter High-Speed Internet Customers Gain Direct Access to GameRail.