Networking

In my home in Asheville, N.C., I currently have 300Mbps internet to my home office. Back in my childhood home in Calhoun County, W. Va., where I still own some family land, I’d be lucky to get DSL speeds in Kbps. That’s kilobits per second. 

It’s no wonder a recent Satellite Internet survey found that 36% of people surveyed said poor internet access was keeping them from moving to the country. As Alexandre Menard, a leader of the McKinsey Center for Advanced Connectivity, told CNET’s Eric Mack, “You have still 10% to to 20% of the population, even in developed markets … that have an average DSL or bad 3G connection, and therefore doing video or doing higher-requirement usage is a challenge.” Working from home is only a dream for tens of millions, but the answer to their internet prayers may lie in the skies above them — with SpaceX Starlink satellites.
Recent Starlink beta tests show that Starlink is living up to its promise of data speeds from 50Mb/s to 150Mb/s and latency from 20ms to 40ms.
To get this, you need to be admitted into the Starlink “Better than Nothing”  beta program. If you make it in, your dish and modem/router will cost you $499 with a subscription price of $99 a month. 
Is it worth it? Starlink beta testers think so. It’s much faster than what they can get from their Earth-bound ISPs. Recently Starlink engineers answered questions from users, critics, and fans on a Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) and revealed more about Starlink’s ins and outs. 
First, for now, if you get a beta invite, you’re going to need a clear line of sight to 53 degrees latitude (north and south) where the satellites are currently clumped up. That’s because “you should think about communication between the Starlink dish and the satellite in space as a ‘skinny beam’ between dishy and the satellite. So, as the satellite passes quickly overhead, if there is a branch or pole between the dish and satellite you’ll usually lose connection.” With that in mind, it’s working on software features to improve this. And, of course, as the Starlink satellite constellation grows so too will be the space in which you’ll find a working satellite.
When you first turn your Starlink terminal on, it knows nothing about where the satellites are. Instead, it “automatically scans the sky in a matter of milliseconds and locks into the satellite overhead, even though it’s traveling 17,500 mph overhead.” Once detected, the Starlink dish hones in on its position and requests to join the internet. Then, the terminal downloads a schedule of which satellites to talk to next to keep your connection going.

Starlink, of course, also has to work on keeping its satellite connected to the terrestrial internet. That’s a challenge. Starlink’s engineers have been working on “space lasers” to connect the satellites to improve speeds. These lasers would provide a high-speed interconnect between the satellites. The net result will be to speed up users’ broadband and decrease their latency. 
This works, the engineers explained, because the “speed of light is faster in a vacuum than in fiber, so the space lasers have exciting potential for low latency links.” This will also enable Starlink to better serve users where the satellites can’t see a fixed ground station. Starlink has already tested this and the prototype space lasers on two satellites that transmitted gigabytes of data per second. Add the engineers: “Bringing down the cost of the space lasers and producing a lot of them fast is a really hard problem that the team is still working on.”
In the meantime, Starlink engineers are working to lower Starlink’s latency even further. “We challenge ourselves every day to push Starlink to the fundamental limitations of physics. Current Starlink satellites operate at 550km, where light travel time is 1.8 milliseconds to Earth. The roundtrip from your house to a gaming server and back is at best 4 times 1.8 milliseconds at these altitudes, or under 8 milliseconds.”
That’s easier said than done. For example:
When satellites are not directly overhead, your data must travel through the air for more time.
Small levels of packet buffering are helpful for a stable service but hurt latency.
Starlink traffic travels through fiber on the ground. This is an indirect pathway that is 1.5 times slower than photons in a vacuum.
Some users also worried about whether Starlink can keep up its current speed. The engineers replied, “Unlike regular satellite internet where it gets way too crowded — as we launch more satellites over time the network will get increasingly great, not increasingly worse.”
Indeed, they’re planning to move from a limited beta to a wider beta in late January. This will give many more users an opportunity to participate.
Potential users expressed concern about data caps, which have proven a constant annoyance of older satellite internet systems. The team’s response:

“At this time, the Starlink beta service does not have data caps… We really don’t want to implement restrictive data caps… Right now we’re still trying to figure a lot of stuff out–we might have to do something in the future to prevent abuse and just ensure that everyone else gets quality service.”

Technically speaking, Starlink currently only supports IPv4. But it won’t stay that way. “We’re testing out IPv6 now, and will roll it out soon! Once it’s ready, you’ll get both an IPv4 and an IPv6 address. IPv4 addresses are a limited resource — IPv6 is the future.” 
On a more down-to-Earth matter, the Starlink staffers also revealed that their dishes come with heaters to melt off snow. As winter approaches, the company said, “We’ll be deploying a software update in a few weeks to upgrade our snow melting ability with continued improvements planned for the months ahead.” Today, the dishes are certified to operate at temperatures from -30C to +40C.”
Finally, Starlink founder Elon Musk is hiring and Starlink has many job openings. Whether it’s software development, engineering, or management, there’s a potential Starlink job for you. In the AMA, the team kept saying over and over again, “Send your resumes to starlink@spacex.com.”
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The fallout from the new rules surrounding Australian domain names has already started, even though the rules do not begin until April.
Webcentral announced on Friday it was exiting its Netalliance “drop catching” business, which it described as “the purchasing of domains if they are not renewed by the domain owner and then on selling it to someone else or back to the original owner”. Naturally, they have left out the inconvenience and inflated prices when a customer forgets to manually renew a domain, versus the automated squatters swooping in, as being a factor in their decision.
“It is expected that this practice will be redundant in the near future once (auDA), the domain governing body makes much needed changes to the industry,” the company said.
For selling off its half-share of Netalliance, Webcentral has walked away with AU$500,000 in cash. Netalliance has less than AU$0.5 million in total revenue and around AU$100,000 in profit each year, of which half went to Webcentral.
“Our strategy is to focus on our core business, improve our customer experience, and simplify the business structure to drive profitability,” Webcentral and 5G Networks managing director Joe Demase said.
“We have identified a number of quick wins to optimise our platform assets and provided the team with clear direction of our roadmap for the future.”
See also: New .au domain namespace rules come into effect April 12

In the new rules, domain name monetisation by way of domain parking and affiliate sites expressly for the purpose of warehousing and transferring the domain to another will be forbidden on the org.au, asn.au, id.au, and edu.au namespaces.
Webcentral was recently taken over for approximately AU$19 million by 5G Networks, which involved a bidding war with Web.com and a delay from the Australian Takeovers Panel.
The formation of Webcentral occurred after Arq Group, which was formerly known as Melbourne IT, sold its enterprise services division for AU$35 million, and the company needed a home for the Arq SMB remnants.
Last week, 5G Networks announced that it expanded its data centre footprint into Brisbane, completing a AU$1.1 million lease agreement that will see it operate the 3MW Fortitude Valley facility.
“We are really excited to be exploiting our advantage of being a [data centre] operator and fibre network owner, I haven’t seen rack space and dark fibre product bundling from one provider before, but this is what our customers are asking for,” Demase said.
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There are two kinds of paid streaming services: Live TV, such as Sling TV and YouTubeTV, and video-on-demand, such as Netflix and Amazon Prime. Here’s what to look for in live TV packages.
Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, we’ve spent more time than ever watching TV at home. You might think that would be good news for the cable companies, Nope. More people than ever are dumping cable and satellite TV for streaming. 

Why? Because people want to save money. At the same time, though, 60% of viewers are paying for both cable TV and one or more streaming channels. That’s because they want both their regular channels and fresh, new offerings from video-on-demand (VoD) streaming services such as CBS All Access’s Star Trek: Discovery; Disney+’s The Mandalorian; and Netflix’sThe Queen’s Gambit. 
Guess what? With today’s streaming services you can have the best of both worlds. There are two kinds of streaming. The first, and oldest, is VoD, from such providers as Amazon Prime Video and Netflix. Increasingly, there are free, with commercials, VoD services such as Crackle, Peacock, and Pluto TV. Then, there are the live TV streaming services including AT&T Now, Philio, and Sling TV. Combine them and you can get all your old channels and fresh new shows for less money than you’re paying your cable or satellite TV provider today. 
But, you need to be careful. Back in 2009, when I first cut the cable cord, I saved over $100 a month and still got to watch all my shows. Just over ten years later, my internet video streaming bills are closing in on cable TV-level bills. 
Why? Internet streaming is copying the tired, old cable business models. Almost all the live TV services saw price increases in 2020, and I expect we’ll see even higher bills in 2021. 
Sure, the delivery technology is different. Instead of a set-top box, you use a streaming device, such as my own favorite, the 2020 Roku Ultra. Or you can just buy high-end TVs with full-featured streaming built-in. But the bills are increasingly getting closer. That said, you can still save money. 

To make use of any of these services you’ll need broadband internet. If you’re living on your own, you may be able to get by with as little as 10 Mbp. If you’re sharing your home with others and/or you want to watch 4K videos, I recommend you have at least a 25 Mbps internet connection. Not sure how fast your connection is? Run the Ookla Speedtest.
And, by the way, you won’t lose anything by switching from a cable box to a Roku or Amazon Fire TV 4K stick. The only real difference between conventional cable and internet TV is that live streaming sports lag 15 seconds to a minute behind live broadcasts.
With no further adieu, let’s first take a look at the live TV services.
Live TV Streaming Services
Before we dive in, you should realize that these services’ pricing, channel lineup, DVR capabilities, and how many streams you can watch at one time are all subject to change. They’re also the most important factors to consider before subscribing to a service. So, even if one service sounds perfect for you, go directly to its site and make sure that you’ll still be getting what I’m describing in this story. 
For the most part, all of these support the most popular streaming devices. For example, no matter which service you subscribe to, an Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV Cube, Roku Express, or Google Chromecast will almost certainly support it. But if you’re using a more obscure streaming gadget, such as an Nvidia Shield TV Pro or Tivo Stream 4K, it might not work with your preferred service. Smart TVs also frequently don’t support newer streaming offerings. The moral of this story is before subscribing make sure the service will work with your hardware. 
Fortunately, most of these services give you a free 7-day trial period. Before signing up for a trial though check the fine print. You don’t want to end up paying for a service that doesn’t work for you. 
Besides these factors, most of these services offer a variety of premium channels for additional fees. To see which services offer what channels at any given moment, again, check the service’s site. You can get a good idea of what’s what though from ZDNet’s sister site CNet’s Top 100 channels comparison chart.

AT&T customers will like it, others should keep looking.

As a long time DirecTV satellite customer, I wanted to like AT&T TV Now. I couldn’t. I always found it to suffer from buffering problems. It’s gotten better over the years, but its offerings and price got poorer.
In the early days, it came with a great 100 channels for $35 a month. That was then. This is now. Today, its Plus package base price is $55 a month for 45-plus channels. The company also offers AT&T TV Now Max, with over 60 channels, for $80 a month. Both offer access to local ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC channels in most, but not all, areas. Of all the major streaming services, it offers the least number of channels for your money. 
The Max offering’s best feature, as its name hints, is it includes HBO Max. Other nice features include 500 hours of cloud DVR service and three simultaneous streams.
But now for some confusion. AT&T also offers another streaming service, AT&T TV. They are not the same thing. AT&T makes it really hard to tell them apart. It even uses the same app. But A&T TV is more expensive and has long-term contracts. Between the two of them, AT&T TV Now is the service you want. 
If you’re an AT&T customer, you may want to subscribe to this service, but the rest of us can do better.
$55 at AT&T

Are you ready for some “football,” where the stars names are Ronaldo, Messi, and Kabe? Then check out fuboTV

Are you a serious sports fan? And when I say “serious,” I mean besides watching the US favorite trilogy of football, basketball, and baseball. Do you want to watch the English Premier League, F1 Racing, and cricket? Yes? Then, you should check out fuboTV. 
That said, fuboTV has some holes in its lineup. For example, it no longer carries TNT and TBS, both of which show a lot of sports. It also doesn’t currently include the MLB Network or the Fox regional sports networks. Still, if your sporting tastes run to European sports, you’ll find a lot to like here. 
Besides sports, fuboTV is a full-fledged streaming service with all the usual stations. It also offers your local ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC channels in many places. Its Family plan offers 100-plus channels for $65 a month. For $80 a month, you get over 150 channels.
The basic DVR capability and number of streams you can play simultaneously used to be on the small side. Until recently, you only got 30 hours of cloud DVR time and two streams. If you wanted 250 hours of video storage you had to pay $10 more a month, and if you wanted to have three streams, it would run you an additional $6 a month. For now, both of these additions are included in the base price.
Put it all together and you have the best streaming service for European soccer fans and other non-mainstream US sports. Personally, I’d like to see them add Willow TV, the cricket-specific streaming service, but that’s a small matter unless you’re a serious cricket fan. FuboTV is also a good, general-purpose streaming service in its own right.    
$60 at Fubo TV

The one and only combination live TV and VoD service has its pluses and minuses
https://www.hulu.com/live-tv
Hulu + Live TV’s big selling point is it’s the one service, which combines both live TV and a video-on-demand (VoD). It’s a powerful package. Besides great original content, such as exclusive titles like The Handmaid’s Tale, it also has a large catalog of other on-demand shows and movies. On top of that, you get over 65+ live and on-demand channels. 
Its channel selection has some blanks in it. Some favorites such as the AMC, the CW channels Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, and VH1 are only available in extra-price add-ons. On the other hand, basic sports are well covered with the ESPN and Fox sports networks. Like most of the other services, it gives you access to local ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC channels in most areas. 
Hulu + Live TV’s interface and performance has been consistently improving over the years. I find it the easiest live TV service to use. 
Hulu + Live TV’s combination of on-demand video and live TV is nice, but its price is going up. For now, it’s still $55 a month, but on December 18, 2020, it will be going up to $65 a month. For that, you can also stream two sessions at once and get 50 hours of cloud DVR storage. If you want more, for $10 a month you get 200 hours of cloud storage. With this Enhanced Cloud DVR, you can also record multiple shows at the same time, and fast-forward through any content in your DVR. For another $10 a month, you can play more than two streams at once. But, unlike the other services, you can’t easily stream outside your home. As Hulu puts it, “Our Live TV plans are intended for single-home use.” 
Finally, if all you want is Hulu VoD streaming, it’s still available. The cheapest version of the ad-supported streaming library is only $6 a month. The no-ads version is also available for $11.99.
Until recently, I’d recommend Hulu + Live TV for most people. But, with its added costs, I think you should take a long, hard look at its offerings and its rivals before paying for a subscription. 
$55 at Hulu

Philo offers the best, cheap streaming TV deal

Short on cash? Not all that interested in sports? If that’s you, then Philo is the service you want. For only $20 a month you get over 60 channels.
But you won’t get any local or sports channels. Still, if you like popular entertainment and lifestyle shows with just enough news — BBC World News and Cheddar News — to keep you informed, Philo is well worth checking out.
Philo also boasts exceptional DVR capabilities. Most Philo’s channel TV shows and movies are available on-demand for 72-hours after their first live airing. It also gives you unlimited DVR storage. Once stored, however, you’ll only have a month to watch the shows. Still, that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make for unlimited storage. You can also fast-forward your way through your saved shows. 
The service also enables you to watch three different streams at the same time. If you go over that, the oldest stream stops working.
Philo may not offer some popular networks, especially sports, but you can’t beat the price and its cloud DVR functionality is second to none. For what it offers, I quite like Philo. 
View Now at Philo

Sling TV is the oldest and in many ways still the best live TV streaming service

Sling TV has an ala carte approach to channels that separates it from its competitors. While the others tend to offer only one or two packages, Sling TV offers two basic packages — Blue and Orange — and a wide variety of packages bundling up to a dozen-related channels.
This is a mixed blessing. I like it because it lets me get only the channels I want while others may find it confusing. It starts with two $30-per-month channel packages. Some channels are available on both Sling Orange, over 30 channels, and Sling Blue, over 45 channels. Orange is basically an ESPN/Disney package, while Blue offers a Fox/NBC package. Your best deal, if you want a broad selection of channels, is to combine them for $45.
What you won’t get though is local CBS and PBS channels. For those, Sling TV urges you to use an over-the-air (OTA) antenna. Indeed, Sling TV has its own streaming devices, AirTV 2 and AirTV Mini streaming devices to watch both Sling TV and your local channels. I’ve used and liked them both. If you already have an antenna you can buy them by themselves. If you need an antenna Sling TV offers them as a bundle with an indoor HD antenna.
Sling TV’s packages, besides such common offerings as Showtime channels, cost from $5 or $10 monthly. For example, the $10 Sports Extra comes with 15 channels including NBA TV, ESPNU, ESPNEWS, NHL Network, and several college sports networks. While the $5 Hollywood Extra offers 7 channels including — for my way of thinking — the essential Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and ReelZ. 
Unfortunately, Sling TV’s DVR starts with a quite limited 10 hours of recording time. That’s nothing like enough. For 50 hours of storage and the ability to prevent shows from becoming automatically erased, you must pay an additional $5 a month.  
Your streaming options are… interesting. Sling Orange only lets you stream one channel at a time, while Sling Blue allows for three. If you get the package, you can stream four shows at once. 
Personally, I’ve liked Sling TV since it pioneered live TV streaming back in 2016. I like the interface, I like its speed, and I like that I can fine-tune my channels so I get just what I want. It’s combined Blue and Orange price is still well below that of its main competitors. For my money, Sling TV is today’s best streaming service. 
$30 at Sling TV

YouTube TV has the most channel choices and a great DVR, but it’s pricey.

I used to love Google’s YouTube TV, and I still like it a lot. But, there’s this one not so little problem. The price-tag. At $65 a month, YouTube TV is starting to close in on cable prices.
That said, there’s a lot to love here. With over 85 channels, it offers more of the most popular channels than its competitors. It also enables you to watch not only your local ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC channels in most areas, but your local PBS stations as well. 
The service also just added its first add-on package: The $11 a month Sports Plus package. This includes NFL RedZone, Fox College Sports, GolTV, and Fox Soccer Plus.
YouTube TV unquestionably has the best cloud DVR. It comes with unlimited storage and a generous nine months to watch recordings. You can stream up to three simultaneous shows at once. 
If it wasn’t for the price, I could easily recommend YouTubeTV for everyone. As it is, if you’re not hurting for money, it’s still an excellent choice.
$65 at YouTube TV
Best of the best
Everyone has different needs. Here are my thoughts on which service is best for who.
Best all-around: Sling TV, with YouTube TV right behind it. If you like storing movies and series for watching later, YouTube TV takes the lead.
Best for a budget: Philo easily gives you the most for the least money.
Best all-in-one live TV and VoD: Hulu + Live TV is the only contender.
Soccer and other European sports fans: FuboTV
AT&T Customer: AT&T TV Now

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Since its inception, BT Global Service has operated as a pure global telecommunications provider, but these days the company has its sights set on being more than just that.
Speaking to ZDNet, BT Global Services CEO Bas Burger explained that for the last two years the company has been adding cybersecurity, cloud, and networking to its remit to become more broadly known as a tech company, and not just a carrier.
That process has so far involved BT building an “over-the-top platform that is going to allow us to — in a completely digital native and data-centric way — manage end-to-end performance of networks, whether it’s our own network or somebody else’s network”, according to Burger.
BT has also been investing heavily in developing its cybersecurity platform. 
“Most of our R&D and new technology is in cyberspace because we have so much data … we have a network in 180 countries in the world, we do business with most of the big multinationals in the world, so we see a lot of trends going across our network, not only about what applications are being used or what behaviours do customers have, but also what behaviours do the bad guys have,” Burger said.
Read: 10 tasks every network admin should perform at the end of the year (TechRepublic)
But why the shift? “Because the whole market pivots,” the CEO said.

“The technology available now to run networks in a more fractured way is because there is such a thing as software-defined networks … you don’t have to have dedicated networks for everything anymore, you can use mobile better because you use 4G, 3G, and in the future 5G.
“So the way in which you can utilise different types of networks is determined by software — so that is a technology shift in the whole industry — but we saw this coming already some years ago, and therefore we pivoted our strategy towards that new world.”
As next steps, the UK-based conglomerate is looking to launch another platform that Burger said would be designed to better utilise its threat data, as part of efforts to help speed up the response time to identify and react to potential threats.
“It’s basically a platform, which assembles all the data that we have from our network and third-party data, which is useful, and then we have an AI engine that looks at that data and then anticipates what type of threats will be coming to the firewalls of our customers. What that system does is it automatically sets policies for files,” he said.
This yet to be named, all-in-one platform that has been designed to assemble data, analyse it, and set policies is due to be launched either at the end of this quarter or next, Burger said, following tests with a number of existing customers.
See also: 5G and IoT security: Why cybersecurity experts are sounding an alarm (TechRepublic)
The other significant move by BT as part of this shift has been partnering with other companies so it can remain focused on becoming a managed network service provider.
“We’ve said we don’t want to own access networks anymore, we’d rather lease them from whoever who has the best access. We don’t want to own any satellite ground stations anymore. But we do want to own our global backbone and we want to partner with an ecosystem,” he said.
“The exciting thing is to build those ecosystems to make sure that you make your own platform quite open through API so that all the rest can work with it.”
He pointed out, for instance, that the company has started working with ServiceNow to enable customers to have visibility over application performance. 
“If you add how networks perform underneath — and the APIs into that environment — that’s a huge advantage for customers because they can see if our connection goes badly. Is it because of the PC you’re using or I’m using, or is it the software that sits in the cloud, or is the network,” he said.
Others on the partner list include Zoom, Microsoft through Teams, and Cisco’s Webex, with plans to bring in some SD-WAN providers shortly.
Burger added he believes there are opportunities to bring the network together with future Internet of Things platforms.
“There are big providers in the IoT space that also want to utilise networks in a better way than what they can do today … and we don’t all have to invest in the same IoT platform,” he said.
“We can click into those ecosystems in a way that is seamless and delivers tremendous outcomes for our customers, which will give agility, will give speed, and will give them the ability to not have to invest in all that technology, and also not be constrained by not being able to switch technology because they bought this one technology and they have to stick with it for 20 years.” 
It might have been 20 years since BT Global Services was first established, but Burger believes all the changes being made has created an “extremely exciting period” for the company. 
“I think we are very, very well-positioned to play a very important role in that new world,” he said.
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Apple’s partnership with Verizon on 5G and the iPhone 12 lineup is all about business as well as indoor and enterprise 5G deployments.
Tami Erwin, Executive Vice President and Group CEO for Verizon Business, along with Apple, in an event outlined 5G Fleet Swap, a program that allows companies to trade in their entire fleet of smartphones from Verizon or any carrier and upgrade to any iPhone 12 model for no upfront cost. The iPhone 12 Mini will carry no monthly cost. 

Special Feature

Erwin detailed the reasoning for the program, highlighting “the acceleration to digital will only get faster.” 
At Apple’s iPhone 12 launch, Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg highlighted the companies’ partnership as a way to expand 5G millimeter wave reach. But the reality is 5G mmwave is going to be more about business.
What is 5G? Everything you need to know about the new wireless revolution | 5G for business: Why this green and leafy campus could hold the key to success | 5G’s mmWave enterprise revolution derailed by COVID-19
Enter the Verizon 5G Fleet Swap effort. Susan Prescott, Apple’s vice president of Markets, Apps and Services said that the iPhone 12 “paired with Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband going indoors it’s now easier than ever for businesses to build transformational mobile apps.”
During the event, Prescott showed a brief video demonstrating enterprise apps, like JigSpace that allows employees to view products in devices using augmented reality. At the start of the pandemic, JigSpace provided instructions and diagrams to technicians in augmented reality for ventilators.

Another app Apple highlighted during the event was OsiriX, a radiology medical image viewer, touting 5G speeds that shortens the load time for large files, making it possible to view and diagnose from anywhere. IBM’s Maximo Visual Inspection app will also benefit from indoor 5G.
From Verizon’s standpoint, the iPhone 12 can be the front end of driving private 5G enterprise deployments. Qualcomm recently outlined how 5G mmwave will play into the enterprise via edge computing.
Indeed, Verizon Business announced that General Motors and Honeywell will be the first enterprise customers to install Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband service inside their corporate offices. Honeywell and GM will develop customized use cases that Apple could use to deploy more iPhone 12 devices.
The initial Verizon Business 5G deployment will be in Honeywell’s headquarters in Charlotte, NC and GM’s Factory Zero at Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Center, which is focused on electric vehicles.
Randy Mott, CIO of GM, said 5G will be critical to improving quality and speed of EV production. Sheila Jordan, chief digital technology officer at Honeywell, said 5G will help showcase the company’s industrial platforms and products.
Honeywell and GM will also explore 5G as a showcase for industrial and manufacturing use cases. Private 5G is likely to be a key enterprise use case for digital transformation, edge computing and artificial intelligence. More

Australian Domain Name Administrator (auDA) has announced that from 12 April 2021, new rules for com.au, net.au, org.au, and asn.au namespaces in the .au domain will come into effect.
The not-for-profit policy authority and industry self-regulatory body for the .au domain space said the new rules were designed to better meet the evolving needs of registrants, enhance trust in the .au domain, and help ensure .au remains Australian and secure.
“This signifies an important step forward in .au governance — modernising the policy framework, ensuring the .au domain can respond to the changing needs of Internet users, and continuing to build trust and confidence in .au namespaces,” auDA CEO Rosemary Sinclair said.
Sinclair said the new rules streamlined and simplified around 30 policies and guidelines that currently govern the .au domain.
Changes included eligibility and allocation rules for some namespaces — com.au, net.au, org.au, and asn.au; the terms and conditions for .au domain names; the complaints process; and how auDA manages rule compliance.
According to the policy document, the rules aim to ensure that a licensing system is established which is transparent, responsive, accountable, accessible, and efficient; improves the utility of the .au country code top-level domain (ccTLD), for all Australians; promotes consumer protection, fair trading, and competition; provides those protections necessary to maintain the integrity, stability, utility, and public confidence in the .au ccTLD; expresses licence terms and conditions in objective and not subjective terms; implements clear, predictable and reliable complaint processes; and preserves the fundamental principles of no proprietary rights in a domain name, first come, first served, and no hierarchy of rights.
As of 30 June 2020, the total number of domains under management by auDA was 3,180,395, encompassing the namespaces in the .au ccTLD which includes com.au, net.au, org.au, asn.au, id.au, gov.au, edu.au, vic.au, nsw.au, act.au, qld.au, nt.au, wa.au, sa.au, and tas.au.

The total figure represents a decrease of less than 1% from June 30 in the previous year.
“Creation of new domains in the last three months of the financial year increased significantly over the same period last year, coinciding with COVID-19 measures that saw an increase in businesses and organisations moving online following restrictions placed on the community’s access to bricks and mortar premises,” auDA said in its annual report, published last month.
Around 2.8 million have the com.au namespace; just over 223,00 are net.au; more than 73,000 are org.au; and just shy of 1,200 are gov.au.
New South Wales boasts just shy of 1.1 million .au domains under management by auDA.
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5G is confusing. It’s not one technology that will bring you gigabit-per-second-speeds and sub-10-millisecond latency. 5G’s actually three different network approaches. Only one of these — millimeter-wave (mmWave) — can give you gigabit speeds. Verizon, under the name 5G Ultra-Wideband, leads in US mmWave deployment. But the company also muddied the water by introducing yet another 5G approach: Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS). Verizon 5G DSS performance is pretty much the same as you’re getting from Verizon 4G LTE.

So, before you buy a new 5G phone, make sure you know exactly what you’re getting. Almost no Verizon customers will see 5G Ultra Wideband’s speeds. Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg praises 5G Ultra-Wideband network, which is now available in 55 cities, 43 stadiums, and 7 airports.
What Vestberg doesn’t mention is that the 5G Ultra-Wideband has a range of about 150 meters. And its 24GHz and 28GHz bands can barely transmit through window glass. Unless you’re almost on top of a mmWave transceiver with a clear line of sight, you won’t get greater speed, latency, or throughput. 
Verizon’s 5G DSS, which Verizon claims is already in 1,800+ markets and covers over 200 million people, has the same range but — and here’s the bad news — speed and throughput of the Verizon 4G LTE you’re already using.
A Verizon spokesperson explained:

Our nationwide coverage layer of 5G was never meant to compete on speed or capacity with our keenly differentiated and powerful 5G Ultra Wideband network. Initially, customers should expect our 5G Nationwide network to perform similarly to our award-winning 4G LTE network. Performance and coverage will continue to grow over time.”

So, why do it? Well, first it’s marketing. When you hear “5G,” you think you’re going to get all that super-fast speed and ultra-low latency. The reality is you’re not. 
That’s going to tick users off when they realize that their pricey 5G smartphone gets exactly the same performance as their brother’s old 4G LTE model. But, Verizon added, there are some benefits from DSS. 

Most of these, however, make life better for Verizon, not for users. For example, by enabling 5G service to run simultaneously with 4G LTE on multiple spectrum bands, Verizon can use its full portfolio of spectrum resources to serve both 4G and 5G customers.
How does that work? Without DSS, when Verizon or any other mobile telephony company has 20MHz of spectrum, it must split the spectrum in two. For example, 10MHz would go to 4G LTE, while the rest goes to 5G. Since, for now, there’s far more 4G LTE customers than 5G users that’s a real waste of spectrum. With DSS, an operator doesn’t have to split it up. Instead, Verizon can dynamically share that 20MHz between 4G LTE and 5G DSS. Or, as Verizon puts it, “It uses spectrum much more efficiently so customers have access to all of Verizon’s spectrum holdings – not just a portion of our spectrum.”
How do they do it? Verizon’s representative wouldn’t go into any detail, but they did say DSS is “built with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) technology which allows for faster response time to meet the dynamically changing needs of our customers.” We also know that Verizon is building its 5G platform on top of OpenStack clouds while running applications in Kubernetes orchestrated containers. This would include the 5G DSS software. 
On the edge, which is where 5G is being deployed, Verizon is using the Open Infrastructure Foundation’s StarlingX, OpenStack cloud infrastructure software stack for the edge. This, in turn, is the basis for Wind River’s Cloud Platform. Verizon uses this to manage its virtual radio access networks (vRANs) and core data center sites. For hardware on the edge, Verizon’s using Samsung’s 5G vRAN hardware and Intel’s Xeon Scalable processor, FPGA acceleration card, Ethernet network adapter, and its FlexRAN software reference architecture.
For users, all that means is that the one good thing 5G DSS customers will see is better latency. Specifically, “Customers accessing 5G using DSS will be able to take advantage of Verizon’s edge computing platforms which bring the power of the cloud nearer to users, drastically reducing the time it takes for data to make a round trip from point A to point B.” In particular, Verizon specific services will be more responsive. 
That’s all well and good, but the bottom line remains that 5G’s hype for consumers is all about all speed, and 5G DSS doesn’t deliver — and never will deliver — on that promise. MmWave, which will only be limited to cities and large indoor spaces, is the only technology that will bring you Gigabit speeds anytime soon. 

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