Jackson Rocco

Comcast just became the wireless Internet vendor to beat by offering 4G wireless Internet in Portland, Oregon. Leveraging Clearwire's WiMax network, this move leaves LTE (Long-Term Evolution), the competing technology, a step behind.

The new service, called Comcast High-Speed 2go, offers speeds of up to 4Mbps. The Fast Pack Metro package is aggressively sold at an introductory rate of $49.99 a month, which also includes a 12Mbps home Internet service and a free Wi-Fi router. After the first year, the rate jumps to a still-competitive $73 per month. An additional $20 adds nationwide 3G data service to the package, provided by Sprint Nextel (the majority owner of Clearwire). Existing Comcast broadband customers can pick up the service for an additional $30 for local and $50 for nationwide.

The offer bests Verizon Wireless's current offering of 3G wireless Internet with speeds ranging from 600kbps to1.4Mpbs and a 5GB cap ($.05 per MB after) for $59.95 per month.

Comcast intends to launch the service in Chicago, Atlanta, and Philadelphia by the end of 2009. Clearwire additionally intends to deploy WiMax in Las Vegas, Charlotte, Dallas, and Honolulu later this year.

This bold move beats LTE to market and gives Comcast a competitive edge in the rapidly changing wireless broadband market.

WiMax is a competitor to the emerging LTE standard, which is supported by Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile. While LTE could potentially offer speeds of 5 to 10Mbs, WiMax is headed for early market dominance and it could take years for LTE to catch up. Both networks are IP-based and were designed to move data rather than voice. WiMax is based on open standards, and the equipment is therefore cheaper to make.

It's speculated that eventually the networks could merge, giving customers more options for nationwide service.

Either way, this is a win for customers who hunger for faster wireless connectivity. With the Internet becoming the default channel for distributing video and voice communications, and laptops and netbooks dominating the PC market, people are demanding faster Internet 2go. So far, Comcast and Clearwire are holding the ace.

Michael Scalisi is an IT manager based in Alameda, California.

The next version of Firefox will include next-generation features Mozilla hopes will help the browser stand apart from competitors.

Firefox 3.5, which is due out in final release at the end of the month, will allow people to edit digital images from within the browser without need for a third-party application, thanks to a new Javascript engine Mozilla has built for the browser, said Mike Beltzner, director of Firefox at Mozilla, during an interview in New York.

The software also will include the ability to run videos directly in the browser without the need for a third-party viewer or player, and will allow other elements of a Web page to interact with that video content, he said.

As an open-source company, Mozilla aims to give people technologies based on open standards that help them leverage the Web as both a content-delivery engine and platform for developing applications, Beltzner said.

"The more people we see using Firefox as their modern, standards-compliant browser, the better it is for the Web as an ecosystem," he said.

The new Javascript engine, called TraceMonkey, is twice as fast as the one in Firefox 3.0, and allows for image editing from within the browser without need for software such as Adobe Photoshop, Beltzner said. Javascript is a standard scripting language for Web applications.

"We can do this just as well with an online Web application as well as you could on a local application," he said, thanks to TraceMonkey. "Especially for those complex, power-hungry Web applications, people will find Firefox 3.5 a lot faster."

Similarly, the new video capability is based on the open-source video codec called Ogg, maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation, so it is built on technology freely available for both Web users and developers.

Video written for the Ogg codec can be played within Firefox 3.5 without a separate media player, Beltzner said. Moreover, to develop video to be played within the browser, developers don't have to license proprietary codecs from the vendors that own them, as they do with Flash Player or other proprietary-player content, Beltzner said.

Firefox 3.5 also allows developers to build applications for other parts of a Web page that can interact with the video playing, which has potential for enhancing next-generation Web-based applications such as advertising campaigns as well as enterprise applications, he said.

Currently, video technology is coded separately from other Web-site assets and there is no interaction between them, he added.

For example, if someone is watching a television program on Hulu.com that is written to the Ogg codec and likes a shirt a character is wearing, Firefox 3.5 will allow that person to click on the shirt and see links to sites where it can be purchased, Beltzner said.

Al Hilwa, a program director for analyst firm IDC, said any technology that provides more options for online advertisers and developers to take advantage of the Web as an advertising and content-delivery system are certainly worth a second look and do differentiate Firefox from competitors.

However, he said due to Firefox's scant market share compared to Microsoft's Internet Explorer - which remains the leading browser - it's too soon to tell whether anyone will take advantage of Firefox 3.5's new technology.

"I think it remains to be seen whether that's going to attract various content providers or Web sites that know full well they will only reach 15 percent of [Web] users, because that's how many people will have Firefox in the short term," he said.

A preview of Firefox 3.5 is available now, but Mozilla delayed the first release candidate that was scheduled for this week until next week to iron out some last-minute bugs. The final release of the browser is still expected at the end of the month.

Verizon Business took its next step toward deploying 100Gbps by trialing its 100G optical service with the United Kingdom's national research and education network, JANET.  

Verizon says it finished the trial in April after it sent 100G signals simultaneously with 10G and 40G optical signals over a 103-kilometer section of its global network located between London and Reading in the United Kingdom. The carrier tested the service in collaboration with JANET, the UK's network that is used to support bandwidth-intensive educational and research project and that consists of a backbone and 19 regional networks.

The test successfully showed that different optical signals "can be carried simultaneously without impact [and that] current networks can be upgraded to the higher bandwidth without modification to the physical network," Verizon says. The company purposely introduced signal impairments during its trial over JANET to see if they could be corrected by electronic hardware.

Verizon Business is planning to upgrade its major routes in the United States to 100Gbps next year. Verizon first tested its 100G capabilities in 2007 when it transmitted a live video feed over 312 miles from Tampa to Miami. Joseph Cook, Verizon Business' vice president for global network engineering, said the 100G test "showed us that we could deploy 100G on routes and not disrupt current wavelengths."

100G networks are seen by many as a logical progression from the current standard of 10G Ethernet. In 2006, the IEEE's Higher Speed Study Group (HSSG) voted to pursue 100G Ethernet as its next major Ethernet standard. The HSSG said last summer that it was aiming to have a single standard developed that covered both 40G and 100G speeds by 2010, marking the first time that an Ethernet standards group had agreed to create one standard for two different speeds.