Tuesday, July 13

Third Voice has patched the security holes, noted here Friday, in its web page annotation software.

I frequently get questions from laptop users about telephone adapters, acoustic couplers, and other products that are useful in hotel rooms and board rooms. If modeming from a laptop is your thing, visit Road Warrior for mobile products and information.

A Canadian judge has ruled that Internet service providers may cancel the accounts of spammers.

The Canadian government has decided that cable companies have to allow other Internet service providers use of their high speed networks. Similar cases are pending in the U.S., with contradictory rulings in Oregon and California.

AOL and MSN are starting to react to ISPs who are giving away computers to sell Internet access. Though neither is giving away computers yet, both companies are offering rebates to customers who buy computers and sign a contract for Internet access. The rebates are for as much as $400 for a three-year contract.

The Toledo Blade has a somewhat unusual article about modem handshaking signals. (I'm not sure what John Q. Public would think about reading this article over his morning coffee. Then again, I'm not much for Garfield, so it all balances out.)

A new report from Moody's Investor Services estimates 1.1 millions U.S. homes will have cable modems by the end of 1999, with an increase to 7.5 million by the end of 2002. Moody's predicts that DSL be in 400,000 U.S. households by the end of this year, and 4.5 million homes by the end of 2002.

Moody's Investors Service modem projections
	End of 1998	End of 1999	End of 2002
Cable modems	400,000	1.1 million	7.5 million
DSL modems	40,000	400,000	4.5 million

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Friday, July 16

Broward County, Florida, has voted to force AT&T to open its cable modem network to other ISPs. The question of whether cable companies must provide open access is being raised across the U.S., with contradictory local rulings.

Dennis Maeder was the first to note that Cirrus Logic is now owned by Ambient. Biggest bonus for modem users: unlike Cirrus Logic, Ambient offers generic Cirrus Logic chipset drivers and firmware instead of protesting that they make chips, not modems (see Rockwell/Conexant, PCTel, and others).

After just one week, Microsoft has dropped the rebate program that allowed new computer buyers to get up to $400 in rebates if they signed a contract to use MSN. Instead, Microsoft is offering a free computer to customers who join MSN for three years.

Intel is entering the broadband market. Intel will manufacture chips for consumer DSL equipment. Intel has entered into an agreement with networking giant Cisco to insure that the two companies' DSL equipment is compatible.

On Thursday the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority began issuing long IP addresses that conform to IPv6, the 32-bit Internet addressing system that will greatly expand the possible number of devices connected to the Internet.

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