The Latest in Telecom and Location-Based Insights

Comcast Business Services has launched an effort to expand its fiber network in downtown Houston to provide access to Ethernet, cloud services, and other telecom services to over 3,000 additional businesses in the area. This fiber network expansion is expected to be completed by early this year and will compliment their previous efforts.

Zayo Group has extended its fiber-based services to CoreSite Realty Corporation, a national provider of powerful, network-rich data centers. Zayo’s full suite of lit services is now available at all CoreSite’s data centers including wavelengths, Ethernet and IP services, and dark fiber at all locations except Miami.

Fiber lit buildings are the best places to locate businesses requiring optimal connectivity because the fiber optic network is already present to tap into. Having fiber or broadband in a building allows companies to access high-speed Internet and broadband connectivity.

Lately, telcos have been waiting in anticipation to see if Sprint will move ahead with a deal to fully acquire Clearwire, a wireless high-speed Internet Service Provider, which they owned the majority share (51%). Last week, Sprint Nextel Corp. reached a deal to acquire the remaining portion of Clearwire Corp.

Often dubbed the “Father of Fiber Optics,” Charles K. Kao led the development and use of fiber optics in telecommunications in 1965 when he showed how the high-loss of existing fiber optics came from impurities in the glass, rather than from an underlying problem in the technology itself.

In a building only a mile away from Omaha’s Eppley Airfield, nearly two dozen dispatch specialists coordinate traffic patterns for 152 emergency helicopters, 17 airplanes, and 15 ambulances across the US. As a dispatch specialist for AirCom, it is your job to deliver critical communications.

In recent years, the courts have struggled to decide whether the government needs a warrant to access records about a cell phone user’s location and in September, federal courts ruled that cell phone location data is not protected under the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment. Last month, a judge in Texas began raising questions.

With two of the Internet’s main hubs (NY/NJ and Ashburn) and some of its most trafficked routes in Hurricane Sandy’s path last month, it leaves the question – how well did the communications grid manage during the storm? Turns out, the Internet actually fared the storm very well.