gigabit

The race to provide ultrafast broadband is on.

The race to provide ultrafast broadband is on. In May, Cleveland will become a test bed for a service, spearheaded by Case Western Reserve University, that lets residents of more than 100 homes download data at about 1 gigabit per second. In February, Google said it plans an ultra-high-speed broadband network covering as many as 500,000 users. "The purpose of this project is to experiment and learn," Google said in a blog introducing the idea. "Network providers are making real progress to expand and improve high-speed Internet access, but there's still more to be done." The U.S.

Jared Starkey is going all out for Google broadband. The day after Google said it would provide high-speed Internet access to as many as 500,000 people around the U.S., Starkey set up a Facebook page to lobby Google to bring the service to his hometown, Topeka, Kan. Since then, Starkey has passed out bright-orange necklaces made of the kind of fiber-optic cable used to deliver fast Web connections and rallied 100 people to show up at a downtown redevelopment meeting wearing T-shirts that play on Google's motto for the broadband plan.

Google's announcement Wednesday that it will roll out a high-speed fiber trial in select U.S. locations unleashed a flurry of comments ranging from Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski to the telecoms and cable industries to network-neutrality advocates.

Google is asking cities, counties and states to indicate interest in having Google-built one-gigabit-per-second fiber service. The company emphasized it is not entering the Internet service provider business but rather is conducting an experiment to see what happens when truly high bandwidth is available.

Billions of microscopic cells on a single chip will soon add eight gigabytes of nonvolatile memory to smartphones and other devices, creating new possibilities for mobile applications and potentially lowering prices in the long term. IM Flash Technologies, a joint venture between chipmakers Intel and Micron Technology, on Monday unveiled a 64-gigabit NAND flash die based on 25-nanometer process technology.

The new process doubles the density of the partnership's previous milestone creation, a 32-gigabit die based on 34-nanometer technology. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter.

The Wireless Gigabit Alliance, or WiGig, has completed a new specification that makes possible high-performance wireless display and audio with rates 10 times faster than current-generation wireless LANs. The new spec works to extend Wi-Fi technology and supports backward capability with existing Wi-Fi devices. WiGig members will have access to the spec to provide faster wireless in new products in the first quarter of 2010.

Kingston Technology Co. is emerging from a rough patch of plummeting prices and a glut of memory chips.

The Fountain Valley[Calif.]-based company is the biggest maker of memory modules -- circuit boards loaded with memory chips that speed the performance of computers and consumer electronics.

Kingston's growth has been crimped by a year-long surplus of memory chips made by big chipmakers in Asia and Europe.

As the price of these chips fell, so did prices -- and profits -- on Kingston's products.

The European Commission (EC) said Tuesday it will allocate 18 million euros (25 million U.S. dollars) to boost next generation 4G mobile networks.

The funding is used for research on the Long Term Evolution (LTE) Advanced technology that will offer mobile Internet speeds up to a hundred times faster than current 3G networks, the EC said.

The EC said it made the investment decision last month, and the new projects are expected to start in January 2010.

In a move to compete with Cisco Systems, 3Com on Monday added a "flex-chassis" family of network switches to its H3C portfolio. The H3C S5800 Series offers up to 192 10-Gigabit ports or 640 gigabit Ethernet ports and supports embedded extensible application services, including security, wireless and monitoring.

With its latest product launch, 3Com is positioning its enterprise switches as a way to improve network reliability, lower total cost of ownership (TCO), and improve application delivery.

Seventeen tech companies are joining forces to develop an in-home wireless standard for transferring mega-files within a home. Dell, Intel, LG Electronics, Microsoft, Samsung and Panasonic are among the board members of the new Wireless Gigabit, or WiGig, Alliance. WiGig is working on a unified specification using 60-Gigahertz wireless band.