Just noticed a few items this past week that caught my eye.  The download speeds piece is probably of rather broad interest.  The others are articles about fiber network plans; clearly, after so many years of following those things during my career, those are items that catch my attention.  Anyway, here they are, just in case you missed them in other news sources:

Internet Speeds

The news that U.S. Internet download speeds are 25th in the world sparked an examination of the U.S. broadband market in this InfoWorld article by Caroline Craig. The article included a link to Ookla’s Net Index, which ranks the download speeds by country.  And yes, I can confirm that I get faster download speeds (and much faster upload speeds) in Eastern Europe than I do here at home in the United States.

Fiber Network Expansion and Pending Carrier Acquisition

Rob Powell’s Telecom Ramblings article discussed tw telecom’s East Coast network expansion using Zayo dark fiber. It also points out that this may be just about the end of this sort of announcements from tw telecom in advance of the closing of the Level 3 deal.  (As Channel Partners notes here, in early September, the DoJ cleared Level 3’s acquisition of tw telecom.)

Fiber-to-the-Prem in Cincinnati

Cincinnati Bell hopes to entrench itself in Cincinnati by reaching 70-80% of all homes via fiber-to-the-premises, as CEO Ted Torbeck noted in a recent presentation, per this FierceTelecom article by Sean Buckley.