More internet users and faster data speeds

© Mark Ollig

Trusting a source providing internet statistics can be questionable.

However, having Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, reference an internet statistics website helps alleviate many doubts.

In 1990, he wrote the software code application for the first web browser and named it WorldWideWeb.app.

Not long ago, Berners-Lee posted a message over Twitter, citing statistical internet data from https://www.internetlivestats.com.

Data from the same website is also used by the World Wide Web Consortium, World Wide Web Foundation, BBC News, Kaspersky Lab, and your humble Bits & Bytes columnist.

Statistical data is gleaned from more than 250 sources, using an advanced algorithm to oversee its accuracy. One source is the International Telecommunications Union, a United Nations specialized agency for information and communications technologies.

“We are an international team of developers, researchers, and analysts with the goal of making statistics available in a dynamic and time relevant format to a wide audience around the world,” the website affirmed in its mission statement.

While looking through many separate groups of continually changing statistical internet peg counters, the current number of internet users in the world is listed at 5,116,500,000. The planet’s population is estimated to be 7.9 billion, meaning nearly 65% of the world can access the internet.

The ranking of countries with the highest number of internet users has not changed much over the past few years.

With 1.4 billion people, China is leading with 854 million internet users, followed by India, which has a population of 1.3 billion and 560 million internet users. The US, with a population of 330 million, has 313 million internet users.

The number of internet users worldwide has been steadily increasing.

Reasons given for the increased number of people using the internet include having accessibility to mobile devices, smartphones, and access to computers having an internet connection due to more countries upgrading their communication networks.

Other factors cited are continuous installations of broadband networks and fiber-optic submarine cables worldwide by major global internet and communication service providers.

Another contributing factor is the coronavirus requiring people to use the internet while working from home.

The top countries with the fastest average fixed broadband internet speeds as of May are:

1. Monaco, 262 Mbps.

2. Singapore, 255 Mbps.

3. Hong Kong (China), 255 Mbps.

4. Romania, 232 Mbps.

5. Switzerland, 230 Mbps.

6. Denmark, 228 Mbps.

7. Thailand, 224 Mbps.

8. Chile, 217 Mbps.

9. France, 214 Mbps.

10. South Korea, 212 Mbps.

The US has an average fixed broadband internet speed of 204 Mbps.

The Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) definition of broadband speed is a minimum of 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload. The FCC defined these speeds in 2015.

It will soon be 2022. FCC regulators need to revise minimum broadband data speeds dramatically; upwards to meet the needs of small businesses, schools, and work-at-home users.

Ookla has been around since 2006, and is a well-known internet speed testing specialist. They report the global average download speed on fixed broadband as of September 2021 was 113.25 Mbps. The average download speed on a mobile device was 63.15 Mbps.

Both are notable improvements over the scores of 85.73 Mbps broadband, and 35.96 Mbps mobile just one year earlier in September 2020.

Being curious, I ran an Ookla cellular data speed test from my 5G smartphone with its local Wi-Fi connection disabled. The results showed a download speed of 65.5 Mbps and an upload speed of 12.1 Mbps.

You can run internet speed tests from your mobile smartdevices or home computer at https://www.speedtest.net.

The speed test app for your Android and iOS device can be downloaded at https://www.speedtest.net/apps/android and https://www.speedtest.net/apps/ios, respectively.

I also ran the speed test on the work computer connected to my employer’s network. The download speed was 1.1207 Gbps, and the upload showed 149.59 Mbps.

With continued improvements in technology, computing devices, and communication networks, the data speed of fixed broadband and future “G” cellular mobile devices will continue to get faster.

Speed test from my 5G smartphone 

Speed test on the work computer connected to my
employer’s network

Several pathways and venues to our news

© Mark Ollig

Of course, we still use printed media, as many of you are reading this column in your local newspaper.

Or, you may be reading or having the words of today’s column audibly spoken to you through your smartphone, computer, e-reader, or another digital device.

Familiar sources for obtaining our news include print, television, radio, and online digital venues.

Our good friends at Pew Research recently released information about our news consumption habits across digital, television, radio, and print platforms.

Of adults polled during 2021, a total of 84% reported they often and/or sometimes got their news from a digital device such as a smartphone, computer, tablet, or other digital sources.

When looking at digital devices as their news source, 51% of adults polled said they often get their news from them. In comparison, 33% responded with sometimes, 8% said rarely, and another 8% said they never get their information from digital devices.

In 2020, 60% responded by saying they often get their news from digital devices.However, this year saw a 9% drop with a polling result of 51%, which surprised me.

In 2020, 40% said they often used television as a news source, while in 2021, 36% said they did. So again, we see a percentage drop.

Polling results from adults getting their news from radio showed that in 2020, 16% often did, 34% replied sometimes, and 28% said rarely.

This year, 15% responded with often using radio, 36% said sometimes, and 27% reported rarely getting their news from radio sources.

This year’s response is the same as in 2020; 10% of adults polled said they often use newsprint publications as their news source.

Interestingly, in 2020, 22% of adults responded saying they sometimes used print media for their news source, compared with this year’s 24% response.

Asked which platforms they preferred to get their news over, 50% responded with digital devices; the same as when polled in 2020.

Looking at digital news sources online, Pew asked adults where they obtained their news. Again, leading are websites or news apps, with 28%. Last year, 34% preferred them, so this year’s polling shows a 6% decline.

This year, some 20% of adults reported using a search engine often to obtain news, a 3% decline than in 2020 when 23% often used one.

In 2021, a reported 43% said they sometimes used a search engine, while 19% responded with rarely using one.

Using social media to obtain news often was the preference for 19% of adults, a 4% drop from 2020.

Podcasts have seen their popularity go up and down over the years; this year, 7% of adults often use it for their news source. In 2020, it was 6%. For 2020 and 2021, 16% report sometimes using a podcast for their news consumption, with 53% and 56% in 2020 and 2021, respectively, saying they never use it.

The most preferred news consumption sources among digital devices are websites and news apps, of 24% of adults polled.

Pew Research Center is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts, its primary funder.

While I use digital devices to obtain news from various online media sources, I still watch television news programs and read news stories via print media.

For one, I am old-school and enjoy holding and paging through the newspaper, its tactile feel, and how the print looks in the light.

One advantage a newspaper does hold over a digital device is that it does not require the charging of batteries.

Submarine cable successfully installed

© Mark Ollig

While looking through a box of old pictures, I found a late 1960s photo regarding Winsted Lake.

As most of my readers know, I lived and worked in Winsted for many years.

In 1968, the local telephone company placed just over one-half mile of underwater marine copper-paired (submarine) cable along the bottom of Winsted Lake to provide telecommunication services for new homes being built on the east side of the lake.

This event occurred years before cellular telephones or fiber optic cables arrived on the scene; technicians physically spliced a telephone line to a pair of copper wires.

Why install a submarine cable?

It was decided this would be the quickest (and least expensive) way to get telephone service to the new homes. In addition, it was thought the submarine cable would operate reliably underwater until the telephone company trenched a permanent telephone cable into the ground going around the lake.

The submarine cable route started in Winsted near the east end of McLeod Avenue and the corner of Kingsley Street.

That day, Winsted Telephone Company employees Frank Roufs, Jim Ollig, and Tom Ollig placed a metal stand holding a large wooden reel of submarine cable in the pontoon boat they would be traveling on across the lake.

“When we first loaded the cable reel onto the pontoon, we thought it was going to sink. The reel had to be perfectly centered on the pontoon, so it didn’t tip over,” recalled Tom Ollig, who was one of the three people reeling off the submarine telephone cable into the lake on the pontoon that day.

The telephone crew guided the pontoon as they slowly made their way across Winsted’s most famous body of water, traveling in a west to an easterly direction.

Being carefully pulled off the reel by hand, the submarine cable was prepared to be lowered into the water.

“Another concern was making sure the submarine cable was weighted down correctly, so it didn’t float to the top of the water,” Tom added.

As it was gently lowered into the lake’s murky depths, about every 10 feet, the telephone crew securely strapped a heavy steel bolt onto the submarine cable to weigh it down.

The three successfully placed the submarine cable across the lake.

The west end of the submarine cable was trenched underground into the metal pedestal enclosure fastened to a telephone pole located about 40 feet from the lake at the end of McLeod Avenue East.

Next, a telephone technician spliced the submarine cable’s copper wired pairs to an aerial telephone cable terminating at the central office of the local telephone company.

The east end of the submarine cable was terminated in an above-ground pedestal enclosure about 50 feet from the shoreline where the new homes were being built.

Winsted Telephone Company technicians opened the outer casing of the submarine cable. Then, they spliced the copper pair wires to wires from the telephone “drop” lines feeding into the new homes.

Phones in the new homes were wired to the submarine cable directly attached with the dial tone from the local telephone office at 171 2nd Street South.

“I remember cutting in the new phone lines using the submarine copper cable pairs for Jerry Sterner and Jack Littfin,” said Mike Ollig, a former Winsted Telephone Company technician. He recalled his memories of the submarine cable with me.

For many years, the submarine cable provided reliable telecommunications service to homes on the east side of Winsted Lake.

However, as we know, nothing lasts forever.

During the early 1980s, some of the submarine cable’s copper wire pairs had begun to fail, and there was growing concern about the remaining good spares.

And so, during the mid-1980s, the local telephone company installed a new underground telephone cable around the lake to replace the aging submarine cable.

I suspect a few of you are wondering about the fate of the abandoned submarine cable on the bottom of Winsted Lake.

After disconnecting both ends of the submarine cable, we (I was employed at the telephone company) attached the east end to our Ditch Witch tractor/trencher and slowly removed (pulled) it from the lake.

The trencher drove in an easterly direction until the entire length of the previously submerged submarine cable was out of the water and lying on the ground.

We rolled up the old submarine cable (with assistance from a John Deere tractor) onto a large wooden cable reel. We then transferred it onto a cable trailer, where it was driven to and stored inside the telephone company’s warehouse.

The submarine cable was later recycled for its copper.

Today, the improved construction of submarine cables (using fiber-optic pairs) has given them an average lifespan of 25 years.

Currently, 487 fiber-optic submarine cables traverse the oceans of the world. The total length of these cables is 807,782 miles. They pass through 1,304 above-ground landing stations and are spliced into telephone cables providing internet, voice, video, and data communications to thousands of cities, towns, and villages.

Fiber-optic submarine cables connect to every continent on the globe, except for Antarctica.

To view and interact with the world submarine cable map from TeleGeography, visit https://www.submarinecablemap.com.

This article was originally published Nov. 23, 2018. However, I was recently asked about it by one of my readers. As a result, this column includes moderate updates in its content by the writer.

Winsted Telephone Co. pontoon crew prepares to lay submarine cable

across Winsted Lake. L2R: Frank Roufs, James Ollig, and Tom Ollig.

(1968)

Days of playful banter and camaraderie

© Mark Ollig

While writing today’s column on this early November morning, I paused and looked out the living room window.

The sky is filled with clouds. Checking the thermometer, it reads 32 degrees.

What happened to our beautiful summer? Why is autumn passing so quickly?

Another year is speeding by. Very soon, 2022 will be upon us.

In online news, Facebook recently announced a name change to Meta.

Anyone who writes HTML code knows meta-tags or meta elements are used on web pages.

Also, my aging brain realized meta spelled backward is atem. Atem in German translates to “breath.”

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg could have renamed it Breathbook.

Okay, enough of my futile attempts at humor.

Before Facebook came into existence, many of us were using the MySpace online social media site.

In late January 2009, I was convinced to join Facebook by my oldest son, who, at the time, was preparing for his trip to Italy.

“What would be a good way to stay in contact with you?” I asked him.

“Go to Facebook and request to add me as a ‘friend’,” he told me.

“What about using MySpace?” I suggested.

“No, you want to get on Facebook,” he confidently replied.

When I first started Facebook 12 years ago, it reminded me of the dial-up online community known as Prodigy.

The Prodigy interactive online service began in 1984, and by 1990, it had grown to be the second-largest online service behind CompuServe.

I was an active Prodigy user and still have my original porcelain Prodigy coffee mug shaped like a computer terminal screen and keyboard.

By 1992, being part of a dial-up online virtual community was becoming popular all across the country, so I decided to start a hobbyist computer BBS (bulletin board system) called; “WBBS,” which was the abbreviation for Winsted Bulletin Board System.

I began with a text-only interface BBS software program by Galacticom, Inc.

WBBS users sent and received email messages with each other, text-messaged in real-time in the chat rooms, played games, and sent and received software files within the BBS community.

The WBBS computer used six telephone lines connected to six modems.

Most dial-up users were from the Winsted and Lester Prairie areas, where the telephone number to reach the BBS was a free, local call.

Sometimes, users would log in for hours to text chat; others stopped by to play a few games, check their messages, or share files. It was a virtual community.

Jumping back to early 2009, I was on the phone and praising the many advantages of Facebook with former Herald Journal and Enterprise Dispatch editor Lynda Jensen, who sadly passed away June 15, 2010.

I frequently spoke with Lynda on the phone while writing my columns. I very much miss her and our playful bantering.

During one conversation, I said to her, “Lynda, it would be so much fun for you to get on Facebook.” After some hesitation, Lynda eventually agreed and decided to get her own Facebook account.

Of course, once Lynda established her account on Facebook, we included it as a venue for our back-and-forth bantering.

It was a lot of fun for both of us.

We posted photos and links to interesting stories and shared humorous comments via Facebook’s status and text chat program for a little over a year.

Lynda told me, because of Facebook, she was able to find her best friend from college, her pastor, a former co-worker, and other people she knew, which made me feel good.

She also penned a few columns about her adventures on Facebook.

Lynda’s March 2, 2009 column is titled “Dragged into the 21st Century,” which can be read here: https://bit.ly/3buxkdB.

At the start of the column, Lynda wrote, “Learning new technology is kind of like taking a ride on Valleyfair – you get an intense thrill and then feel like throwing up, I always say. Anyway, taking this love/hate thing to a different level, I decided to open a Facebook account; being prodded into this a bit by fellow columnist Mr. Mark Ollig.”

She continued, “This is great because if I don’t like it, I can blame him for my troubles and make him buy me chocolate in compensation.”

The following week, Lynda’s column was titled “Hacking my way through the digital jungle on Facebook,” you can read it at https://bit.ly/3jURnqu.

Lynda began her column March 23, 2009 with, “I must confess that Facebook is more fun than I thought it would be. Part of the blame ... er, I mean reason ... is because I goof around with fun people online who have a great sense of humor and are fun to bug. It’s a pick-me-upper that only takes a few seconds to check online once a day when I get home from work.”

I truly miss those days of playful banter and camaraderie.