ReadWriteWeb

Google breaks ground today on the super-fast fiber optic network it plans to build for the lucky residents of Kansas City, Kan. They'll get a 1 gigabit-per-second Internet connection, which will offer downloads 100 times faster than what most Americans get. Uploads will be a thousand times faster than average.

Kansas City won this privilege over 1,100 other cities in March 2011. Since then, Google and the city have been surveying, planning, and eating "way too much barbecue," says Google's manager, Kevin Lo. Today, they start laying cable. A few months behind the Kansas side, neighbors on the other side of the river in Kansas City, Mo. will get the hook-up as well.

Akamai has released the results of its latest "State of the Internet" report covering the third quarter of 2011. What is interesting is how nasty the Internet has become, with increasing attack incidents recorded and changing strategies for hackers looking to exploit systems. Our last post on the first quarter results can be found here.

"Akamai has seen a 2000% increase in the number of attack incidents recorded on our platform over the last three years, including several recent high-profile Web-based DDoS attacks conducted by both hacktivist groups and more traditional online criminal elements," says the report.

AT&T has a bone to pick with the Federal Communications Commission. In the mobile operator's quarterly earnings call this morning, CEO Randall Stephenson blasted the FCC over its leadership in making additional spectrum available to carriers to handle the explosion of mobile data flowing through the operators' pipes. Stephenson and AT&T are bitter after the FCC blew up its proposed acquisition of T-Mobile. Stephenson said that because of AT&T's spectrum crunch it will be forced to raise prices and take additional actions against the highest data users.

Stephenson's remarks come as AT&T announced that it sold 9.4 million smartphones including 7.6 million iPhones in the the fourth quarter of 2011. AT&T has been crying about its spectrum paucity for several years now with the iPhone and other smartphones driving the company's desperation. See Stephenson's harsh message to the FCC below.

Akamai delivers a lot of content around the globe and every quarter they look at overall trends in bandwidth and connectivity. The 2Q11 report is out now and like the last edition, you can have some fun with choosing particular states or countries and graphing their overall trends right on the home page linked above. Akamai carries a lot of the big-ticket Internet traffic across its network, ranging up to a third of overall global traffic.

Lots of memories of my computing past flooding through me this morning, and no, this won't be another Jobs tribute. But a post yesterday talking about whether you were using the Internet back in 1995 brought me back to that era, and I thought it would be a good time to show how much progress we have made in the 16-some years and what businesses were doing with the Internet back then.

If you travel frequently, you might have noticed that hotel lobbies have become more social, and it isn't just the free Wifi. As we become more interested in working in shared spaces, the hotels are trying to become more like the coffeeshops and other hangouts where we work. The trend is happening from lower-priced discount hotels to the higher-end properties, and includes A-Loft (Starwood's lower-end designer label), Hyatt (both their restaurant-less Hyatt Place, and extended-stay Hyatt House brands), Marriott Courtyards and Hilton's Home2 Suites extended stay brands. The idea is to remake the sterile hotel lobby into a "social hub" that is more living room than just a place to check in and grab a free newspaper and wait for a cab. Call it the Facebooking of the hospitality industry.

Internet content hosting provider Akamai released its latest "State of the Internet" report today for the first quarter of 2011. The report shows a slight increase of 5% in total IP addresses connected to their network from last quarter and an overall increase in 20% from last year. Italy replaced Canada as the source of traffic in the top ten countries.

When the FCC unveiled its National Broadband Map, it was hailed as a move that would highlight the different levels of broadband penetration in the country. Indeed, when Curt Hopkins covered the story here at ReadWriteWeb, he noted that the government's broadband map revealed an "unconnected nation."

The FCC's map was part of a larger government effort to help boost broadband availability and was hailed as a marker of industry transparency. However, although the map does answer a lot of questions - what providers are operating in an area and what speeds do they promise - it really doesn't paint a complete picture.

That's where Bandwidth.com has stepped in, with its own broadband map - available at Broadband.com - that offers a lot more of those missing details, including some crucial ones: how much does broadband cost and what speeds do you actually get.

AT&T will begin capping its DSL customers' monthly usage beginning May 2. According to Broadband Reports, which broke the story last night, the cap for DSL customers will be 150 GB per month and 250 GB per month for U-Verse customers.

AT&T spokesperson Seth Bloom confirmed the story, saying that customers will soon receive notices informing them of the changes to the company's terms of service. Bloom says that the new limits will involve overage charges, but these will only be billed to users who exceed their monthly caps more than three times. These overcharges are currently set at $10 for every 50 GB over the limit.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Federal Communications Commission have released a map of the broadband connections across the United States.

The most surprising thing in looking at the map? The reality that much of the country is not connected to broadband at all. But that was rather the point. The NTIA gives grants to projects in every state to increase the reach of broadband.