Featured Blogs

What If They Simply Made Communications Technology Better?

Rob Hyndman has a pointer to Mark Cuban's latest: Think the Internet Will Replace TV? Think Again. Cuban's post can be summarized as: Today's broadband networks are too slow. The insatiable appetite for on-demand rich media content will soon overwhelm them. Telco's aren't putting in upgraded networks quickly enough to meet that demand. Cuban also provides some facts and figures to back up that claim. In the comments, readers have a number of viewpoints, including the view that Mark has ignored cable, and that cable can provide the required speeds and feeds... more

CIRA Suspends Participation in ICANN

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) has issued a public letter to ICANN calling on the organization to follow accountable, transparent, and fair processes. Until the concerns are addressed, CIRA says it is suspending its voluntary contributions to ICANN... more

Skype: When Good Press Releases Go Bad

Burton Group issued a press release last week announcing the conclusions of my recent report on Skype. I thought the release clearly stated our conclusions on Skype, which essentially were that there are indeed security and management concerns that enterprises ought to be aware of, but that those risks may be outweighed by the business benefits offered by the use of the application, and that enterprises must carefully weigh risk vs. reward when evaluating Skype usage. more

Give Us TVoIP, Not IPTV

A buzzword in the cable/ilec world is IPTV, a plan to deliver TV over IP. Microsoft and several other companies have built IPTV offerings, to give phone and cable companies what they like to call a "triple play" (voice, video and data) and be the one-stop communications company. ...I'm at the pulver.com Von conference where people are pushing this, notably the BellSouth exec who just spoke. But they've got it wrong. We don't need IPTV. We want TVoIP or perhaps more accurately Vid-o-IP. more

Communications Policy for 2006 and Beyond: VoIP as a Case in Point

In this article, published in the Federal Communications Law Journal (FCLJ), the authors (Reed E. Hundt and Gregory L. Rosston) have proposed sweeping changes to the current telecommunications regulatory regime. With impending reform in telecommunications laws, the authors argue that an important first step is the creation of a bipartisan, independent commission to examine and recommend implementation of more market-oriented communications policy. The following excerpt from the article looks into service competition with respect to VoIP... more

Answers from Vint Cerf: The Road Ahead for Top-Level Domains

Earlier this year we requested your questions on one of ICANN's most heated discussions -- issues involving top-level domains (TLDs) -- which we passed on to Vint Cerf, Google's VP and Chief Internet Evangelist and chairman of the board of ICANN. Despite an understandably heavy schedule, Vint Cerf has taken the time to personally respond to more questions than we had originally anticipated. So with our special thanks, here are his responses. more

Is the U.S. Dancing to a Different Drummer?

Is the United States in full retreat from internationally recognized regulatory best practice? Or is it instead headed toward some different destination -- "dancing to the beat of a different drummer"? Where is this likely to lead? The following is an introduction to a paper, published by IDATE, from J. Scott Marcus, a Senior Consultant for WIK-Consult GmbH: "...What has radically changed is telecoms regulatory practice in the United States. The U.S., in a long series of regulatory decisions, has largely abandoned its long-standing regulatory principles and moved in an entirely new direction." more

Today’s Carrier Networks as Trollways?

As I keep pointing out -- there is indeed a viable alternative of a real marketplace not a fake one. Today's system is a fake because it depends on capturing the value of the application - communications - in the transport and that is no longer possible because with the Internet the value is created OUTSIDE the network. One example of the collateral damage caused by today's approach is the utter lack of simple wireless connectivity. Another is that we have redundant capital intensive bit paths whose only purpose is to contain bits within billing paths. more

Is Comcast Impairing Vonage?

On the one hand, the big telcos are chanting the mantram, "We shall not block, impair or degrade any content, service or application." On the other hand, they're saying, "There's no problem. We don't need a law until there's a problem." Well, now. Mitch Shapiro over at IP & Democracy, points to Russell Shaw's post that says: "I have been noticing a growing number of posts in which many Vonage users and Vonage Forum Members have been complaining about the quality of Vonage calls over Comcast broadband connections..." more

Finally the .com Discussion is Over…

Well, at least one part of it. As ICANN has announced, the Board approved the VeriSign Settlement Agreement. Now, there will be many questions, many pros and contras, but for me the main question is that finally this discussion is over. Here's what I think about my vote and the agreement itself.  more

Old New Telco Thinking

Ahh, so the telecom incumbents have come up with a "new" idea for the Internet -- usage-based pricing. That's right, more usage (for things like VOIP and video especially) means more costs to operate the network, so users should pay by the bit, or some similar metric. It's all so logical! But wait a minute. I thought what sparked the consumer Internet revolution was the fact that ISPs didn't charge by the minute, but offered flat-rate monthly fees. And what catalyzed the boom in cellular usage here in the US was the shift from heavily usage-based pricing to the largely flat rates we see today... more

The Future of Some Email May Not Use Email

Paul McNamara quotes me extensively in this piece on the EFF protest of Goodmail. When I say "the EFF has lost its mind", i really mean "the EFF has lost its way". In the early days, the EFF was about preventing the government from ruining the Internet commons, and preventing the government from putting walls on the frontier. These days, the EFF is more about preventing companies who have no power to regulate from doing things the EFF doesn't like. That is a huge change, and one that makes the EFF much less worthy of support... more

A Day Which Will Live in Infamy: ICANN Board Approves VeriSign Settlement

ICANN's Board voted to accept the latest settlement proposal by a vote of 9 to 5: "Today, ICANN's Board of Directors approved, by a majority vote, a set of agreements settling a long time dispute between ICANN and VeriSign, the registry operator for the .COM registry. These settlement documents include a new registry agreement relating to the operation of the .COM registry..." more

China’s New Domain Names: Lost in Translation

This morning I got a bunch of alarmist messages from friends asking about this English-language People's Daily article titled: China adds top-level domain names. The paragraph that's freaking people out is: "Under the new system, besides "CN", three Chinese TLD names "CN", "COM" and "NET" are temporarily set. It means Internet users don't have to surf the Web via the servers under the management of ICANN..." Not for the first time, it appears that the People's Daily's English translation is very misleading. more

Chinese Alternate Root as a New Beginning and Real Internet Governance

I suppose not many have been listening to Paul Vixie or surfing from China, I have done both. The Chinese "alternate root" has been going on for a while. China is creating an alternate root, which it can control while using the Chinese language. I doubt I need to tell any of you about ICANN, VeriSign, Internet Governance, alternate roots or the history of these issues. Everyone else will. Unlike most of my colleagues, I hold a different opinion on the subject and have for some time. China launches an alternate root? It's about time they do, too! more