Featured Blogs

Report on the Eve of WCIT

Hello, from Dubai where the WCIT (World Conference on International Telecommunications) - under the auspices of the United Nations agency, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) - is set to get underway... There is a great deal of jockeying for position taking place, and it is interesting to walk through the corridors and listen to what is going on. more

A Look Inside the European Response to Spam

Last week the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA), which assists the European Commission and its member states with network and information security issues, published its third Anti-Spam Measures Survey. The survey provides insight into how network operators in Europe are responding to the continued onslaught of email spam. more

At the Start of the NL IGF

At the annual Dutch "delegation" dinner at the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Vilnius, Lithuania, I voiced that it may be a good idea to start a Dutch IGF. This followed a discussion in which we discussed the possibilities of involving more people and organisations from the Netherlands in Internet governance. The, now, Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation followed this thought and made it possible for the ECP/EPN foundation to start the NL IGF. more

It’s Official: Value Moving to Edge

It's official. A team of market analysts from Oppenheimer are saying [PDF] what I've been saying since 1997, that the apps are separating from the network, and this is driving a wave of "explosive innovation." more

Addressing Infringement: Developments in Content Regulation in the US and the DNS

Over the course of the last decade, in response to significant pressure from the US government and other governments, service providers have assumed private obligations to regulate online content that have no basis in public law. For US tech companies, a robust regime of "voluntary agreements" to resolve content-related disputes has grown up on the margins of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and the Communications Decency Act (CDA). more

5G for Fixed Connectivity in Cuba

ETECSA reports that over 110,100 Cuban households have DSL connectivity using their Nauta Hogar service. There are also shared facilites – 986 WiFi hotspots (127 in Havana) and 347 Navigation Rooms (44 in Havana) with 1,309 computers (304 in Havana). These services are dead-ends on the road to hoped-for "computerization." The Cuban population is around 11 million so, after three years, roughly one person in 100 lives in a Nauta home and the services are limited geographically... more

Bulk Sunrise Period for Special Collision List Starts Next Week

The first 12 domain registries have been scheduled for the first special Sunrise Period mandated by ICANN for trademarks on the blocked collision lists. A total of 328 new domain extensions have launched so far in 2014. Each one of these has its own unique collision list of names that were found to be already in use on private computer networks. Some of these lists have over 100,000 names. All of these registries were required to block these names from being allocated until a policy for their allocation could be developed by ICANN. more

IPv4 Market Outlook

When 2015 began, there were several million IPv4 numbers still in the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) IPv4 free pool, ARIN was processing 4-5 unique IPv4 transfer transactions per month, and fewer than 5 million numbers had been transferred publicly in the prior 12 months. The end of 2015 told a different story. In late September, the ARIN free pool was depleted. more

So, How Big Is the Internet?

The results of an excellent study made, for reasons that will become clear, by an anonymous author reaches this conclusion... The problem is, to make the study, the author created a botnet - that is he wrote a small program that took advantage of insecure devices to enlist additional machines to help in the study. more

ICANN Defends Plans for New TLDs But Launch Date to Likely Slip

On September 23, ICANN's Chief Operating Officer, Doug Brent was asked by ranking members of the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee why they were continuing to move forward with the launch of new gTLDs when they had not yet been able to resolve complaints. Brent stated that Internet users have long called for the expansion of new gTLDs and that winners of new gTLDs would have to abide by a lengthy set of rules. Brent went on to say that "ICANN did not casually think this plan up." more

FCC Vote Results: We the People Won

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has just voted to open up the so called TV Whitespaces for UNLICENSED use. This is incredibly good news for rural America in particular but actually for all of America. It's not as important as the election the rest of us in the US voted in today -- but this action is a very, very big deal. Just a few of the benefits... more

Flipping the Kill Switch: Internet Restrictions Becoming the New Normal

The Internet was built on the promise that everyone, everywhere could create, share information and ideas without frontiers. Yet, Internet restrictions are increasing to the point they are becoming the norm. And it's happening fast. In its 2016 Freedom on the Net report, Freedom House revealed that Internet freedom declined for the 6th year in a row. The report notes that more governments have been blocking social media and communication apps than ever before. more

Are New TLDs Truly About Competition and Innovation or Is It to Make ICANN Rich and Powerful?

The ICANN Board resolutions adopted during the retreat in Trondheim, Norway on the 25th of September, 2010, painted yet another question mark for new Top-Level Domains (TLDs), despite its positive outlook. While the Board seems dedicated to resolve all the outstanding issues, applicants were still left in the dark in regards to some key issues that affect the economics of launching new TLDs. more

ISPs and the Digital Divide

It seems almost monthly that I am asked about the role that ISPs should take in making sure that we solve the digital divide. I think that people are somewhat shocked every time when I tell them this is not a role for ISPs. In explaining my answer, let me start by parsing what is meant by the question. We are about to see a lot of grant funding for getting computers into homes and training folks on how to use them. more

SpaceX Starlink Service in Ukraine Is an Important Government Asset

At 4:04 AM on February 26 Mykhailo Fedorov, Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine requested Starlink service from Elon Musk and at 2:45 PM on the 26th, Elon Musk tweeted "Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More terminals en route." On February 28 at 12:29 PM Fedorov posted a photo of a truck load of terminals. (Kyiv is 10 hours ahead of California). more