Featured Blogs

The Explosive Growth of Worldwide Broadband Usage

Sandvine gathers data from the 160 largest fixed and wireless ISPs on the planet to understand Internet usage trends. The statistics discussed below come from the Sandvine January 2022 Global Internet Phenomena Report. Sandvine identifies several current industry trends... more

An Update on Telemedicine

I’ve been keeping tabs on the news about telemedicine since it was touted throughout the industry as one of the big benefits of having good broadband. One piece of news comes from a survey conducted by Nemours Children’s Health. This is a large pediatric health system with 95 locations in Delaware, Florida, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The company treats almost half a million children annually. Nemours released a report on Telehealth in July. The report was based on a survey of 2,056 parents/guardians of children. The survey had some interesting results, more

2023 Routing Security Summit Starts July 17 - Participate Virtually

Interested in learning more about routing security? How it can affect your connectivity supply chain? What are best practices for enterprises and organizations? What is the role of CSIRTs in securing routing? What are governments doing now, and planning to do in the future around routing security? more

ICANN HR Shares Some Data on Staffing

How diverse is ICANN? While the recently published Afnic report gives some insights, it didn't explore ICANN staff in any detail. ICANN's HR team, however, did share some data on ICANN's staff diversity during a session at the ICANN meeting in Helsinki earlier this week. Some interesting data was shared about how ICANN handle their HR overall, but the bit that caught my eye was in respect to gender. more

Blacklist Operations and Practices: Excerpts from an ASRG Draft

The Anti-Spam Research Group (ASRG) published a draft for an Overview of Email DNSBL Best Practices. We can take a step back and review paragraph 2.2.5 (Conflict of Interest)... Some DNSBLs used for blocking/negative reputation have had a practice of requiring fees or donations to charities from the listee for delisting. It is generally considered entirely appropriate for a DNSBL to charge for access to it by its users -- the definition of a commercial DNSBL. more

WTSA, WCIT, WTPF: Apocalypse Now?

The year 2012 isn't meant to be apocalyptic, and with a little forethought it won't be, but it is the year in which we will reopen the International Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs). For many companies this will be bad news for reasons that are already well-understood and for new reasons that countries keep piling onto the agenda: a recent favorite from Russia calls for the treaty to govern and regulate all telecommunications services, "existing, emerging, and future." more

Mobile Consolidation Is Unavoidable

Despite its absolute success in providing competition to the telecoms market, infrastructure-based competition in the mobile market is now also reaching its final stages. We have been predicting this for some time; we did so in order to highlight the need to change to different business models in the industry -- models with more emphasis on infrastructure-sharing and competition based on new innovative services rather than on utility offerings... more

Project Explosion in the Email Industry Today…

Funny as it may seem, today there's big news in the email industry -- 2 large internet bodies, 2 projects... Projects Phoenix and Titan, by AOL and Facebook respectively. What are key things to note about each project? Let's look at each in brief detail... more

The Dos and Don’ts of DNS Management

The domain name system (DNS) is vital for businesses as it facilitates customer access to online services and resources. Strategic DNS management plays a pivotal role in cybersecurity, safeguarding against threat vectors and ensuring secure global connectivity across online channels including apps, email, websites, application programming interfaces (APIs) and more. more

Meeting Report: ICANN’s Registration Data Request Service Requestor Experiences

During CSG Open Working Session at ICANN79, Members from the ICANN Community were invited to an open meeting to share their experiences with Registration Data Request System (RDRS) from the Requestor side. As President of the Edgemoor Research Institute (ERI), I had the honor to present the keynote address and I am pleased to be able to provide you with ERI's report of the meeting. more

Is There a Role for ICANN in Satellite Internet Governance?

A recent invitation to participate in a webinar to discuss ICANN's Role in Satellite Internet Governance as an enabler of UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 9 prompted me to consider this issue. As a legal scholar with expertise in telecommunications infrastructure, I had much to say and discuss about the new mega-constellation phenomenon and its potential role in achieving SDG9, which, for me, is a multifaceted and fascinating subject. more

Challenging UDRP Awards in Federal Court: Recent Outcomes

Challenging UDRP awards in actions under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) is infrequent though steady. There are currently a number of court filings in U.S. district courts that are in the early stages, most notably the ADO.com case reported on in an earlier essay and several others have either been referred to mediation (the IMI.case) or settled or discontinued. more

Data Quality in the RIPE NCC Service Region

In an earlier article on CircleID, Registry Data Quality Assessment, we discussed the importance of high quality and accurate IP registry data. At that time, we focused mainly on the accuracy of legacy address space: IP addresses that were given out prior to the existence of the RIPE NCC and that are not part of the current registry system. In this article, we want to present the efforts to keep the address space that is the responsibility of the RIPE NCC up to date and well maintained. more

Analysing the USA: An Outsider’s Perspective

Over the last year I have become deeply involved in the debate in the USA regarding the future of their telecoms sector, which is proceeding very much along the lines of the trans-sector approach towards infrastructure (using it for other sectors such as healthcare, education, energy), open networks and a separation between infrastructure and applications. While many of the issues are universal it was also interesting to observe the specific elements that make the USA so unique. more

ICANN to IP Experts: Come Back With a Solution for Internet Trademark Protection

Trademark issues are emerging with the upcoming introduction of new generic top-level domains on the internet, and the board members of the body introducing the names has passed the ball back to intellectual property experts to find answers. The Intellectual Property Constituency of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has been asked to work out a viable solution "no later than 24 May 2009." Trademark issues have been defined as one of four overarching issues still to be solved before ICANN can finalise the application procedure for the next hundreds or thousands of top-level domains from .eco to .music. more