Featured Blogs

Looking Back on 2012: What’s in our Rearview Mirror?

Well, 2012 is almost over, and we can now reflect on the major events that hit our industry this year. If I had to choose the top three trends from the past 12 months, they would have to be: 1. Over-the-top (OTT) services; 2. IPv6 deployments (finally!); 3. TR-069 adoption. Let's examine each of these in more detail. more

Positive Outlook for Investments in Backbones

When talking about the problems of attracting infrastructure funds to the telecoms industry, I would make one exception; that is backbone infrastructure... We increasingly describes mobile networks as fibre networks with a wireless access component. This clearly indicates the need for fixed backbone network capacity, eventually all the way to the street. more

OIAC Report: Views on Economic Impacts of Open Internet, Mobile Ecosystems, Specialized Services

Having been a member of the Committee for this past year, I'm pleased to share that the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) "Open Internet Advisory Committee" has published its first annual report... The report is weighty - 98pp if you kill trees to print it. The OIAC was established as part of the US FCC Open Internet activity and Open Internet Report and Order from 2010. The FCC appointed expert committee members from a broad range of commercial, academic, and not-for-profit organizations. more

Broadband Providers: What are the Implications of Virtual Reality?

Broadband service providers take note, personal virtual reality (VR) platforms are going to reshape the industry sooner than you think. We've seen a constant stream of VR-related news coming from major industry tradeshows, online broadband publications, and even broadband CEO blog posts. I'll try to generalize their comments succinctly: personal VR platforms are expected to bring massive sales, huge increases in bandwidth consumption, and dramatic shifts in subscriber quality expectations. more

China and Taiwan to Lead the Development of 4G

China missed out on playing a leadership role in the development of 3G and as we predicted at that time, China would most certainly start looking at 4G for a major involvement in developing the technologies for it. more

Unbundling the Social Media Stack - Could a Decentralized Protocol Bring Real Choice and Control?

Project Liberty's Institute sat down with Wendy Seltzer, an advisor to the Decentralized Social Networking Protocol (DSNP). Wendy was counsel to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and has served on the boards of The Tor Project, Open Source Hardware Association and ICANN. more

The IPv4 Market in 2021

Price was the story of the 2021 IPv4 market. Large and small organizations alike continue to invest in their IPv4 infrastructure causing demand for IPv4 address space to intensify. Meanwhile, supply remains constrained. These market factors drove prices up at a historic rate in 2021. more

New TLDs: Disruptive Marketing 21st Century Style

Traditionally, top-level domains (TLDs) have been almost exclusively marketed by registries through their registrar channel. In a never-ending cycle of driving and sustaining sales, registries often resort to discounting and "promotional pricing." The competition for prime shelf space for a TLD is fierce, with sales and distribution largely controlled by the channel... In this chaotic and cluttered channel, it's not surprising that TLDs have traditionally been less than successful in defining their brand and delivering a unique value story for their product. more

Cyberspace Solarium Commission Report

The Cyberspace Solarium Report released today is another, in an endless string of reports, that disgorge from Washington committees dealing with the eternal mantra of "defending American interests and values in cyberspace." The challenges (and many reports) here trace back 170 years when transnational telecommunication internets emerged. The dialogue and reports scaled in the 1920s with the emergence of radio internets and cyber threats, then again in the early 1980s... more

Take IP Address Management Seriously; Your Business Depends on It

Let's start by stating the obvious: All business communications depend on IP addresses. Without an IP address, you simply can't communicate over the network. No IP address means no access to your email server, no access to your website, and no cell phone or VoIP access. So much for the new VoIP system installed last month. What does that mean to you? more

ICANN 56 in Helsinki - Schedule of DNSSEC Activities

The ICANN 56 meeting takes place in Helsinki, Finland, from June 27-30 and while it is a smaller "policy forum" style of meeting, there will still be some activities related to DNSSEC, DANE and DNS security in general. DNSSEC Workshop The DNSSEC Workshop will take place on the morning of Monday, 27 June 2016. All times are Eastern European Summer Time (EEST), which is UTC+3. more

Better Than Best Efforts Routing of Mission Critical Traffic and the FCC

It appears that the FCC will permit exceptions to the standard, plain vanilla best efforts routing standard for Internet traffic, such as the paid peering arrangement recently negotiated between Comcast and Netflix. In both academic and applied papers I have supported this option, with several major conditions... With no opposition that I have seen, companies like Akamai offer better than best efforts routing of "mission critical" traffic from content source to last mile, "retail" Internet Service Providers. more

Marketing Activities for New TLDs That Can Start Right Now

Sitting on the plane after a tightly packed 3 days in Amsterdam for the regional registrars meeting, I'm bursting with ideas and thoughts. The highlight of the event for me was the meeting organized by Google to propose the creation of a trade association on behalf of TLDs. Brilliant and long overdue. The comedy of the situation the domain name industry has lived with since its inception is the fact that it actually doesn't exist in the eyes and minds of the average business or consumer. Domain names are simply a by-product of websites, or possibly even web-hosting.  more

Call for Participation – ICANN DNSSEC and Security Workshop at ICANN68 Virtual Policy Forum

If you are interested in speaking at the ICANN 68 DNSSEC Workshop, please send a brief (1-2 sentence) description of your proposed presentation to [email protected] by 29 May 2020. This online workshop will be Monday, 22 June 2020, from 02:00 – 04:30 UTC (10:00 – 12:30 Kuala Lumpur) We are doing something new this time and would like to get a feel for attendance for this virtual meeting. more

FTC Report on Broadband Resurrects Freedom of Service Information

The Federal Trade Commission intends to monitor the information that telecom and cable companies provide about high-speed Internet service in the service plans they offer to customers, according to a report issued last week by the agency. The FTC asserts in the report, released on June 27, that since it has jurisdiction over matters involving consumer protection, it "will continue to enforce the consumer protection laws in the area of broadband access."... The consumer protection sections of the FTC report raise this question: are broadband providers engaging in a deceptive practice when they advertise a connection speed of, for example, "up to" 768 kilobits per second (kbps) - and yet actual speeds are considerably lower? more