Geely Geespace Update - Global Centimeter-Level Positioning Services

Chinese automobile conglomerate Geely has made significant strides since I last wrote about their Geesat LEO constellation for mobile vehicle connectivity. They launched the first nine satellites in June 2022 and a second batch of eleven satellites in February 2024. The mass of the first nine satellites was 100 kg, and the mass of the second eleven was 130 kg, so they are not identical. more

Loving and Hating Starlink

I'm such an industry nerd that I sometimes read customer reviews of large ISPs just to see how the public perceives them. Most ISPs have more negative reviews than positive ones, and that's to be expected since people are more likely to complain when things go wrong than give praise when things are working as promised. more

Net Neutrality: What Is Old Is New Again

On July 22, the FCC's open Internet order - which transforms Internet access service from a lightly regulated information service into a heavily regulated telecommunications service - will take effect. This article describes the policies and legal theories underlying the Order and the Order's effect on consumers of Internet services and providers of the service, including a number of entities that had previously escaped FCC regulation. more

Global Domain Market: 368 Million Names and Growth in 2023 (Afnic Observatory)

Afnic, the association in charge of the .fr domain and several other French overseas and generic Top Level Domains, has published the 2023 edition of its annual observatory report "The global domain name market" containing all of the latest key figures and trends in the TLD market... At year-end 2023, the global domain name market represented some 368 million domain names. more

Will We Ever End Legacy Telephone Networks?

Anybody not involved in the telephone business will probably be surprised to find that the old TDM telephone networks are still very much alive and in place. The old technologies were supposed to be phased out and replaced by digital technologies. The FCC started talking about this before 2010. In 2013, Tom Wheeler, the FCC Chairman at the time, announced an effort to force the needed changes, which was dubbed the IP Transition. more

The Evolution of DNS: Adapting to the Changing Internet Landscape

The DNS is a crucial part of today's Internet. With the fracturing of the network's address space as a byproduct of IPv4 address run down and the protracted IPv6 transition the Internet's name space is now the defining attribute of the Internet that makes it one network. However, the DNS is not a rigid and unchanging technology. It has changed considerably over the lifetime of the Internet and here I'd like to look at what's changed and what's remained the same. more

‘Internet Fragmentation’: A Defining Challenge for Digital Technology Governance?

At the recent Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) 80 Policy Forum meeting, one notable takeaway was its close focus on questions around the stability and security of the technical layer of the Internet: the growing risks which assail it, and potential ways to address these through governance. more

A Mature Broadband Market? (Implications and Industry Shifts)

It is becoming clear that the broadband market is reaching maturity. This is already causing havoc in the industry for ISPs that relied on year-over-year customer growth to prop up stock prices. Earlier this year, the New Street Research, a company that specializes in research in the telecommunications and technology sectors, said that it estimated that new broadband customers would grow by about 1 million this year. more

When a UDRP Panel Infers Bad Faith from An Asking Price

In the Converse.co dispute, a three-member UDRP panel unanimously ordered the transfer of the disputed domain name to the Complainants, All Star C.V. and Converse, Inc., owners of the well-known brand CONVERSE for shoes and apparel. The panel drew the inference that the Respondent, by setting of an asking price of around $300,000 after having acquired the domain name for $306, was primarily motivated by a bad faith intent to target the Complaint. more

Alternative Insights on Article 28 of the NIS2 Directive

On June 9 CircleID published an insightful article by Thomas Rickert entitled "Demystifying Art 28 NIS2." In that piece Thomas set forth two alternative interpretations of Article 28(6) of NIS2, and argued that TLD registries should not be required to maintain a separate database of the registrant data under NIS2. In my view, Thomas' approach is inconsistent with the remainder of Article 28, and would not achieve the goals of NIS2 to improve cybersecurity across the EU member states. more