One thing I enjoy about following Dyn Research (formerly Renesys) on Twitter is that they provide quite interesting graphics and charts about Internet outages. They've been tracking North Korea's Internet access quite closely over the past week and their tweets have been quite enlightening. Back on December 22, for instance, DynResearch tweeted a chart showing a 9-hour, 31-minute outage... more
There are many voices calling for increased initiatives by municipalities to build and operate broadband internet infrastructure as a public utility, but until this week, very little in the way of economic analysis to fully examine whether the benefits justify the costs. A paper released this week finds that local efforts produce small economic benefits, but cause a notable increase in the size of local government. more
I have learned that lesson many times over. In many of the issues that we are facing, as a society or in our industry, I am reasonably confident that common sense will eventually prevail. Sometimes the road twists and turns, but in the end water flows around rocks. In our industry I can refer to developments we have been advocating for (structural separation, utilities-based telecoms infrastructure, broadband for social and economic benefits, ICT-based industry and sector transformation, FttH, internet as a tool for more direct democracies, etc). more
Exponential growth in network bandwidth requirements has created a need for large CAPEX investments for most service providers. Unfortunately, each provider faces limits on all expenditures and must upgrade only what is needed, when it is needed. Nobody should waste time or money by performing unnecessary network upgrades. To avoid needless upgrading, providers must have all the data they can get from their network to guide them through the decision-making process. more
When Cable & Wireless Communications (CWC) announced an agreement to acquire Columbus International, news of the deal sparked widespread concerns about the impact of reduced competition on consumer pricing, infrastructure investment and wider economic development in the Caribbean. If approved, the deal will make CWC the Caribbean's largest wholesale and retail broadband service provider. At the same time, it will return several Caribbean territories into monopoly or near-monopoly markets... more
At the 2014 TelSoc Charles Todd Oration the former Chair of the ACCC, Graeme Samuel, warned against the looming content monopoly... "There is a constant risk that the exclusive tie-up of rights to content for new and emerging markets will allow the right holders to shut out competition across a wide range of services delivered over new networks." He didn't think that the current telcos have the right expertise to enter the content market... more
How can we work together to improve the security and resilience of the global routing system? That is the question posed by the "Routing Resilience Manifesto" site with the suggested answer launched today of the "Mutually Agreed Norms for Routing Security (MANRS) document, to which a number of network operators have already signed on as participants, including: Comcast, Level 3, NTT, RUNNet, ClaraNet, SURFnet, SpaceNet, KPN and CERNET. more
During the last Internet Governance Forum in Istanbul, a day was devoted to Net Neutrality with three panels devoted to the subject. The first was exactly about Zero-Rating: Net Neutrality, Zero-Rating & Development: What's the Data? the second was Network Neutrality: a Roadmap for Infrastructure Enhancement and last, the main session Network Neutrality: Towards a Common Understanding of a Complex Issue and Zero-rating was discussed on all three panels. more
NANOG 62 was held at Baltimore from the 6th to the 9th October. These are my observations on some of the presentations that occurred at this meeting. .. One of the more memorable sides in this presentation was a reference to "map" drawn by Charles Minard in 1869 describing the statistics relating to the Napoleonic military campaign in Russia, and the subsequent retreat. more
Engineering wise, how's the industry doing? With that question in mind, hundreds descended on Denver for this year's Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) Cable-Tec Expo. That question begs to be answered. Really, can we still separate the engineering 'cool' stuff from the business chic? By that, I mean the business requirements from subscribers who demand communication and entertainment when they want it, where they want it, and on whatever device they want it delivered to. more