Access Providers

Canadian Government Stepping Up on Internet Surveillance

A Canadian law expected to be introduced next week could greatly assist law enforcement authorities in the country to access date revealing internet-user habits and personal information. Privacy watchdogs caution if the so-called Lawful Access law is passed, it would give police access to webbrowsing history and sensitive personal information, and would grant greater permission to track the cellular phones of suspects -- much of it without the requirement of a warrant. more

ISPs Are Not Broadcasters, Says Supreme Court of Canada

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that Internet providers are not broadcasters for the purposes of the Broadcasting Act when they simply transmit content to subscribers, reports Michael Geist. The court noted... more

AT&T’s Randall & Stankey: Wireless Data Growth Half The FCC Prediction

40%, not 92%-120%. "Data consumption right now is growing 40% a year," John Stankey of AT&T told investors and his CEO Randall Stephenson confirmed on the investor call. That's far less than the 92% predicted by Cisco's VNI model or the FCC's 120% to 2012 and 90% to 2013 figure in the "spectrum crunch" analysis. AT&T is easily a third of the U.S. mobile Internet and growing market share; there's no reason to think the result will be very different when we have data from others. more

BT Working on 300Mbps Residential Pilot Project

Openreach, the lead deployment arm of BT, has issued an announcement asking residents and landlords of apartment blocks to join a pilot project that will eventually bring broadband download speeds of up to 300Mbps to residents. "Participants will gain access to Openreach’s Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) technology which delivers super-fast broadband speeds," says Openreach. more

Protests Erupt Over EU’s Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement

In a blog post today, Michael Geist writes: "The reverberations from the SOPA fight continue to be felt in the U.S. and elsewhere (mounting Canadian concern that Bill C-11 could be amended to adopt SOPA-like rules), but it is the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement that has captured increasing attention this week. Several months after the majority of ACTA participants signed the agreement, most European Union countries formally signed the agreement yesterday (notable exclusions include Germany, the Netherlands, Estonia, Cyprus and Slovakia). This has generated a flurry of furious protest..." more

NORDUnet’s Brilliant Internet Peering Strategy

NORDUnet, the R&E network connecting the Nordic countries has recently undertaken a brilliant Internet peering strategy that will have global significant ramifications for supporting research and education around the world. NORDUnet is now emerging as one of the world's first "GREN"s -- Global Research and Education Network. NORDUnet is extending their network infrastructure to multiple points of presence throughout the USA and Europe to interconnect to major Internet Exchange Points (IXPs). more

China’s Internet Users Pass Half a Billion

The number of Chinese Internet users has surpassed 500 million, with nearly half of them using microblogs, or Weibo, according to latest official figures. About 55.8 million Chinese people became new Internet users last year, bringing the country’s Web population to 513 million, representing an Internet penetration rate of 38.3 percent, according to a report released by China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC). more

Comcast Announces Completion of DNSSEC Deployment

Comcast, a leading ISP in the U.S., has fully deployed Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) according to a company announcement today. Jason Livingood, Comcast's Vice President of Internet Systems writes: "As of today, over 17.8M residential customers of our Xfinity Internet service are using DNSSEC-validating DNS servers. In addition, all of the domain names owned by Comcast, numbering over 5,000, have been cryptographically signed. All of our servers, both the ones that customers use and the ones authoritative for our domain names, also fully support IPv6." more

Vint Cerf: Internet Access Not a Human Right But Only Means to an End

Technologies such as the Internet should be viewed as enabler of rights, not a right itself says Vint Cerf in an op-ed piece in The New York Times. He writes: "The best way to characterize human rights is to identify the outcomes that we are trying to ensure. These include critical freedoms like freedom of speech and freedom of access to information...
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CircleID’s Top Ten Posts of 2011

Here are the top ten most popular news, blogs, and industry updates featured on CircleID in 2011 based on the overall readership of the posts for the year. Congratulations to all the participants whose posts reached top readership and best wishes to the entire community for 2012. Happy New Year! more

SIP Co-Author Henning Schulzrinne Appointed CTO of the FCC

In a move to be celebrated by many of us with a VoIP background, the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced today the appointment of Henning Schulzrinne as Chief Technology Officer (CTO). As the release indicates, Henning's role as CTO will be to: ...guide the FCC's work on technology and engineering issues, together with the FCC's Office of Engineering and Technology. more

The Myth of the Unintended Infringer in SOPA and PIPA

In a recent op-ed piece in TheHill.COM, some friends and I described the futility of mandated DNS blocking as contemplated by the SOPA (H.R. 3261) and PIPA (S. 968) bills now working their way through the U.S. Congress: No Internet user is required to use the Domain Name servers provided by their ISP. And if millions of American citizens who for whatever reason want to engage in online piracy can no longer do so because Congress has passed this law and their ISP is now filtering the citizen's DNS lookups... more

ISOC Joins Opposition to Stop Online Piracy Act

In a letter released on Monday, the Internet Society Board of Trustees has expressed concern with a number of U.S. legislative proposals that would mandate DNS blocking and filtering by ISPs to protect the interests of copyright holders. "Policies mandating DNS filtering undermine the open architecture of the Internet and raise human rights and freedom of expression concerns," says Internet Society (ISOC). more

Video Recording Now Available of FCC Dec 6th Workshop on PSTN Transition

If you missed attending or listening to the live stream of the US Federal Communication Commission's (FCC) workshop on the transition of the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) to new technologies that was held last week on December 6th, the FCC has very nicely made a video recording available from their website for viewing... FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski also appeared briefly to provide a few comments. more

Dealing With the Digital Divide

A political focus on subsidizing telecom infrastructure is just so easy. There are multiple photo opportunities (at the announcement, the cheque presentation and the system activation), happy mayors, happy voters. It gets to be portrayed as economic stimulus, direct job creation and consistent with progress on digital economic development. But while it may feel satisfying politically, I question the effectiveness of continued broad government subsidies based on geography, rather than taking a more focused approach based on need. more