Feared by the Bad, Loved by the Good: Robin Hood

The eccentricities of California-based ICANN, the allocator of domain names, know few bounds. Based on the best of legal advice, though perhaps not the best of PR advice, it's Board has announced the system for allocating priority in the processing of around 1000 weighty applications for new top-level domain names. It has described the system, with all seriousness, as Digital Archery. A description that just begs for comparison with the English folk hero, Robin Hood. more

Carrier Hotels: The Unsung Critical Part of Broadband Connectivity

Today's blog talks about a critical part of the broadband network that most people don't know about -- carrier hotels. These are locations that have been created for the specific purpose of allowing carriers to connect to each other. The need for carrier hotels became apparent in the year after the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. That new law allowed local competition for telephone service. more

The EPDP Passed an Important Milestone… Now What?

This isn't the blog post I had hoped to write. When I signed up to participate in ICANN's Expedited Policy Development Process for gTLD Registration Data, I knew we had a lot of work ahead of us, but I was cautiously optimistic that we would, eventually, reach a successful outcome. Today, I find myself looking at things differently. After hundreds of hours and countless meetings and emails, Phase 2 of the EPDP's work has wrapped up with the delivery of our final report to the GNSO Council. more

Phishing Attack Attempts to Steal Consumer Data via Bogus Live-Chat Support

Security experts at RSA Research Lab have reported the discovery of a new type of phishing attack targeted against online banking customers that combines a typical phishing website with a live change session initiated by fraudsters. The technique dubbed "Chat-in-the-Middle" not only attempts to trick customers into entering their usernames and passwords into a phishing site but obtains further sensitive information (such as answers to secret questions used by banks to authenticate customers). According to the report, this attack is currently targeting a single U.S.-based financial institution, however operators of all online banking websites are cautioned. more

Software Has Already Eaten Telecoms (It Just Has Indigestion)

The unconscious and near-universal belief is that packet networks are a telecoms service, and one that constructs an 'additive' resource called 'bandwidth'. This is demonstrably technically false. They deliver distributed computing services, as they calculate how to divide up an underlying telecoms transmission resource. The ubiquitous error is a failure to recognise that the hardware platform has already been devoured by the software industry. more

Supreme Court Delivers One-Two Punch to Agency Power

At the end of its 2024 term, the Supreme Court made two landmark rulings that limit federal agencies' regulatory powers. Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo curtails their ability to create new regulations, while SEC v. Jarkesy reduces their capacity to enforce existing laws. These decisions significantly weaken agencies like the FCC in regulating sectors of the national economy, marking a substantial shift in administrative authority. more

Government Shutdown Halts Trump’s FCC Deregulation Agenda, Says Tom Wheeler

Former FCC Chairman, Tom Wheeler, warns that the effect of U.S. government shutdown on the Trump Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will last a long time even if the shutdown were to end tomorrow. more

Brand Control: The Next Stage for Digital

Social and Digital Marketing are two of the fastest growing, and arguably the most important, pieces of branding today. According to eMarketer, 2017 digital marketing expenditures will account for 38.4% of total ad spending and are projected to be almost 45% by 2020. This is double what they were just a few years ago and growth doesn't seem to be slowing down. more

Connecting the Next 46 Percent: Time to Pick the Good From the Bad and the Ugly

On the 5th of November 2019, the release of the first of ITU's Measuring Digital Development series coincided with Freedom House's unveiling of its Freedom on Net 2019 report. This serendipity prompted me to write this blog note after carefully examining both reports. On one hand, ITU's analytical publication, with its new friendly format, emphasizes that Internet use continues to spread, warning however that the digital gender gap is widening. more

FBI Takes Down China-Backed Botnet, Facilitates Ransomware Negotiations

The FBI and international partners dismantled a China-backed botnet run by the Integrity Technology Group, a company linked to Chinese government espionage. more

ICANN President, CEO to Step Down July 2012

Rod Beckstrom announced today that he will be ending his work at the the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) by July of next year. Beckstrom, a former U.S. cybersecurity chief, was elected as the President and CEO of ICANN in Jun of 2009 following Paul Twomey who had been serving the position since March 2003. more

Terahertz WiFi

While labs across the world are busy figuring out how to implement the 5G standards, there are scientists already working in the higher frequency spectrum looking to achieve even faster speeds. The frequencies that are just now being explored are labeled as the terahertz range and are at 300 GHz and higher spectrum. This spectrum is the upper ranges of radio spectrum and lies just below ultraviolet light. more

Renewed Internet.nl Website: Modern Standards Need to be Used for a Free, Open and Secure Internet

Modern Internet Standards provide for more reliability and further growth of the Internet. But are you using them? You can test this on the Dutch website www.internet.nl (also available in English and Polish). Recently the website was renewed. Not only the style has been adapted, but also the way the tests are performed and the test results are shown. A lot of additional information has been added, so that even the tech savvy internet users can find an explanation underpinning the test results. more

Virtual Assistants Market on the Rise, Poised to Rule in 2017

In Spike Jonze's 2013 film "Her", the main character Theodore Twombly (played by Joaquin Phoenix) falls in love with a Siri-like virtual assistant. It is an intelligent computer operating system, a variance of AI envisioned by the high technology developers of today. We are still far away from creating AI capable of thinking and learning for themselves, not to mention living in symbiosis with them. However, Intelligent Virtual Assistants can be perceived as a step towards the fulfillment of the idea. more

Digital in 2021 – Five Predictions for Brand Protection

While smartphones were an integral part of our lives before 2020, now, as a result of the changes associated with COVID, our mobile devices are virtually "super-glued" to our hands. The worldwide pandemic has heavily influenced our lives. Based on our past experiences with digital brand protection and the trends we're currently seeing, we've made five predictions regarding the future of internet usage in 2021. more