A self-appraisal of the ICANN Board has just been posted on the organization's website. In it, Board members rate 89 different measures of their own performance according to a seven-measure rating from "strongly agree" to "strongly disagree". Unfortunately, despite plenty of figures in the documents, there is zero analysis of what this all means, so I have gone through them and prepared one. more
Virtualization of core network services such as DDI has created a lot of controversy over the last couple of years. Perhaps most notably, Infoblox and Gartner have been both claiming that virtualized network services are not on the agenda of larger organizations, nor will they ever be. I'm not sure I have ever seen a convincing technological reasoning for this position. Rather, the logic has always been circular: it's not going to happen because we're not seeing it happening. more
The suggestion was recently put to the GNSO Council: anyone who becomes a member of a proposed new Expedited Policy Development Process (EPDP) must be able to demonstrate that they have basic knowledge of privacy and data protection. This makes a lot of sense: Would you trust a lawyer who had never been to law school? Or a doctor who had never studied medicine? Of course not. Recently I asked members of our ICANN Community: have you had any GDPR training, classes, or certification? more
Let's go to the scoreboard. There are 1751 applications for new top-level domains. Nearly 1/3 (635) are brands. The rest are generics (e.g. .Buzz) and geographies (e.g .NYC). So, brands are definitely interested in new TLDs - and a handful of major industries have jumped into the lead. If you're in any of those verticals, it's time to pay attention. Your competitors may be giving your customers new ways to reach out, learn and buy from them. more
Karachi-based Bank Islami revealed Saturday morning that it had detected abnormal transactions resulting in 2.6 million Pakistani rupees, roughly $19,500 and precautionary steps where taken immediately. more
2018 was a record-breaking year for the IPv4 market. The total volume of addresses traded, overall number of transactions in the ARIN region, and prices reached their highest levels to date. Since 2014, the number of transactions has grown considerably, mostly attributable to a dramatic increase in small block trades of fewer than 4,000 addresses. The volume of addresses sold during the same period, however, tells a different story. more
The telecoms industry is facing a systemic problem of high operational complexity and excessive cost. We take a look at the root causes, and how to tackle them. Every telco in the world wants to both increase the quality of their customer experience, and also save money by lowering opex and deferring capex. A pervasive industry barrier to achieving this is one of complexity, which exists at many levels. more
I recently learned about a meeting that took place between ICANN staff and Noncommercial Users Constituency (NCUC) members Kathy Kleiman and Konstantinos Komaitis regarding the Implementation Recommendations Team (IRT) recommendations for the protection of intellectual property rights in new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs). My comment relates to the White Paper published by Ms. Kleiman and Mr. Komaitis with respect to the notion of having multiple Regional Trademark clearinghouses (TMCs). For the reasons stated in this comment, the KK Proposal fails a number of the benchmarking checklists used by the IRT in evaluating proposals. more
Sen. Scott Wiener along with ten state assembly and Senate Democrats have proposed legislation which includes a number of ways to ensure telecom companies operating in California adhere to the principles of net neutrality. more
Over the next decade which companies do you think will be better able to exercise monopoly power? Amazon, T&T, Comcast, Facebook, Google, Regional phone companies, or Verizon? If you'd asked me this question in 2000, I would've picked AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and regional phone companies. They are part of local duopolies for wired infrastructure. more
Before anyone claims victory for the consumer in AT&T's abandonment of its "swinging for the fence" gambit to buy T-Mobile's market share and spectrum, consider what did not make many headlines this week. Both AT&T and Verizon substantially shored up their spectrum stocks with major deals with Qualcomm and several cable companies respectively. Solid hits for both carriers: not homeruns, but very strategic singles and doubles. more
The results of the latest survey conducted by the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration shows more American from all walks of life are increasingly connecting to the Internet. more
According to various news outlets, Russia is reported to be planning a complete Internet shut down, as part of a test of its cyber-defenses. more
With the start of hunting season for new gTLDs, attention needs to be paid to Community in all of its reality and diversity. After family, community is one of the strongest organizational principles in human society and has been since the beginning of history. With the rare exception of the classical hermit, everyone is part of multiple communities. Communities are important and need to be protected by society and by this new gTLD process. more
Close to 1300 IP addresses were hijacked this morning resulting in Amazon losing control of a number of its highly used cloud services. more
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