California Introduces Its Own Net Neutrality Bill; Similar Bills in Progress for WA and New York

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

IANA Transition Confirmed: US Governement to Handover IANA Contract to ICANN at Midnight

United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas Galveston Division has denied plaintiffs motion for a temporary restraining order thus allowing IANA transition to proceed as planned. more

Join An Online Dialogue About Encryption - Wednesday, May 25, at 13:30 UTC

What are your concerns around encryption? What questions do you have about the legal, technical and policy aspects of the increasing use of encryption? How does encryption help bring about a higher level of trust in the Internet? On Wednesday, May 25, the Internet Society and its Greater Washington, DC Chapter are hosting an "Online Dialogue About Encryption" to discuss all these questions and many more. more

Latin American and Caribbean TLD Association Politely Smacks ICANN Over Meeting Relocation

Earlier this week the Latin American and Caribbean TLD Association (LACTLD) put out a statement about ICANN meetings. The statement, which is available in both Spanish and English, while very polite and diplomatic, expresses the organisation's concerns with ICANN moving meetings out of Latin America due to health concerns. So far this year the meeting scheduled for Panama (ICANN 56) has been relocated to Helsinki. more

Genachowski to Broadband: Reduce Prices, Increase Speeds, Increase Access, Embrace Competition

Broadband providers are not taking the recent move by the FCC to reclassify broadband under Title II; i.e., put broadband under its regulation arm along with the likes of telephone companies, very lightly and have come out swinging to stop that effort... Seemingly at issue; an appeal brought by Comcast with the D.C. Court of Appeals and the subsequent defeat of the FCC's perceived role as a broadband regulator, ruling the communication had no authority under current legislation to sanction Comcast over a 2008 Internet throttling incident. more

The Introduction of New Domain Name Services: “Due Process” and Innovation

For those interested in encouraging innovation in the domain name space -- which presumably includes the ICANN community currently convening in Dakar -- the recent episode in which VeriSign proposed, and then quickly withdrew, a bundle of new services (the VeriSign anti-abuse domain use policy) raises important issues that will be revisited as new gTLDs are introduced. Some of those issues are referenced in a recent blog post by Milton Mueller, but his emphasis on "due process" suggests a regulatory framework that is not friendly to innovation. more

Open Season

In June 2016 the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) hosted a meeting of ministers to consider the state of the Digital Economy. The central message from this meeting was the message that: "Governments must act faster to help people and firms to make greater use of the Internet and remove regulatory barriers to digital innovation or else risk missing out on the potentially huge economic and social benefits of the digital economy." All well and good, and as a piece of rhetoric it seems to strike an appropriately positive note without straying far from what appears to be bland truisms of our time. more

Do-It-Yourself Rural Fiber

Necessity has led Cubans to become do-it yourself (DIY) inventors -- keeping old cars running, building strange, motorized bicycles, etc. They've also created DIY information technology like software, El Paquete Semanal, street nets and WiFi hotspot workarounds. Last June the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) adopted a standard for "low-cost sustainable telecommunications infrastructure for rural communications in developing countries," L.1700. L.1700 cable should be of interest to both DIY technologists and ETECSA. more

Trusted Notifier Arrangements Require Trust: Why Unpacking Misunderstandings Around Trusted Notifiers Is Important for Dealing With DNS-related Abuse

Domain Name System (DNS) Operators (Registries and Registrars) receive notices asking them to take action on a wide range of alleged technical and content-related abuses. However, there is a fundamental question of when it is appropriate to act at the DNS level and the evaluation of whether the alleged abuse meets a sufficient threshold for action at the DNS level. Additionally, given the volume of abuses occurring on the internet, existing resources, mechanisms, and protocols available in-house to Operators are in many cases insufficient to address abuses in a timely fashion. more

Revisiting the Impact of Killing Net Neutrality

Ajit Pai recently wrote an article in the National Review where he talks about how his decision as head of the FCC to repeal net neutrality was the right one. He goes on to claim that repealing net neutrality was the driver behind the current boom in building fiber and upgrading other broadband technologies. He contrasts the progress of broadband in the U.S. with Europe and says that the FCC's action is the primary reason we are seeing a fiber boom in the U.S. more

Over 50 Internet Shutdowns Reported in 2016

"Governments around the world shut down the internet more than 50 times in 2016 -- suppressing elections, slowing economies and limiting free speech," Lyndal Rowlands reporting in IPS. more

ICANN Releases Fourth Version of the New gTLD Draft Applicant Guidebook

A fourth draft of ICANN's New gTLD Draft Applicant Guidebook has been released. In addition to the Applicant Guidebook, ICANN has also published summaries and analysis of the public comment period. The latest version includes... more

Is Telemedicine Here to Stay?

It's going to be interesting to see if telemedicine stays after the end of the pandemic. In the past months, telemedicine visits have skyrocketed. During March and April, telemedicine billings were almost $4 billion, compared to only $60 million for the same months a year earlier. As soon as Medicare and other insurance plans agreed to cover telemedicine, a lot of doctors insisted on remote visits during the first few months of the pandemic. more

The Director

On Thursday, Stephen J. Lukasik passed away peacefully at the age of 88. He was the legend in a field with no peer. For nearly half a century, he shaped the development of national security and network technology developments at a level and extent that is unlikely ever to be matched. For a great many of us in that arena from the 1960s past the Millennium, he was the demanding visionary leader who set the policies and directions, framed the challenges, approved and funded the projects, and questioned the results. more

Canadian Telcos Fast Tracking FttH to Combat Cable Operators

There are a number of stimuli which are pushing Canada's burgeoning FttH market, and the government and telcos alike have made significant steps to improve the reach and capacity of broadband infrastructure. These measures will show real benefits for consumers in recent years. From the government's side, its Economic Action Plan, launched in 2009 as a response to the global financial crisis, included a pledge to provide $225 million over three years towards its Broadband Canada Program, geared to extending broadband coverage to underserved communities. more