The nation's leading organization of government, corporate and academic privacy executives -- the International Association of Privacy Professionals -- recently did what good groups do, it issued a report that validated the pursuit of the career it supports... the IAPP reminded all what has long been understood -- privacy is an important and growing risk management activity under the watchful eye (mostly) of general counsels. With $2.4 billions being spent this year and $3 billion next, it is a growth industry. more
With the ICANN Silicon Valley in San Francisco meeting just six short weeks away, the Internet community's hopes of seeing the launch of the new generic top-level domains (gTLD) program have been once again reinvigorated. A meeting of the ICANN Board of Directors last week produced encouraging resolutions that have given hopeful gTLD applicants the clearest indication yet that San Francisco will be the venue for the final approval of the Applicant Guidebook and the beginning of the Internet's next extraordinary phase of evolution. more
Computer scientists, engineers and journalists gathered today on the CERN particle physics lab in the suburbs of Geneva, Switzerland, to pay homage to the a 1989 proposal by Tim Berners-Lee that would later come to be the blueprint for the World Wide Web. In March 1989, Tim Berners-Lee submitted a proposal for an information management system to his boss, Mike Sendall. 'Vague, but exciting', were the words that Sendall wrote on the proposal, allowing Berners-Lee to continue... more
The Internet Society (ISOC) has addressed human rights issues related to Internet access stating "[t]he increasing pressure to limit access to the Internet has escalated the sense of urgency in addressing this situation." ISOC, in the announcement, reaffirmed its policy area and its work to bring attention to the impact of Internet freedom on other aspects of human rights. more
Public comments on the Proposed Recommendations published by the Accountability and Transparency Review Team ("ATRT") have now been submitted, and it is worth stepping back to evaluate ATRT's work in the context of ICANN's larger challenges. ATRT was constituted to carry out ICANN's commitments under the AoC. Yet at times ICANN acted as if ATRT were an adversary rather than a partner... more
The success of a proposal by AT&T and Verizon to end net neutrality does not threaten the Internet. The broadband customers of AT&T and Verizon will just no longer have access to the Internet. The development appropriately creates alarm among AT&T and Verizon's customers, but the combined customer bases of these companies represent less than 2% of the billion or so users of the Internet. The fact that access to the Internet requires net neutrality does not depend on laws passed by the US Congress or enforced by the FCC. Neutrality arises as a technical and business imperative facilitating the interconnection 250,000 independent networks that choose to participate in the Internet. more
AT&T got critics' keyboards activated by announcing plans for a Sponsored Data service, enabling websites to pay for their end-users data consumption. The service has been characterized as a type of toll-free or "1-800? style service for mobile data. Does this contravene network neutrality principles? AT&T says the traffic from the sponsoring sites will be treated the same as other traffic on the network. A US public interest group, Public Knowledge, claims this is precisely what a net neutrality violation looks like. more
A cooperative international report was released last week outlining Internet and mobile best practices aimed at curtailing malware, phishing, spyware, bots and other Internet threats. It also provides extensive review of current and emerging threats. "Best Practices to Address Online and Mobile Threats" is a comprehensive assessment of Internet security as it stands today... more
One of the oddest aspects of FCC monitoring of broadband is that the agency has accepted the premise that any broadband product faster than 25/3 Mbps is adequate broadband. This means that the FCC has completely accepted that broadband provided by cable companies is adequate and is something the agency doesn't have to be concerned with. The FCC makes the automatic assumption that broadband from cable companies is good broadband... more
Sandvine gathers data from the 160 largest fixed and wireless ISPs on the planet to understand Internet usage trends. The statistics discussed below come from the Sandvine January 2022 Global Internet Phenomena Report. Sandvine identifies several current industry trends... more
Over the last year I have become deeply involved in the debate in the USA regarding the future of their telecoms sector, which is proceeding very much along the lines of the trans-sector approach towards infrastructure (using it for other sectors such as healthcare, education, energy), open networks and a separation between infrastructure and applications. While many of the issues are universal it was also interesting to observe the specific elements that make the USA so unique. more
A couple of new notes that underscore the continued convergence of real-time communications services (e.g. voice/video/IM) into a presence-based real-time IP communications infrastructure... I haven't seen this shift just yet, but increasingly the folks responsible for managing voice and video systems are integrating their planning with the groups in charge of instant messaging and collaboration. I expect this trend to accelerate as we move forward. more
One of Japan's leading Internet services providers and domain registrar, GMO Internet, Inc., today announced the acquisition of the single-character domain name, Z.com for JPY ?800 million (close to USD $7 million). According to the company, the acquisition is part of a plan to unify its global strategy under the brand name, Z.com and building GMO's "core values and objectives into the Z.com brand" more
A number of conversations have recently converged on a single problem: how to match applications to network access. Let's unpeel this issue... When I was Chief Analyst at Telco 2.0, we proposed there was a significant untapped market opportunity for network operators to bundle together access with content, applications or services. The revenue opportunity is to charge the providers of those services for delivering fit-for-purpose data at bulk wholesale prices. This is the "postage problem"... more
These days in Washington, even the most absurd proposals become the new normal. The announcement yesterday of a new U.S. State Department Cyberspace Bureau is yet another example of setting the nation up as an isolated, belligerent actor on the world stage. In some ways, the reorganization almost seems like a companion to last week's proposal to take over the nation's 5G infrastructure. Most disturbingly, it transforms U.S. diplomacy assets from multilateral cooperation to becoming the world's bilateral cyber-bully nation. more
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