EU Telecom Overhaul One Step Closer

Europe's electronic communications sector is currently governed by directives adopted in 2002. These stipulated that the directives and regulatory framework should be reviewed, a processed initialised in November 2007. Both the European Council and the European Parliament need to adopt the proposed changes, and none of the initial consultations conducted by the EC indicated that a major overhaul was on the cards, or even required. Yet this is what has transpired. more

Impact of Hurricane Irene on the Internet

Effects of hurricane Irene were clearly visible in the Internet's global routing table, as tens of thousands of networks were cut off from the rest of the world, according to analysis by Renesys. From the report: "Overall, it seems that the East Coast's power and Internet infrastructure fared pretty well during this storm, with good evidence of restoration after the storm had passed. This is good news, given the important role Twitter now plays in ad hoc rescue coordination, and the importance of the Web for keeping people informed about what they're facing in an emergency situation." more

Amazon Joins the Race to Offer Broadband Access from Orbit, Uncovered Filings Show

Reports suggest Amazon Inc. is planning to provide broadband internet access worldwide via 3,236 satellites in low earth orbit. more

Title II and ICANN

Many voices are hailing February 26th as a watershed day in the history of the Internet in the United States. After a year of loud argument, frequent misrepresentations, and epic flows of political contributions, the FCC has restored the open Internet rules which prevailed from 2010 until struck down in a court ruling last year. And it has done so with new reliance on existing provisions of U.S. telecom law which it believes will pass judicial scrutiny. more

Neustar Acquires .CO Internet

.CO Internet closed its chapter as an independent company and became part of the publicly traded Neustar on Monday afternoon. The Sterling, Va.-based provider of real-time analytics and registry services was also already providing a critical piece of .CO Internet's technology infrastructure. more

Senate Appropriations Committee Critical of NTIA Role Within ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee

On July 18th the Senate Appropriations Committee issued Report 113 - 78 on S. 1329, the "DEPARTMENTS OF COMMERCE AND JUSTICE, AND SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS BILL, 2014". more

Google Launches Public DNS Service

Today Google announced the launch of its own public DNS resolver called Google Public DNS - claimed as part of the company's effort to "make the web faster". Google product manager, Prem Ramaswami, writes: "As people begin to use Google Public DNS, we plan to share what we learn with the broader web community and other DNS providers, to improve the browsing experience for Internet users globally. The goal of Google Public DNS is to benefit users worldwide while also helping the tens of thousands of DNS resolvers improve their services, ultimately making the web faster for everyone." more

Speed Isn’t Everything: The Other Metrics That Matter in Broadband

The marketing area of the broadband industry spends a lot of time convincing folks that the most important part of a broadband product is download speed. This makes sense if fiber and cable are competing in a market against slower technologies. But it seems like most advertising about speed is to convince existing customers to upgrade to faster speeds. While download speed is performance, the industry doesn't spend much time talking about the other important attributes of broadband. more

First Round of GDPR Fines Coming by the End of the Year, Says EU Data Regulator

The EU's privacy regulator is predicting that the first round of enforcement actions under the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will be exercised in the coming months. more

ISOC Issues Statement in Response to Increasing Internet Access Restrictions by Governments

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

A Survey of Internet Users from 24 Countries Finds 83% Consider Affordable Access Basic Human Right

A survey of Internet users in 24 countries has found that 83% believe affordable access to the Internet should be a basic human right, according to the "CIGI-Ipsos Global Survey on Internet Security and Trust." The results of the new survey, commissioned by the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) and conducted by global research company Ipsos, were presented today in Ottawa, Canada. more

Touching Enhanced Cooperation

A concrete plinth was lain at the foundation of durable Enhanced Cooperation this week when ISOC unveiled its IXP toolkit and portal. In simple English (which no doubt will be expanded to other languages) the soft launch modestly seeks feedback, corrections, and further input to the already pithy and instructive content. More to the point, this resource responds to one of the principle demands of those who do not recognize themselves in the multistakeholder model: how do we get our own IXP? more

ICANN Voting to Pull the Weeds is Good - Pulling Them is Even Better

At the ICANN Public Forum in Singapore yesterday, I likened the ICANN to a community garden: fertile, colorful and above all, worthwhile, but not without a few troublesome weeds. Today's Board vote to adopt the recommendations of the Accountability and Transparency Review Team (ATRT) is a vote to pull those weeds. As good as voting for this weed-pulling exercise is, completing it will be even better. more

The New Privacy Law in California

The State of California often leads the country in addressing regulatory issues. This makes sense since the State has a population of nearly 40 million and an economy that would be the fifth largest in the world if California were a separate country. A new law was enacted on the last day of the California Legislature that was signed by Governor Gavin Newson this month. more

A Look Ahead to Fedora 19

Fedora 19 is the community-supported Linux distribution that is often used as a testing ground for features that eventually find their way into the Red Hat Enterprise Linux commercial distribution and its widely used noncommercial twin, CentOS. Both distributions are enormously popular on servers and so it's often instructive for sysadmins to keep an eye on what's happening with Fedora. more