A History of Disruptors: Or How the U.S. Government Saved the Internet from the Telcos

Kenji Kushida is a scholar at Stanford University, who has written a most explanatory overview of how America came to dominate cyberspace, through computer companies. He traces the evolution of the Internet to a series of actions taken by the US government to limit the power of the telephone companies. Kushida looks at the USA, Europe and Japan from the perspective of what happened when telephone monopolies were broken up and competition introduced in the 1990s. 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

Spectrum and Weather Forecasting

There is currently a brewing controversy over the allocation of various radio frequencies for 5G that could have a negative impact on weather forecasting. Weather forecasting has become extremely sophisticated and relies on masses of data gathered from weather satellites and other data-gathering devices. The masses of data, along with modern supercomputers and data center computing, have significantly improved the ability to predict future weather. more

5G a Fizzle With Consumers

The cellular companies have made an unprecedented push to get customers interested in 5G. Back in November, I recorded a college football game that enabled me to go back and count the twelve 5G commercials during the game. Advertising during sports events is relatively expensive, so these ads were not purchased at bargain-basement prices. The amount of money being spent on advertising 5G must be gigantic. 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

Multi-Layer Security Architecture - Importance of DNS Firewalls

In today's world with botnets, viruses and other nefarious applications that use DNS to further their harmful activities, outbound DNS security has been largely overlooked. As a part of multi-layer security architecture, a DNS Firewall should not be ignored. After serving as a consultant for multiple organizations, I have encountered many companies that allow all internal devices to send outbound DNS queries to external DNS servers - a practice that can lead to myriad problems. more

Implications of Satellite Being Broadband

We've had a quiet policy change in the United States over the last year, where satellite broadband is starting to be considered broadband by the federal government. Any rural household that subscribes to and loves Starlink would wonder why this is news, but from a policy perspective, it is a big deal. I've been considering what this shift might mean in the future. The FCC decided that Starlink wasn't broadband when it rejected Starlink's long-form filing in August 2022, where Starlink wanted to claim the funding it had won in the RDOF reverse auction.  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

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

Internet Governance in 2023

It's been an interesting couple of weeks for me, in mid-October 2023. I presented in a couple of panels at the 18th Internet Governance Forum meeting, held in Kyoto, Japan, and I also listened in to a couple of sessions in their packed agenda. The following week, I followed the presentations at NANOG 89, the meeting of the North American Network Operator's Group, and listened to a presentation by John Curran, the President and CEO of ARIN, where he gave his impressions of the current state of Internet Governance. 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

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

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

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