The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in the Google-Verizon Legislative Framework

Google and Verizon have developed a "Proposal" on Internet access which I am sure they expect to serve as a template, starting point and frame of reference going forward. In light of the FCC's judicial reversal in the Comcast case, the absence of substantive progress at the FCC and the unlikelihood of congressional action, two major stakeholder can and have taken the lead. It should come as no surprise that Verizon and Google have emphasized and begrudgingly compromised on their corporate interests. more

How Diverse Is ICANN? New Study Explores Organisation’s Makeup

ICANN is a strange beast. Even the term "ICANN", which is itself an acronym, has more than one meaning. There are at least two "ICANNs", one is the "community", which is made up of everyone who engages with the ICANN "circus" and then there is ICANN the organisation itself -- a California not-for-profit. While people outside the internet industry probably have never heard of ICANN or had any direct dealings with it, the policies that get decided at ICANN have a tangible impact on how the internet operates. more

United Arab Emirates TRA Investigating High Level Speculative Interests in Recently Liberalized .AE

Domain names registered under United Arab Emirates' recently liberalized county code Top-Level Domain (.ae) have attracted such high level speculative interests that red flags have been raised within the country's regulatory agency. Domain names such as 'vip.ae' and 'vips.ae' registered only a little over a year ago are currently receiving multi-million dollar offers according to reports. Abu Dhabi's newspaper, The National, reported last week that the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA), the .ae administrator, has stated "registering a UAE domain with no intention other than to resell it could hurt the registrants if they are later accused of registering the site in bad faith, something forbidden by its rules." more

Getting Ready for the Metaverse

In a recent article in LightReading, Mike Dano quotes Dan Rampton of Meta as saying that the immersive metaverse experience is going to require a customer latency between 10 and 20 milliseconds. The quote came from a Wireless Infrastructure Association Connect (WIAC) trade show presentation. Dano says the presentation was aimed at big players like American Tower and DigitalBridge, which are investing heavily in major data centers. more

The Online World Is Not Flat: The Need for Geo gTLDs

This post outlines location factors that make the online world not as flat as some have claimed. I then outline the impact of these factors on the demand for new gTLDs. Domain names can signal geography by means of country-code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs) and new generic TLDs (gTLDs). Location is back in the spotlight for reasons laid out by Professor David R. Bell of the Wharton School in his recent book. more

What to Expect at ICANN 59, Johannesburg

I'm excited! Not because of the 30 hours that it will take me to get to Johannesburg, but because this ICANN meeting will be the second time we've put the Meeting B Policy Forum to the test. If the second time is a charm then hopefully we'll have cemented the Policy Forum into the ICANN meeting structure, and we can start a conversation about having two Policy Forums each year and one AGM meeting. more

Are You Getting Your News From Spam? My Mother Does

This is a story about my mother and Obama. My mother: "Have you heard about Obama? Really impressive guy." Me: "What about him?" My mother: "x, y and z." Me: "Where did you hear about this?" My mother: "I read email too, you are not the only one who is into technology." Luckily, my mother bases her opinion on more than just spam messages... more

Downloading is Not Enough… Probably

Peer to peer download services are still popular with music-loving kids, it seems. The second annual survey of young people's music consumption by pressure group UK Music found that three-fifths of the 1,808 18-24 year olds who took part said they used p2p services, and four-fifths of those did so at least once a week. This is almost the same as last year's result, and would seem to indicate that the efforts by the music industry to offer a range of licensed alternatives to Limewire and other p2p services have failed to have any real impact. more

Norwegian Cruise Line Joins the Fleet of Cruise Liners to Adopt Starlink Satellite Broadband Service

Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL) has announced the start of the trial for Starlink, a satellite broadband service, on one of its ships - the Norwegian Breakaway. NCL plans to potentially deploy the service across eight cruise ships this year. This includes the three new additions to its fleet - Vista, Norwegian Viva, and Seven Seas Grandeur. If the trials are successful, NCL will equip these vessels with Starlink terminals. more

Privacy Getting a Reboot

Anyone old enough to remember when cross-border data flows were limited to what could be put in a DHL box in New York and sent directly to Milan for the next day? Or when MIPS were so costly and centralized that batch processing was the norm? The world has changed, but the rules governing data protection and privacy haven't (much). Today technology allows and users demand that data flow without the drag of political boundaries or national borders, yet we still want assurances that our information will be protected and respected.  more

In Praise of ICANN

ICANN comes in for a lot of criticism. That's because people care very deeply about it. The multi-stakeholder model, of which ICANN is the exemplar, is such a radical and revolutionary departure from how global affairs have been managed in the past that many of us are constantly on guard lest ICANN degrade into the command-and-control structure that characterizes other global regulatory bodies. At ICANN, it's the volunteers, those who care (as well as, yes, those who are paid to pretend to care) who set policy more

DNS, My God It’s Full of Stars…

Since my last post about DNS subversion we have had some good feedback. We had 29 responses, I agree a small sample, but what we found is very interesting. Let's remind ourselves of what we are looking at? Does your ISP redirect DNS queries? Specifically, if you try to make a port 53 UDP or TCP connection to a server outside of your ISP's network does it get there? more

Top Ten List of Needed FCC Regulatory Reforms

Honesty is the best policy. At the risk of anthromorphizing a regulatory agency, at the very least the FCC has not told the complete truth, or put itself in a position not to know the truth. The FCC has contributed to debates about what constitutes credible facts and statistics, and what this data means. For example, soon-to-be former FCC Chairman Kevin Martin asserted as the gospel truth his factual conclusion that cable television operators collectively have a 70% market share... The FCC should acknowledge that it may not know all the facts. more

The Multinational Nature of Spam

I received a spam message the other day that went to my Junk Mail Folder. I decided to take a look at it and dissect it piece by piece. It really is amazing to see how spam crosses so many international borders and exploits so many different machines. Spammers have their own globally redundant infrastructure and it highlights the difficulties people have in combating the problem of it. more

Trans-Sector Thinking Spreading to the Highest Levels in Government

Australia, New Zealand and the USA have taken international leadership in relation to their approaches to the infrastructure investment their countries are committed to in relation to the multi-billion dollar investment in national broadband and smart grid infrastructure. This is based on open networks, which will allow multiple access to infrastructure that can be used for e-health, smart grids, tele-education, as well as, of course, to telecoms, Internet and entertainment services. more