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

Electricity Utilities and IoT

More and more connected devices will require more and better electricity solutions. In many developing economies more people have ready access to a smartphone and the internet than they have access to electricity. For that reason we have seen mobile telecoms operators starting to include power solutions (mainly through distributed energy systems, using solar panels) in order to sell more phones and telecom services. This shows how important access to electricity is. more

Another Day, Another Two Million Dollars

ICANN just published the results of the auction for .HOTELS and .HOTEIS. The high bidder (I'm not sure "winner" really applies here) was Booking.com, who will use .HOTELS. The $2.2M they paid, along with the prior results, notably the $25 million Google paid for .APP, brings the total in ICANN's auction pot to about $60.5 million. There's a few more auctions scheduled for CAM, PHONE, and SHOP/SHOPPING, along with yet to be scheduled auctions for DOCTOR, INC, LLP, and LLC. more

Symantec Acquires VeriSign’s Security Business for $1.28 Billion

Symantec today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire VeriSign's identity and authentication business, which includes the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Certificate Services, the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) Services, the VeriSign Trust Services and the VeriSign Identity Protection (VIP) Authentication Service. more

ITU Becomes Trans-Sectoral

Very little was said about telecommunications during the official speeches and forums at ITU Telecom World 2009. The industry is even talking about changing its focus from telecommunications to ICT [United Nations Information and Communication Technologies Task Force], Discussions are now focusing on how ICT can be used to underpin the various socio-economic developments that are taking place. more

Is It Time for Social Networks to Adopt Some Trademark Protection?

The headlines this week say that over 200 million domain names now exist on the internet. Pretty impressive... But consider the explosive growth of Social Networks. The top twenty social networks alone have over 2 billion user names. With User Names on social networks rapidly becoming the Internet's new brand identifiers, I wonder: is it time that we apply the same trademark rules we have for domain names to user names as well? more

How Safe is Your Fiber Network?

There was a major attack launched against long-haul fiber networks outside of Paris, France, on April 27 of this year. It appears that there was a coordinated attack by vandals to cut three long-haul fiber routes simultaneously. Fibers were cut with what seemed like a circular saw, and sections of fiber were removed to make it hard to make repairs. These were backbone fibers that were shared by multiple ISPs. more

Celebrating the 25Th Anniversary of the World Wide Web

Today the full original name of the World Wide Web is being seen everywhere as people all around the world join together to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the proposal that Tim Berners-Lee submitted at CERN that led to the creation of the "Web" we have today. While many of our articles here on CircleID focus more on the underlying Internet infrastructure that makes the Web possible, it's good to take a moment to reflect on - and celebrate - the amazing evolution of the Web from those very early days!  more

CENTR Reports Decreased Growth in European ccTLDs

According to the latest quarterly report from the Council of European National Top-Level Domain Registries (CENTR), the median growth in European ccTLDs during 2019 was recorded at 2.4% YOY, down from the 3.1% recorded at the same time in 2018. more

Will October Be Our Biggest Month Yet for .brand TLDs?

I'll admit I tend to get evangelical when I'm talking about .brands. To me and the team at Neustar, every development in this space is exciting and significant and we're always eager to share the latest news and insights. But you don't have to be a .brands nut to see that the last few weeks have shown some serious signs of momentum. And it makes me wonder, with everything that's developed in just the last week or two, could we be set for October to be the biggest month in .brands we've ever seen? more

Mobile Broadband Penetration in Asia

The advent of mobile broadband triggered a huge change in broadband access across Asia. Following more than a decade of strong growth in almost all mobile markets in the region, an amazing transition to new generation mobile networks and services took place. By end 2014 there were a total of 1.2 billion mobile subscribers and with annual growth running at over 40% coming into 2015 the numbers were expected to hit 1.7 billion by end-2015. more

Not World War III - This Time the ICT Revolution

In the past it has been wars and revolutions that created major changes in society. It was only after these events that old ideas, structures and doctrines gave way. And in many countries wars and revolutions are still functioning as a tool for change -- the Arab Revolution and the collapse of the Soviet Empire are good examples of this. But wars and revolutions are disruptive in an economic sense, cost the lives of many people, and necessitate costly rebuilds after the even more

Pre-Registrations of .NYC Domain Names and the Shattered Dream

In response to United Domains pre-registration of .nyc domain names, we posted the below on our blog and the NARLO sites yesterday. While United Domains pre-registration service is free and non-binding, the North American Regional At Large Organization, part of the ICANN governance ecology, is concerned that "the offer of such a service could create artificial demand..." more

Doing Crypto

The recent discovery of the goto fail and heartbleed bugs has prompted some public discussion on a very important topic: what advice should cryptologists give to implementors who need to use crypto? What should they do? There are three parts to the answer: don't invent things; use ordinary care; and take special care around crypto code. more

US Telcos Withdrawing from DSL and Telephony Markets - A Case of Lobbying Power and Poor Regulation

During the last few months the US's main DSL providers AT&T and Verizon have begun retracting from the DSL and landline market in many rural and less commercially viable areas while concentrating on their wireless LTE ambitions. DSL and voice telephony provide relatively low returns, which can be whittled away through network maintenance costs, while LTE promises to deliver proportionately higher profits, based on exorbitant charges by data volume.  more