The Benefits of Thinner Fiber

Fiber manufacturers are always trying to make it easier to deploy fiber. One of the most interesting trends is the increasing migration from 250-micron fiber to 200-micron fiber. For those not familiar with the metric system, a micron is one-thousands of a millimeter. A 250-micron fiber has a diameter of 0.25 millimeters, while a 200-micron fiber has a diameter of 0.2 millimeters. more

The hiQ Decision Legalized Infrastructure Theft - We Need a Federal Fix

The hiQ ruling erased legal protections against commercial scraping, leaving infrastructure providers to absorb escalating costs. Without federal action defining data misappropriation, a free-rider AI economy could undermine open networks, investment, and long-term data integrity. more

Broadband Benefitting US Households by Over $30 Billion Annually, According to Study

According to a recent study, broadband Internet access is now considered by many US households a necessity and they turn to broadband Internet during recession. The study released by Jonathan Orszag, Robert Willig, and Mark Dutz suggests that with $32 billion gains in 2008, consumers increasingly benefit from using broadband at home. "Once people get a taste of the entertainment, educational opportunities, social networking and everyday services that broadband access facilitates, they grasp the immense value it can add to their lives as a powerful tool, regardless of where they come from," said Co-Chairman of the Internet Innovation Alliance Bruce Mehlman. "Once a broadband user, always a broadband user." more

British Banks Not Fully Reporting Cyber Attacks, Fear Punishment, Bad Publicity

"Britain's banks are not reporting the full extent of cyber attacks to regulators for fear of punishment or bad publicity, bank executives and providers of security systems say," reports Lawrence White in Reuters today. more

Re-Booting Internet Governance: Resurgence of Ideas and Proposals

Milton Mueller reporting at IGP: At the recently concluded Seoul Conference on Cyberspace, a memo was circulated calling for the creation of a "Commission on the Future of Internet Cooperation." The commission, the confidential memo said, would consist of "civic leaders, ministers, CEOs and technical pioneers." Its purpose will be to "provide new ideas for transnational and multistakeholder proposals for Internet governance." According to the leaked document, the group is supposed to begin work in October and conclude its work with a presentation at the World Economic Forum in January 2014. more

Is Zoom’s Server Security Just as Vulnerable as the Client Side?

Zoom programmers made elementary security errors when coding, and did not use protective measures that compiler toolchains make available. It's not a great stretch to assume that similar flaws afflict their server implementations. While Mudge noted that Zoom's Windows and Mac clients are (possibly accidentally) somewhat safer than the Linux client, I suspect that their servers run on Linux.Were they written with similar lack of attention to security? more

US Senators in Letter to Yahoo Say Late Hack Disclosure “Unacceptable”

"A group of Democratic U.S. senators on Tuesday demanded Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O) to explain why hackers' theft of user information for half a billion accounts two years ago only came to light last week and lambasted its handling of the breach as "unacceptable," reports Dustin Volz from Washington in Reuters. more

Q3 Broadband Report Shows Uploads Rising Faster Than Downloads

OpenVault's latest broadband report shows U.S. households using more data, with uploads rising faster than downloads and a major shift toward midrange speed tiers. Growing gaming, streaming, and cloud activity continues to reshape network demand and subscriber behavior. more

Ireland’s Solution to the Rural Divide

The pandemic has given the whole world a pause to consider if we should return to business as usual when the pandemic is behind us. Ireland has a unique reaction and is something that could make sense here. Ireland plans to provide incentives to lure people from cities back to smaller rural towns. Like much of the world, Ireland has seen decades of young people moving to cities to find work, leaving behind shrinking and aging rural towns. more

Granular Regulation: A Future-Ready Framework for Effective AI Governance and Beyond

Granular regulation offers a new governance framework for AI, blending flexibility with enforceability. By translating broad principles into risk-sensitive, technical mandates, it overcomes the rigidity of rule-based models and the vagueness of principle-based approaches. more

China Spurs eSIM Boom as Global Connections Set to Quadruple by 2030

Global eSIM connections are projected to reach 4.9 billion by 2030, driven by China's rapid adoption, new provisioning standards, and growing demand across smartphones, industrial devices, and the expanding Internet of Things ecosystem. more

Let’s Not Forget the Lobbyists

Common Cause recently released a report, Broadband Gatekeepers, that describes the influence that lobbyists have on broadband policies. The numbers are staggering -- the ISP industry spent $234 million lobbying the 116th Congress (2019 and 2020). That number is likely understated since the rules on reporting lobbying are lax, and enforcement is almost nonexistent. That number doesn't include the huge amounts of lobbying efforts at State legislatures. more

Copper Thieves in New Brunswick Impacting Bell Aliant Customers

Bell Aliant customers in the Canadian province of New Brunswick have been experiencing repeated and prolonged disruption to their internet, home phone, and TV services due to vandalism to Bell's network. more

Entering the Growing IPv4 Market: What Enterprises Should Do Now

With IPv4 addresses fetching up to $30 apiece and IPv6 adoption lagging, companies may be sitting on hidden digital assets. A strategic audit could unlock unexpected revenue and enhance long-term infrastructure planning. more

European Parliament Votes Down Amendments Aimed at Strengthening Network Neutrality

Following some heated debates, the European Parliament today voted down various amendments aimed at strengthening network neutrality in the new telecommunications package which has been on the agenda of the European Union for more than two years. more