With 4G rollouts in many developed mobile markets reaching completion, it might be time to check the balance of the state of the mobile industry. Looking at campaigns around the world it is clear that what you see are 'me too' strategies. The advertising campaigns and the marketing hyperbole around them might suggest that a particular operator has now done something unique or very special, but if one looks beyond the advertising blurb it is clear that the campaign is nothing new and/or that what is on offer can be very easily matched by their competitors in the market. more
Given that CircleID is about "Internet Infrastructure" it would be remiss if there wasn't a mention here that October 29, 2014, was the 45th anniversary of the moment when the first message was sent between two ARPAnet computers located at UCLA and the Stanford Research Institute (SRI). That moment was chronicled well this year by Matt Novak writing on Gizmodo's Paleofuture, complete with photos of the original logs and more. more
It is interesting to see telecommunications policy issues being covered by the general media. Of course, we expect to see coverage of communications issues in the business press. The sector is a large employer, makes massive investments in infrastructure and virtually every citizen buys communications products and services every month. Still, covering the sector in the business section is different from seeing coverage move to the front page or the general editorial pages. more
NANOG 62 was held at Baltimore from the 6th to the 9th October. These are my observations on some of the presentations that occurred at this meeting. .. One of the more memorable sides in this presentation was a reference to "map" drawn by Charles Minard in 1869 describing the statistics relating to the Napoleonic military campaign in Russia, and the subsequent retreat. more
Back in late 2009 I had the honour of explaining my views on how broadband can deliver social and economic benefits to countries and their people to Dr Hamadoun Touré the Secretary-General (SG) of the ITU, the UN body looking after global telecoms. He showed a particular interest in the initiative Australia had taken in developing the NBN. This discussion with the SG led to the establishment in 2010 of the UN Broadband Commission, co-sponsored by UNESCO and the ITU. Dr Touré invited 50 Commissioners from around the world to participate in this initiative, half of them from private industry. more
It has been a very busy period in the domain of computer security. With "shellshock", "heartbleed" and NTP monlink adding to the background of open DNS resolvers, port 445 viral nasties, SYN attacks and other forms of vulnerability exploits, it's getting very hard to see the forest for the trees. We are spending large amounts of resources in reacting to various vulnerabilities and attempting to mitigate individual network attacks, but are we making overall progress? What activities would constitute "progress" anyway? more
It's often observed that the Internet was a direct outcome of the progressive liberalization of national telecommunications markets in the late twentieth century. This allowed the entry of a wave of Internet entrepreneurs into various national telecommunications markets that were historically dominated by incumbent telephone monopolies. The resultant transformation of telecommunications over the past two decades is as much a testament to the transformational power of open markets as it is to the prodigious ability of the Internet's technology base to service the ever increasing demands being made of it. more
Last Sunday I attended the 10th meeting of the UN Broadband Commission for Digital Development in New York, where we launched this new report -- State of Broadband Report 2014. Here are some of the highlights of the report. Over 50% of the global population will have Internet access within three years' time, with mobile broadband over smartphones and tablets now the fastest growing technology in human history, according to the 2014 edition of the State of Broadband report. more
That's what Europeans are now calling the venerable old International Telecommunication Union -- EATU for short. In fact, based on current metrics, this transformation is exactly what has occurred. The shift began occurring almost a decade ago, and has dramatically accelerated in recent years. At the ITU-T's key Study Group 17 meeting on security now underway, fully 90% of the input contributions and more than half of those participating are from only three countries -- China, Japan, and Korea. Indeed, there has long been a semi-formal organization known as CJK that has been manifested here. more
Following my comments about the iPhone VoLTE announcement I had an interesting conversation with Andy Huckridge from Gigamon, a company that provides intelligent traffic visibility networking solutions for enterprises, datacentres and service providers around the globe. An interesting concept that we discussed was the 'triple challenge of network transformation'. The three elements of this challenge are... more
"What is a minimum set of specifications that a vendor must implement to be able to say that it is SIP-compliant?" A friend asked me that question and my response was: "It depends." and even more unfortunately:
"I don't know." It turns out to be a challenging question to answer... and it led me to ask: "How do we define what "SIP" is for telecommunications in 2014? How do we help vendors move their products/services to be based on SIP? As we talk about "turning off the PSTN" and "moving all telecom to IP", how can we make it easier for companies to switch to using SIP? more
As far back as 2011 we predicted that Apple would eventually enter the voice market. We indicated at that time that it was just a matter of time -- in the end it took another three years... While it didn't happen at Christmas that year the company is now ready and will use the VoLTE service to enter this market, which will make it possible to replace Telstra with any other mobile operator around the world... he telcos are not ready for this. While they should be seen as the leaders in the voice call market they are too preoccupied with protecting their traditional business and it is companies like Apple and Samsung who are now leading the charge. more
For decades, IT followed business. Even the development of the World Wide Web didn't move this development much beyond the four walls of corporate offices -- outside connections were essential but never informed the growth of business-critical technology. Now the growth of public clouds, enterprise-grade social networking and mobile device use in the workforce is creating a new paradigm, one where business networks are reactive to IT trends -- here are six that are set to impact companies this year. more
In the 2014 Istanbul-Turkey IGF workshop on policies to promote broadband access in developing countries organised by Rui ZHONG of ISOC China, we realized that while technological solutions are advancing rapidly, policy and regulations remain a significant barrier to affordable internet especially in the developing world. According to a report by Alliance for Affordable Internet ( A4AI), the key to affordability is the policy and regulatory environment that shapes the different actors in the market. more
There are many predictions that the next big wave in telecoms is M2M and that this will be the next growth market for the telecoms industry. There is no doubt that M2M is a revolutionary development, but we need to separate the hype from the reality. In order to do this it is best to divide the major developments into two main areas, although there is no doubt that others will emerge over time. One area is the sensors that are being installed in networks such as electricity, the environment, roads and other infrastructure. more
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