A little over a year ago, the FCC approved the use of 1,200 MHz of spectrum in the 6 GHz band for public use -- for new WiFi. WiFi is already the most successful deployment of spectrum ever. A year ago, Cisco predicted that by 2022 that WiFi will be carrying more than 50% of global IP traffic. These are amazing statistics when you consider that WiFi has been limited to using 70 MHz of spectrum in the 2.4 GHz spectrum band and 500 MHz in the 5 GHz spectrum band. more
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has been a major contextual factor of global internet governance discussions over the past year, and it appears that discussions in ICANN are no exception. Threats to the integrity and security of the DNS have become a regular topic of debate within the ICANN community. In recent months, these discussions have increasingly focused on the idea of 'DNS abuse' and, more specifically, COVID-19-related DNS abuse. more
Last month, the Chinese government published space situational awareness and traffic management regulations and procedures designed to guard against collisions in orbit and mitigate space debris, and this month, at the G7 summit, delegates from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the USA, the UK, and the EU pledged to take action to tackle the growing hazard of space debris as our planet's orbit becomes increasingly crowded. more
It was not without a little trepidation that I planned the 2nd DNS Abuse Institute Forum to focus on the long-standing and often contentious definitional issues surrounding DNS Abuse. While the risk of getting stuck in the usual entrenched positions was real, it seemed to me that we had an opportunity to provide some clarity and if not change minds, at least provide perspective. more
The ways in which the Internet is embedded in our daily lives are too varied and numerous to catalogue. The Internet delivers information, access to goods, services, education, banking, social interaction and, increasingly, work space. The global pandemic has only heightened our dependence on the online world, which is why efforts to ensure that the Internet remains a trusted and secure environment are more important than ever. more
Using the lingo of Internet Governance, the "stakeholders" of digital technologies currently live in a state of confusion about their rights and responsibilities in the digital age. Digital technologies confront us with many questions we thought had been answered long before. We have a pretty clear understanding of our rights and responsibilities as citizens of our country, how a state should be governed, and how the private sector should conduct its business. more
It has been just over 3 years since the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect, and the work within ICANN (type "EPDP 2a" into your acronym decoder ring) to develop a permanent Registration Data policy is progressing at a snail's pace. At issue is a proposed mandatory requirement for Contracted Parties (really just Registrars), to differentiate between "legal persons" (a fancy way of saying corporations and similar organizations) and "natural persons" (the kind that eat and breathe and schedule Zoom calls). more
The IRTF is a research-oriented part of the larger IETF structure. It has a number of research groups, one of which, DINRG, is looking at decentralized Internet Infrastructure. That's a big topic, and one could certainly look at distributed decentralized blockchain frameworks applied to ledgers, used by Bitcoin and similar, or self-organizing systems that perform orchestration without imposed control or distributed hash tables. more
In September 2015, John Levine asked why ICANN should be considered a tax-exempt organization following the completion of the U.S. government's transition of technical management of the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS). The U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) determined that ICANN was an exempt organization in 2000 and, inarguably, circumstances have evolved materially since then. more
It has been a long time coming. In the world of global 5G security, there is only one principal forum. The somewhat cryptically named 3GPP SA3 is dedicated to 5G security and holding its 103rd meeting electronically next week from 17 to 28 May with 772 submitted documents and 189 participants registered. SA3 meets every 60 days and exists at the security center of an ecosystem of numerous technical groups encompassing many hundreds of companies, industry organizations, and government agencies worldwide. more
A multi-year investigation into 2017 net neutrality rulemaking finds 18 million fake comments were filed with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and half a million fake letters were sent to Congress. more
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT), Government of India, approved permissions today to Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) for conducting trials for use and applications of 5G technology. more
"2021 will be another challenging year for us, but it's also the year that our future development strategy will begin to take shape," said Eric Xu, Huawei's Rotating Chairman. Huawei generated CNY152.2 billion in revenue, a 16.5% decrease year-on-year. The Network Business continued to grow. It wasn't officially announced1, but consumer products other than phones probably increased sales. The fitness tracker, earbuds, and watches are winning strong reviews. more
The new Biden Administration in the USA laid out a $100 billion proposal for broadband investment as part of its $2 trillion+ infrastructure plan. Under the proposal, the plan is to provide national broadband coverage. The Administration will use better competition measures, such as price transparency, the use of public utility infrastructure, and subsidies for low-income households to achieve its goals. more
Efforts have been ongoing in the ICANN community to develop a better understanding of its role in the combat of abuse. This theme has been rising in prominence every year since 2018, and 2021 appears to be the tipping point, in which consensus has built around the idea that more can be accomplished in terms of reducing the impact of rogue actors using the Internet for malicious purposes. more
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