US House Subcommittee to Hold Hearing for ICANN’s New TLD Rollout

Kevin Murphy reporting in DomainIncite: "The House Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition and the Internet will hold an 'ICANN Generic Top-Level Domains (gTLD) Oversight Hearing' on Wednesday May 4 at 10am local time. The hearing has been called at the direction of the committee's chairman, Rep. Bob Goodlatte." more

.COM Contract Amendment Coming Soon for Public Comment

Last Thursday, during VeriSign's Q3 2019 quarterly earnings call, CEO Jim Bidzos offered statements that seemed to be carefully calibrated to satisfy Wall Street's curiosity about protracted negotiations with ICANN on a Third Amendment to the .com Registry Agreement while also appearing to distance the company from the soon-to-be forthcoming product of that year-long effort. more

How to Move Telecoms Forward in the USA

In the last few weeks courts in the USA have carried on business as usual. They continue to provide the two major telcos in the USA, Verizon and AT&T, with extraordinary protection -- basically retaining the outdated regulatory system in the USA that identifies the duopoly between the telcos and the cablecos as the best way forward for the development of telecoms competition in this country. This is rather different from the position taken by the new Obama Administration, which has indicated that it will break with past regulations... more

DOTZON Study: Digital City Brands 2021

DOTZON presents the fifth edition of the Digital City Brands study. After introducing the study in early 2017, DOTZON expanded further and enhanced the data to display how cities successfully use their Digital City Brands. The Digital City Brand is the digital dimension of the City Brand and mirrors the "Digitalness" of a city. However, the Digital City Brand is much more than a mere extension of the City Brand. more

Facebook’s Internet.org Delivers Free Internet to Colombia

Facebook's Internet.org has launched a free Internet application in Colombia as part of a drive to bring developing markets online. Colombia is the first nation in Latin America and the fourth in the world to receive the new Internet.org service, in partnership with local mobile phone provider Tigo, but the aim is to push the app globally. The mobile app, aimed at low income and rural users, offers more than a dozen tools via the Android operating system... more

Creating, Protecting and Defending Brand Equity - Part 3

In the final of my three-part post series about how to protect your trademark against misuse, I will focus on proactive searching and policing and the benefits these can provide to brand owners. ... Proactive searching and policing of your brand is a prudent step in making sure your name is protectable. This is an advisable first step in naming a product or service. more

The Impact of Satellite Broadband

Recently I've had several people ask me about the expected impact of low-orbit satellite broadband. While significant competition from satellites is probably a number of years away, there are several major initiatives like StarLink (Elon Musk), Project Kuiper (Amazon), and OneWeb that have announced plans to launch swarms of satellites to provide broadband. more

Vodafone Plans to Create the First 4G Network on the Moon, Appoints Nokia as Technology Partner

Vodafone is working on a project to create the first 4G network on the Moon to support a mission by PTScientists in 2019. Nokia is chosen as the company's technology partner, according to a press release issued today. more

Travelogue Broadband Experiences

Throughout this year I have once again travelled extensively through USA, Europe, Asia and Latin America. Naturally, being in this industry I watch closely the various developments in broadband, mobile and WiFi. When you are travelling obtaining access is never far from one's mind. This also provides good opportunities to compare what is available, where, what the quality is, and so on. Looking back over many years there is no doubt that, no matter where you travel, there has been incredible progress. more

First Two-Day School on Internet Governance in Afghanistan

On Wednesday April 26, 2017, Afghanistan had its first two-day long school on Internet Governance. The event was organized by a home grown civil society by the name of National IT Professionals Association of Afghanistan (NITPAA). Afghanistan School on Internet Governance (AfSIG) is a new initiative by a group of volunteers at NITPAA, who worked tirelessly for months to put up an event that comprised of speakers from multiple organizations and multiple stakeholders across the country. more

Holding Trump Accountable Under Public International Law

Trump and his enablers are well known to disrespect if not disdain legal systems, including public international law. He has effectively abrogated every treaty instrument relating to international communications at the whim of a tweet. His behavior has dishonoured the USA in a way that will take years to remedy. Trump's actions to ban access to Android Operating System updates on Chinese products have significantly harmed cybersecurity worldwide. more

First Insights from the GAC Early Warnings on New Top-Level Domains

Today, the national governments that constitute ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) for the first time publicly voiced their concerns over specific new Top-Level Domain (TLD) applications in the form of Early Warnings. More than 240 individual GAC Early Warnings were issued in relation to 200 new TLD applications which account for 162 unique strings. By far the most prolific government to issue GAC Early Warnings was the Australian government with 129. more

U.S. Internet Speed Growth Too Slow, Will Take Over 100 Years to Catch Up With Japan

According to a recent study by Communications Workers of America's (CWA's), United States has not made significant improvement in the speeds at which residents connect to the Internet. U.S. continues to fall far behind other countries. "...between 2007 and 2008, the median download speed increased by only four-tenths of a megabit per second (from 1.9 mbps to 2.3 mbps), and the median upload speed barely changed (from 371 to 435 kbps). At this rate, it will take the United States more than 100 years to catch up with current Internet speeds in Japan." more

Google Credits USB-Based Security Keys for Successfully Protecting Its 85000 Employees from Phishing

According to multiple sources, Google this week reported that since early 2017, it has not had any of its 85,000 plus employees phished on their work accounts. more

Gordon E. Moore, Co-Founder of Intel and Father of Moore’s Law, Passes Away at 94

Gordon E. Moore, the co-founder and former chairman of Intel Corporation, passed away on Friday at his home in Hawaii. He was 94. Moore was widely known for his 1965 prediction, which became known as Moore's Law. more