A Verizon partner is reported to have exposed millions of Verizon customer accounts due to a misconfigured cloud-based file. more
"Net neutrality" is implicitly framed as a debate over how to deliver an equitable ration of quality to each broadband user and application. This is the wrong debate to have, since it is both technically impossible and economically unfair. We should instead be discussing how to create a transparent market for quality that is both achievable and fair. In this paper I propose an alternative approach that (potentially) meets the needs of both consumer advocates and free market proponents. more
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) today announced that it will strengthened its commitment to net neutrality. more
Time to brush the dust off your Computer II notebooks. Are voicemail, electronic fax, and call forwarding enhanced services or telecom services? Today's case: FTC v. American eVoice, Ltd... The FTC brought an action against Defendants claiming that they were engaged in cramming, adding unwanted voicemail, electronic fax, and call forwarding services to consumers bills to the tune of $70 million. more
The Best Practice Forum (BPF) on IPv6 at the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) explored what economic and commercial incentives drive providers, companies and organizations to deploy IPv6 on their networks and for their services. The BPF collected case studies, held open discussions online and at the 2016 IGF meeting, and produced a comprehensive output report. This article gives a high-level overview. more
The question is not uncommon these days for someone who has been the principal historian on the ITU over the past 40 years. The short answer is that the institution should do just fine. Indeed, the appearance of bizarre phenomena like Trump, enhance the value and trustworthiness of a stable, globally inclusive intergovernmental venue dealing with matters that by their nature require worldwide cooperation and is buttressed by one of the most highly regarded Secretary-Generals in its history. more
The International Telecommunication Union recently began a well-deserved celebration of one of the real success stories in international cooperation -- the 110th anniversary of the Radio Regulations as a treaty instrument. An ITU publication describes the historical highlights. Global cooperation among governments in managing radio spectrum via the Radio Regulations has been generally regarded as essential from the outset in the early years of the 20th Century and remains so today. more
The foundational idea behind "net neutrality" is one of fairness by constraining ISP power over network mechanisms. The theory is this: if there is "non-discriminatory" local traffic management, then you have "fair" global outcomes to both users and application providers. There are thousands of pages of academic books making this assumption, and it is the basis of recent EU telecoms law. more
In the ongoing war for mobile messaging dominance and "what will replace SMS", Facebook has decided to annoy a serious part of their user base and force all mobile users to move to Facebook's separate Messenger app. In a short period of time, you will be forced to install the Messenger app if you want to send messages to Facebook friends while using your iOS or Android mobile phone. more
Global IP traffic for fixed and mobile connections is expected to reach an annual run rate of 1.6 zettabytes -- more than one and a half trillion gigabytes per year by 2018, according to the Cisco's Visual Networking Index. more
T-Mobile filed a petition today making it clear that the FCC's commercial reasonableness standard is a failure. Anyone following net neutrality knows that the FCC is proposing to authorize discrimination and pay-for-priority deals known as fast lanes. The FCC is claiming we need not worry, however, because the FCC can make sure that entrepreneurs and users face only "commercially reasonable" discrimination. more
You can't open a newspaper today, listen to the radio, or watch TV without hearing about the enormous explosion in the use of telecommunications technology - be it fixed or mobile broadband, the internet, social media, smartphones, tablets, wearables, IoT, cloud computing, the list is endless... Yet, at the same time, many telcos and ISPs are struggling to maintain their profitability. This defies economic logic. more
People working on net neutrality wish for a "third way" — a clever compromise giving us both network neutrality and no blowback from AT&T;, Verizon, Comcast and others. That dream is delusional because the carriers will oppose network neutrality in any real form; they want paid fast lanes. They have expressed particular opposition to "Title II" of the Communications Act — something telecom lawyers mention the same way normal people might reference the First or Second Amendments. Title II is the one essential law to ban paid fast lanes. more
It's been an interesting couple of months in the ongoing tensions between Internet carriage and content service providers, particularly in the United States. The previous confident assertion was that the network neutrality regulatory measures in that country had capably addressed these tensions. While the demands of the content industry continue to escalate as the Internet rapidly expands into video content streaming models, we are seeing a certain level of reluctance from the carriage providers to continually accommodate these expanding demands... more
Given its engineering background, many positive contributions can be made by the engineering community in the broader ICT world to assist in addressing some of the broader internet issues, often addressed within the more limited telecoms environment.. Of course some of this is already happening; however much more work would be needed to strengthen the technical foundations of the internet. Just as an example, the type of issues that could be addressed by a broader ICT engineering foundation could include... more