In the 1950s and 60s, large numbers of immigrants came to London from the Caribbean and other Commonwealth countries. They had few resources, yet needed somewhere to live. Many fell prey to exploitative landlords. These unscrupulous rentiers packed tenants into formerly swanky parts of town, which then became slums. This process even birthed a new word in British English - "Rachmanism" - to define the archetypal unethical treatment as practised by one notorious landlord. more
Service providers have traditionally organised their operations around different technology domains. The responsible teams have been staffed with specialists looking after routing, network services, security and various other functional areas. Over time, organizations like this have had the tendency to transform into loosely tied silos with limited interaction between the different teams. more
Last week I asked on a post elsewhere, why we, at the MLi Group, chose to consider speakers, panelists, supporters and sponsors at our Global Summit Series (GSS) as "Thought Leaders" and "Trend Setters? Many wrote me directly offering their answers and then it dawned on me that my answer may (or may not) get appreciated by many at the ICANN community. So here is why we do. more
Recently, BII-Global SDN Certified Testing Center (SDNCTC EN | CH) issued the Performance Test White Paper for SDN Controller (hereinafter Whitepaper) at China Future Network and Development Innovation Forum, which truly fills the vacuum in SDN controller performance testing at home. It, by means of elaborate results from the open-source controller tests, provides reliable analysis report to all corners within the industry, which has been highly thought of and widely supported by experts both at home and broad. more
A British perspective on a very American process... As a new member of the the "Tech Elders", I was invited to join yesterday's hearing in Washington, DC on the reclassification of broadband Internet access services. The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has decreed that Internet access should switch from being lightly regulated as an 'information service' (Title I) to a more heavily regulated as 'telecommunications service' (Title II). I'd first like to say that the process and content was a credit to the rule of law in the United States. more
One of the primary purposes of global Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is to introduce a wide range of topics to newcomers and provide them with the opportunity to take back what they have learned in the hopes of establishing an understanding of the Internet Governance philosophy at the community or national level. As a first time participant at the 10th Global Internet Governance Forum (IGF 2015) that took place in Joao Pessoa Brazil, in early November of 2015, I felt the burden of being a representative from a developing country, a place where discussion of important issues is limited to a small group of individuals, often in informal settings, over coffee or in my case, green tea. more
More than a decade ago we predicted that the telecoms industry would be transformed, driven by its own innovations and technological developments. As a result we indicated that in many situations the telecommunications infrastructure would be offered as a service by hardware providers. We also predicted that this would open the way for a better sharing of the infrastructure. more
In a previous article, I discussed how telecoms is facing a growing complexity crisis. To resolve this crisis, a new approach is required. Here I explore how that complexity can be tamed... 'Invariants' are things that are meant to be 'true' and stay true over time. Some invariants are imposed upon us by the universe... Others are imposed by people. As engineers, we aim to establish these abstract 'truths' about the system. more
The telecoms industry is facing a systemic problem of high operational complexity and excessive cost. We take a look at the root causes, and how to tackle them. Every telco in the world wants to both increase the quality of their customer experience, and also save money by lowering opex and deferring capex. A pervasive industry barrier to achieving this is one of complexity, which exists at many levels. more
Reading about the EU Neutrality vote, I'm reminded of the challenge faced by traditional telecommunications regulators in understanding the very concept of the Internet. To put it bluntly zero-rate is a policy framed in terms of Minitel and setting the price based on what phone number is dialed and not at all about the Internet where the value is determined by relationships entirely outside of a network. more
Responding to a recent New York Times article which warned the possibility of Russian submarines possessing the ability to sabotage undersea communication cables, Doug Madory, Director of Internet Analysis at Dyn, calls them exaggerated scenarios. more
Russian submarines and spy are reported to be aggressively operating near vital undersea cables that carry global Internet communications, according to a story in the New York Times. The issue is raising concerns among some American military and intelligence officials regarding the possibility that Russians might be planning to attack those lines in times of tension or conflict. more
Communication service providers around the world are about to embark on an epic journey. A journey which has the potential to be a major game changer for hardware and software vendors alike. The simple concept of decoupling software from hardware, referred to as network functions virtualization (NFV), promises to improve an operator's ability to differentiate themselves from the competition by moving network functions from dedicated appliances to generic commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) servers. more
This year's Independent Show summer conference was held in Boston, a place where the accents are strong and you hear great quotes like... If I had to sum up this year's conference with one phrase, it would have to be: out-of-the-box thinking. The keynote speech was given by Professor Bharat Anand of the Harvard School of Business, whose expertise is in the areas of digital strategy, corporate strategy, and media strategy -- in other words, digital marketing. The title was "Lessons from the Digital Transformation of Media". more
A great deal of discussion is taking place about topics such as the digital economy, sharing economy and networked economy. Obviously these are concepts rather than being well-defined, but they are being used by the various players in the market to argue for or against certain developments. For example, in some of the broadband debates around the world, the digital economy is the key reason why national broadband infrastructure gets developed. more
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