The proposals by the European and Arab telcos that are being considered at the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) conference in Dubai later this year are most certainly facing defeat. This is not because the USA believes that the international telecommunications regulations (ITR) cannot be discussed by the ITU. America has a rather strange set of national regulations in which they have combined internet infrastructure and content -- and as such they claim that this no longer has anything to do with telecommunications. more
A study conducted by researchers at Northeastern University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst involving 650,000 tests indicates U.S. carriers are throttling online video on their mobile networks regardless of whether or not those networks are congested. more
Network neutrality is important in the context of assuring the opportunity to innovate in how we communicate and connect. We can't define it in terms of specific outcomes but rather in terms of what we enable. The Internet is just one example of what we can do when given the opportunity to use software to fashion our own solutions... I thought about this more when I found myself in my hospital room (after knee surgery) unable to open and close the shades by myself. But yet I could control the lights in my house! more
VoIP remains a hot topic in the IP communications world, but it's definitely evolving. The following is my most recent article for a column that I write for TMCnet, and it's a year-end review on VoIP as well as my outlook for how it's changing for 2009. Colleague Alec Saunders posted his response to my article yesterday, and it's a good read. If you're interested in where VoIP is headed, then my article should help keep that dialog moving along within the CircleID community. Here we go... more
The Internet is in for interesting times. Previously, on Renysys' blog I wrote about the engineering issues and the policy issues facing us over the next five years. But there is at least one large issue still lurking. Most of you will not be surprised to learn that almost all of these issues are outgrowths of a single factor: money. The core of the Internet still doesn't have a sustainable business model. more
Aalyria, a new space Internet company, just burst out of stealth mode. It is based on work done on Alphabet's "moonshot" Project Loon and Alphabet transferred almost a decade's worth of technology IP, patents, office space, and other assets to Aalyria in return for an equity stake in the company. Spacetime is Aalyria's intelligent network orchestration technology, and Tightbeam is its advanced atmospheric laser communications technology. more
Earlier this month, Avaya held a new type of customer event in Toronto, called Evolutions. They have been looking for better ways to bring customers together, so aside from their global event, they've put together Evolutions, which has a regional focus. The first one was recently held in Mexico to great success, and my understanding is that Canada was the next trial event, and that's what I attended in downtown Toronto... I'm almost certain I was the only Canadian analyst invited, so this may well be the only place you'll hear about Evolutions. more
After a more than 100 year run, the end is nigh for plain old telephone service (POTS). Through most of recent history POTS was provided by monopolies, which were regulated at both the federal and state level. The new world is much more competitive; we can talk via cell phones, computers, traditional phones hooked to a variety of devices instead of the old phone line, and a plethora of new gadgets like tablets. Voice service no longer has to be vertically integrated. more
Last week, comments were filed with the FCC in response to the Berkman study of international broadband comparisons... Many of the comments were not supportive of the Harvard Berkman study. In an earlier blog posting, we had observed that there appeared to be statistical problems in the Berkman study that would not hold up to peer review. Our comments may have understated the extent of the problems. more
A new report on 5G and geopolitics by Oxford Information Labs details the complex landscape of 5G security. Importantly, it draws out how a variety of proven technical concerns around the quality of Huawei security practices and equipment are drowned out by the US' Twitter diplomacy. Critical international dialogue on genuine cybersecurity concerns relating to 5G and Huawei are being lost in the noise of the US-China trade war. more
Today one of the headlines in Computer Sweden was that there is a dispute between Telia and the regulator PTS in Sweden. PTS requires Telia to stop locking out competing TV-distribution companies for IP-TV in the access network (DSL) that Telia runs. Specifically, they lean towards the fact Telia is dominant provider of the copper, and require Telia to competitors give access to the larger frequency band in the copper that they claim is needed for TV distribution. more
Jeff Heynan at Infonetics reported a double-digit drop in DSL equipment sales, inspiring Dan O'Shea at Telephony to headline "Is DSL Finally Dying?" Both note that DSL sales in Q1 were actually ahead of the same quarter last year. Yet Dan writes "Fiber is the future." more
A colleague sent me an article that had been published earlier this year in MachineDesign magazine that predicts that driverless cars can't be realized until we have a ubiquitous 5G network. When looking for the original article on the web I noticed numerous similar articles like this one in Forbes that have the same opinion. These articles and other similar articles predict that high-bandwidth, low-latency 5G networks are only a few years away. more
Since the dust has settled from a stinging defeat in federal court, the FCC has decided to move on its own to settle the broadband regulation dispute. With a 3-2 vote the commission issued a Notice of Inquiry that would set the stage for more regulatory authority of broadband. It seems ironic that the motivating factor was the court case brought by Comcast in Federal District Court to immobilize the FCC's efforts to sanction the service provider from throttling Bit Torrent, file sharing customers. more
Once we decide that Network Neutrality is a good thing to (re)enshrine in law, then we need to ask how to do that effectively. One way would be to pass a law saying, "Thou shalt not discriminate." That's the current approach. But network operators will say that they must manage their network, and if, in the course of network management, they were to disadvantage some source, destination, application, service or content, they might be accused of violating the law. So any Network Neutrality law must have a Network Management Exception... more
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