After several months of trials, ETECSA announced the availablity of third-generation mobile access to their national intranet and the global Internet in a televised "round table." The prices are quite steep for a typical Cuban and I suspect there would be relatively few subscribers among the 34% of the population that is not yet covered. Furthermore, many users will have to buy new phones to use the service. (There are still 1,084 second-generation mobile base stations in Cuba). more
Cuba's government monopoly ISP ETECSA in October announced special home connectivity rates for some of the poorest towns in rural Cuba. The monthly charge for 30 hours of 512/256 Kbps DSL access in those towns will be 5 CUC. In other areas where home connectivity is available, the minimum monthly charge is 15 CUC for 30 hours of 1,024/256 kbps service and faster, more expensive, plans are available. more
Would you be interested in helping guide the future of the Public Interest Registry (PIR), the non-profit operator of the .ORG, .NGO and .ONG domains? If so, the Internet Society is seeking nominations for three positions on the PIR Board of Directors. The nominations deadline is Monday, February 4, 2019, at 15:00 UTC. There are three positions opening on the PIR Board. Directors will serve a 3-year term that begins mid-year 2019 and expires mid-year 2022. more
Here in the United States, we recently celebrated Thanksgiving and with that, we now enter the last weeks of 2018. I've spent much of this past year involved in ICANN's Expedited Policy Development Process (EPDP) for gTLD Registration Data and I'm happy to say our group has reached a historic milestone. Just last week, the group published its initial report for public comment. more
On November 15, the FCC approved a revision to the plan for Starlink, SpaceX's forthcoming broadband satellite service. The new plan reduces the number of satellites from 4,525 to 4,409 and lowers the altitude of the phase-1 satellites from 1,100 to 550 km. Mark Handley, a professor at University College London, has created videos based on simulations he ran of both the original and revised phase 1 plans. more
Macron has declared the Internet to be under threat. Without stepping back to question and explore the underlying causes of those threats, he uses them as a justification to propose a different approach to, albeit limited, current Internet Governance processes. Here we explore his proposals and some of the issues they generate. He acknowledges that Civil Society and the private sector have been core drivers in the creation of the Internet. He argues that its benefits and existence are endangered by predatory practices. more
Computers have always had clocks. Well maybe not clocks as you might think, but digital computers have always had oscillators, and if you hook the oscillator to a simple counter then you have a clock. The clock is not just there to tell the time, although it can do that, nor is it there just to record the time when data files are created or modified, though it does that too. Knowing the time is important to many functions, and one of those is security. more
Abusive conduct or cybersquatting is the essence of disputes under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), usually by domain name registrants violating their warranties of registration but also (in appreciable numbers) by trademark holders overreaching their statutory rights. The UDRP remedies are asynchronous: there is forfeiture of offending domain names; for abusive use of the process there is reverse domain name hijacking (RDNH), essentially a shaming remedy that substitutes for a monetary penalty. more
Several weeks ago, the White House published a document asserting that "America Will Win the Global Race to 5G." The White House should get over it. This is not about America winning any global race to 5G, but the world working together on fundamentally different, complex, new communication networks and services. There are four important points, however. more
Forty five what? Forty five abandoned top-level domains. On November 7, ICANN received a notice from the Communication Regulatory Authority of the State of Qatar that they are terminating the registration agreement for .DOHA. Two weeks before that, the Zadco company terminated .ZIPPO. In addition to the $180,000 application fee, applicants had to hire consultants, make arrangements with back-end operators, go through the certification process to get their TLD online. more
Over the past few years, the term "open internet" has become popular among politicians in Washington and Europe. It is bandied about in political pronouncements that assert that everyone needs to somehow support the open internet without ever actually defining it. It is sometimes used as a synonym for Net Neutrality. In fact, it is a bogus public relations term that is rather like saying you believe in the Tooth Fairy. more
OneWeb is building a large constellation of low-Earth orbit (LEO) Internet-service satellites and Via Satellite has published the "definitive 2018" interview of OneWeb CEO Greg Wyler. The following are some of the quotes that caught my eye... They are going through the final stages of testing now before the launches begin. The satellites have actually performed better than expected in many ways, especially with their Radio Frequency (RF) performance which is really positive. more
Today, President Macron threw down the gauntlet to President Trump and the US administration on Multistakeholderism. In his welcome address to IGF 2018 Paris a few hours ago, President Macron challenged IGF to become more relevant by reinventing itself in factoring in multilateralism into IGF's non-decision-making body and to move beyond the mere talk-ship lip service it has been for the last 13 years. more
Shortly after the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA)'s recent announcement allowing Verisign to pursue increased .com registry fees, Verisign published a blog post questioning the business practices of registrars and domain name investors. The ICA, on behalf of its registrar and domain name investor members, had previously spoken out against a .com fee increase, as did others in the domain industry. more
As the ITU-T 2018 Plenipotentiary Conference rolls toward a close this week, its most controversial and contentious subject appeared baked into a new treaty instrument resolution that has apparently reached a kind of steady-state. After distilling the many input proposals through ten revisions and a corrigendum, the tasked drafting committee has produced a new resolution with the simple title of "OTTs." more
Hackers behind the massive data breach of the hotel group Marriott International Inc have left clues suggesting ties to the Chinese government intelligence-gathering operation. more
Public Interest Registry (PIR), the nonprofit operator of the .ORG domain has announced that its Board of Directors has unanimously selected Jonathon Nevett as President and Chief Executive Officer, effective December 17, 2018. more
U.K. Parliament today released 250 pages of internal emails between Facebook and other tech companies regarding accessing user data through the social network's system. more
A new study by Microsoft researchers suggests the actual use of high-speed internet across the US is quite different than those of from the FCC. more
It looks like the smartphone party has come to an end. The slow down which began in the 2013/2014 timeframe has shifted to decline phase with fewer smartphones sold in 2017 as compared to the 2016 numbers. more
Millions of email warnings were sent out by Marriot on Friday to warn customers about the massive data breach which has affected close to half a billion guest data. more
The "Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace," announced by French President at the Paris Peace Forum on November 13, has attracted more than 450 signatories. more
While there are now billions of IPv6 addresses that could be active at any given time, there are no precise estimates as to how many or where they are. more
A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. has upheld the federal government’s ban on anti-virus software from the Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab. more
U.S. Departments of Commerce and Homeland Security have released a road map setting out steps to stop the cyber threat to nations internet infrastructure, announced NTIA. more
Over 75 consumer groups in U.S. and Europe have asked the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate Google for unfairly and deceptively manipulating users of mobile phones with its Android operating system by constantly tracking location. A letter sent to the FTC by the Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD), a forum of US and EU consumer organizations, says Google manipulates users into constant location tracking. more
A new study by anti-phishing company PhishLabs reveals 49 percent of all phishing sites in the third quarter of 2018 had Secure Sockets Layer or SSL with HTTPS in their URL. more
The U.S. government is engaged in persuading wireless and internet providers in allied countries to stop using telecommunications equipment from China's Huawei Technologies. more
Japan's cybersecurity minister, Yoshitaka Sakurada, 68, who recently stated he doesn't use a computer, also admitted on Thursday to a parliamentary committee that he's not very familiar with the whole cybersecurity field. more
The FCC has unveiled two proposals as part of its plan to help reduce unwanted phone and text spam however the move is challenged by consumer advocacy groups. more
The 2013 NSA revelations by the American whistleblower Edward Snowden was a stern wake call for French politicians. more
Google will invest 600 million euro (roughly $700 million USD) to construct its first Danish datacenter. The company says the site will be matching its energy use with 100 percent carbon-free energy. more
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) in its recent submission to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has raised a stern objection regarding ICANN's attempt to adhere to the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), stating that the temporary specification had gone "well beyond what the GDPR mandates." more
Space Exploration Technologies Corp. is granted permission from U.S. regulators to deploy over 7,000 satellites. more
The registrant of domain names with decent traffic who fail to renew them are proving quite costly for owners and others. more
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Today, Verisign released the latest issue of the Domain Name Industry Brief, which shows that the third quarter of 2018 closed with approximately 342.4 million domain name registrations across all top-level domains (TLDs), an increase of approximately 2.6 million domain name registrations, or 0.8 percent, compared to the second quarter of 2018. more
Known to be one of the world's largest tech conferences, Web Summit was held in Lisbon from 5th-8th November 2018. This was the third consecutive time that the Startup League was at Web Summit with startups on Radix TLDs. more
The Internet is often described as a network of networks. In reality though, staying connected is often more complicated than that, especially as internet traffic volume increases by more than 40 percent every year. more
ONLINE is one among the few nTLDs that have crossed the 1 million mark, which now makes it the 5th largest nTLD by zone size. more
The Town Hall will provide an opportunity for the community to hear from the .US team on the 2018 developments and for community discussions on how to build and grow the .US domain to meet the demands of the future. more
Verisign announces that קום., the new, Verisign-operated, internationalized domain name (IDN) extension that is uniquely designed for Hebrew language speakers, is now open for the registration of domain names by the general public on a first-come, first-served basis, subject to availability and the applicable registry policies. more
Neustar, Inc. a trusted, neutral provider of real-time information services, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement with Verisign, Inc. to acquire Verisign's Security Services customer contracts. more
Radix, one of the world's largest portfolio registries, today announced that it has made one-time premium name sales of more than $137K since August 2018. These one-time sales were made through domain marketplace SEDO and via top registrar partners. Names that fetched maximum value were across .online, .space and .fun TLDs. more
Verisign, the company granted exclusive rights to issue .com domains, is expected to request a price increase for .com domains when its current 'price cap' agreement with the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) expires on November 30, 2018. Will NTIA impose a price increase on millions of Internet users to further enrich Verisign, "The Most Profitable Company You've Never Heard Of", which is already enjoying huge windfall profits? more
Verisign just released its Q2 2018 DDoS Trends Report, which represents a unique view into the attack trends unfolding online, through observations and insights derived from distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack mitigations enacted on behalf of customers of Verisign DDoS Protection Services. more
As the .brands program evolves, it's truly rewarding to see the space maturing -- as companies' use of their branded domains become more diverse and find clear connections with business strategy and corporate priorities. more
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