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British Telecom has announced its plan to transform the UK broadband landscape from superfast to ultrafast. The company says it plans to deliver much faster broadband for homes and small businesses via a widespread deployment of “G.fast” -- a technology the company will test in two pilot locations starting this Summer. G.fast is aimed to help BT deliver ultrafast speeds of up to 500Mbps to most of the UK within a decade. Deployment will start in 2016–2017, subject to the pilots being successful, BT says. ›››

BBC – The Army is setting up a new unit that will use psychological operations and social media to help fight wars "in the information age". Head of the Army General Sir Nick Carter said the move was about trying to operate "smarter". The 77th Brigade, made up of reservists and regular troops and based in Hermitage, Berkshire, will be formally created in April. It has been inspired by the Chindits who fought in Burma in World War Two. ›››

According to news sources Google's fiber-to-the-home service is expanding to four additional cities: Atlanta; Nashville, Tennessee; Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. Google Fiber currently is available in Kansas City, Austin, Texas and Provo, Utah. At a price tag of $80 per month, the service offers speeds around 10 times greater than that of the average Internet connection. ›››

The Internet Society has released an announcement setting out its views on the development of policy to address the balance between security and privacy. From an Internet perspective and in the context of the growing threat vector from hacking, targeted cyber attacks on networks and individuals, and surveillance, the Internet Society's approach to the development of cyber security policy initiatives is based on the following key considerations. ›››

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... ›››

Elon Musk has announced plans for a space project to provide faster, cheaper Internet access around the globe. The $15 billion plan would use hundreds of satellites placed 750 miles above the Earth, far lower than existing communications satellites. Doing so would speed up the transfer of data and give better coverage to three billion people who do not have it. ›››

A group of researchers from Belgian University of Leuven and US-based Stony Brook University have conducted a one of a kind content-based typosquatting experiment that studies the typosquatting phenomenon "longitudinally", i.e., in time.  ›››

Kieren McCarthy reporting in the Register: "Google has launched its new domain-name management system, providing a clean and simple interface that will put it in direct competition with market leader GoDaddy." ›››

According to various sources, Cuba is launching its first public wireless service in the city of Santiago de Cuba. However, at the reported cost of $4.50 an hour, it will be far too expensive for most Cubans with average salary of $20 a month. Last year, 3.4 percent of homes in Cuba had Internet access -- one of the world's lowest rates, according to international technology authorities. ›››

SC Magazine – A senior government figure says that the UK's power grid is under "minute-by-minute" attacks from computer hackers but information security experts aren't so sure. Conservative MP James Arbuthnot chaired the Defence Select Committee up until last year and said that the National Grid is facing cyberattacks every minute. He plans to visit the National grid next month to discuss the issue. ›››

During the M3AAWG meeting in Brussels earlier this year, Dave Crocker and John Levine were asked to step into an impromptu video studio and talk about how email has changed over the past several decades and whether we are any closer to resolving the spam problem. ›››

Reuters – South Korea's nuclear operator and the energy ministry is keeping emergency teams on stand-by to the end of this year in case of any cyberattacks on nuclear plants as threatened by a hacker... The company and the ministry set up emergency teams on Wednesday after a hacker demanded the shutdown of three reactors by Thursday, threatening, in Twitter messages, "destruction" if not. ›››

CNN – North Korea's Internet was back up Tuesday after a more than nine-hour outage, according to Dyn Research, a company that monitors Internet performance. The disruption came amid an escalating war of words between the United States and North Korea over a massive cyberattack on Sony Pictures... Matthew Prince, president of CloudFlare, a performance and security company, described the disruption as if "all the routes to get to North Korea just disappeared. ›››

In an announcement on Tuesday, ICANN reports that it is investigating a recent intrusion into its systems. The agency believes a "spear phishing" attack was initiated in late November 2014. It involved email messages that were crafted to appear to come from its own domain being sent to members of its staff. ›››

Kieren McCarthy reporting in the Register: "The US government has posted a step-by-step guide to how it authorizes changes to the internet's root zone -- the heart of the world's domain-name system. The 16-page slide deck published by the Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) sheds light on what has been a contentious and largely secret process for the past 15 years." ›››

External Source – Google has partnered with the French space agency, the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales, or CNES, with a goal of reaching higher ground with its Project Loon initiative. Project Loon is essentially a program by Google to bring free Internet to developing countries through low-flying weather balloons that project Wi-Fi signals. The two companies remained relatively quiet about their plans to partner... ›››

Kieren McCarthy reporting in the Register: "Plans to create a new internet governance body have grown increasingly desperate... and confusing. A conference call between the organizers of the 'NetMundial Initiative' and business organization the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) earlier this week saw ICANN's CEO Fadi Chehade pleading with the group to withdraw their rejection of the program and join its 'coordination council'" ›››

Google announced today that its Public DNS team, in collaboration with Akamai, has reached a significant milestone improving the speed of accessing location-based Akamai hosted content. ›››

Google is closing its engineering office in Russia as a result of new law coming into force next year requiring foreign firms to store Russian users' personal data on servers located in Russia. ›››

fTLD Registry Services, LLC has announced an agreement with Symantec Corporation to provide verification services for the ".bank" and ".insurance" generic top-level domains. According to the report, Symantec will be responsible for adding a layer of protection to the new domains by verifying the eligibility of companies requesting domain names, making sure the person requesting the domain name is authorized by the company and ensuring the name requested by the company complies with fTLD's policies. ›››