Millions of households in UK will be paying a "broadband tax" in order to fund increase and improvement of broadband access in the country according to the Digital Britain white paper launched yesterday. BBC today reports: "One of the biggest surprises in the Digital Britain report was the news that everyone with a fixed line telephone would pay a broadband tax. At 50p a month the amount is unlikely to break the bank but experts are already questioning what it will buy." more
cores of Twitter users around the world thanked the social networking site, Twitter, today for its decision to postpone a scheduled maintenance which would take the service down for 90 minutes tonight at around 9:45 pm PST. Twitter has become a lifeline for Iranian demonstrators as the microblogging service is providing a vital means of communication amongst protesters as well as the outside world. In response to a large number of users on Twitter pleading the company to reconsider the timing of its scheduled maintenance -- given the sensitive timing in the Iran -- Twitter decided to reschedule the maintenance to a later time. more
In the midst of heavy demonstrations in the street of Iran against current regime and controversial election results, online activist have began organizing online attacks against government websites. Activists are asking supporters to use tools currently being spread via Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking sites to participate in the attack. However as one blogger writes, the attack might in fact back fire in a country like Iran where network infrastructure is relatively centralized... more
A recent report released by Pew Internet & American Life Project reviews the state of music online 10 years after Napster was launched. In the study, Pew Internet also reports that 15% of online adults admitted to downloading or sharing files using peer-to-peer or BitTorrent. "Globally, estimates from file-sharing research firm Big Champagne place the P2P universe at more than 200 million computers with at least one peer-to-peer application installed, and operators of the popular Pirate Bay torrent tracker have identified more than 25 million 'peers' who have used their site alone to exchange files." more
Following rumors last week on the leading candidate for ICANN's new CEO position, an official announcement has been released by ICANN confirming that the board may indeed announce its selection during its meeting in Sydney next week. more
Former New York City Mayor Edward I. Koch announced Thursday he is supporting dotNYC LLC's bid to operate the .NYC web address. City Council Speaker Christine Quinn disclosed during her State of the City speech in February that the City Council and Office of the Mayor will pursue the .NYC top-level domain. The city last month completed a Request for Information about .NYC and is expected to endorse a company to run the .NYC address this summer. more
The total number of mobile internet users are expected to reach 134 million by 2013 as a result of increasing rise in smartphone popularity according to the research firm, eMerketer. Additionally Piper Jaffray, one of few organizations to project the extent of the growth, estimates that combined spending on consumer and business mobile applications will top $13 billion worldwide by 2012, a nearly fivefold increase over 2009," says eMarketer in a report released this week. more
Sources indicate former director of the US Homeland Security Department's National Cybersecurity Center (NCSC), Rod Beckstrom, will be replacing the current ICANN CEO, Paul Twomey, who announced his resignation earlier this year. Milton Mueller in a blog post on the IGP website writes: "This is still unconfirmed by ICANN but comes from well-informed sources. We also hear that David Eisner, the CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service under G.W. Bush and former VP at AOL, was also in the running." Beckstrom recently made headlines for his sudden resignation from his post at NCSC, criticizing the lack of funding from the NSA and its move to try to "rule over" the NCSC. more
Annual global IP traffic will pass two-thirds of a zettabyte in four years according the Cisco's Visual Networking Index report. The economic downturn has only slightly tempered traffic growth and the global IP traffic is expected to quintuple from 2008 to 2013. Cisco predicts IP traffic to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 40%. more
Source from Google have recently confirmed total number of YouTube video streams are above 1.2 billion per day worldwide according to Michael Arrington at TechCrunch. Previously reported numbers by comScore and other third party services appear to have been fairly under-estimated. more
According the the report, a survey of 1,000 consumers found that the majority believe the Internet will become full of pointless domain names (65% of those polled), messy and confusing (57%), too complex to navigate (46%) and out of control (41%). Two-thirds of the 100 UK businesses surveyed are still unaware that liberalization is happening, which is a concern, considering the opportunities and potential risks that it presents." more
In response to Canada's recent decision to keep a hands-off approach to distributed content over the Internet and through mobile devices, Jacob Glick, Google's Canada Policy Counsel has highly commended the decision. In a blog post today, Glick writes: "If you've ever wondered about the power and popularity of user-generated content in Canada, consider this: if all three Canadian television networks began broadcasting Canadian content 24 hours a day, seven days a week, YouTube would still have more Canadian content than those three networks combined." more
According to the latest update from ICANN related to the introduction of new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs), Dr. Dennis Carlton has reiterated that the planned introduction of new gTLDs will not burden trademark owners with additional defensive registrations. Carlton writes: "I conclude that ICANN's proposed framework for introducing new gTLDs is likely to facilitate entry and create new competition to the major gTLDs such as .com, .net, and .org. Like other actions that remove artificial restrictions on entry, the likely effect of ICANN's proposal is to increase output, lower price and increase innovation. This conclusion is based on the fundamental principles that competition promotes consumer welfare and restrictions on entry impede competition." more
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has launched a new site to keep track of 'Terms of Service' for major websites such as Google, Facebook, eBay and others. The new website called TOSBack has been created to help users easily find privacy policies of various websites and to alert them when those policies are changed. "Some changes to terms of service are good for consumers, and some are bad," says EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann. "But Internet users are increasingly trusting websites with everything from their photos to their 'friends lists' to their calendar -- and sometimes even their medical information. TOSBack will help consumers flag changes in the websites they use every day and trust with their personal information." more
The number of global IPTV subscribers will grow from 26.7 million in 2009 to 81 million in 2013, a compound annual growth rate of 32%, according to the latest Research and Markets IPTV Global Forecast Report. Regarding service revenue, the Global IPTV market is $6.7 billion in 2009 and growing to $19.9 billion in 2013, a compound annual growth rate of 31%. By 2013, the report forecasts Europe and North America will generate a larger share of global revenue, due to very low ARPUs (average revenue per user) in China and India, the fastest growing (and ultimately, the biggest markets) in Asia. more
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