incommunicado

Close to 3,000 memory cards in HTC Magic phones may be infected with malware after initial assumption by the company, Vodafone, that it was an isolated incident when first discovered by a customer. "It is unclear how the batch of memory cards became infected and an investigation is under way, said a spokesman for Vodafone in Spain. There are no problems with either the HTC Magic phone or its Android OS. The malware only affected phones sold in Spain."

Read full story: Computerworld

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More under: Malware, Security

Egypt has banned international calls via mobile internet connections in a apparent reaction to a drop in international call volumes made through country's landline monopoly Telecom Egypt. "The ban is on Skype on mobile internet, not on fixed, and this is due to the fact it is against the law since it bypasses the legal gateway," said Amr Badawy, the executive president of the National Telecommunication Regulatory Authority (NTRA).

Read full story: Reuters

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More under: Mobile, Policy & Regulation, Telecom

Federal regulators on Tuesday made public the details of their ambitious policy to encourage the spread of high-speed Internet access. But their 376-page proposal, the National Broadband Plan, was met with a chorus of questions, even from the staunchest advocates of its goals. Telecommunications companies praised the intent but worried that new regulations might impede rather than encourage their progress in expanding Internet access.

Read full story: New York Times

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More under: Broadband, Policy & Regulation

There is an old saying that "bad news comes in threes." Domain name service providers have witnessed two unsettling developments in the past few weeks. The third, still winding its way through the U.S. Congress, could have enormous ramifications. Registries and registrars, in particular, need to speak up or resign themselves to the consequences.

French Court Orders Fines for Parking

As previously reported, in mid-February 2010 a French court fined Sedo €95,000 ($130,000) for parking a trademark infringing domain name. SafeNames reportedly was fined $5,000 in this case for being the domain registrar. The court used terms like "fraud," "counterfeiting" and "unfair competition" in its ruling. While some in the industry may dismiss this as a case of "beware the (potentially) high costs of doing domain-related business in France," the judgment could serve as a dangerous legal precedent. Furthermore, it could embolden intellectual property protection advocates seeking any and all means to expand the limits and application of trademark law.

Utah Trying to Expand Internet Regulation

Utah has a documented history of attempting to regulate various Internet-related activities. Most have been struck down in court or repealed in subsequent legislative sessions. Nevertheless, Utah's latest attempt is called the "Utah E-Commerce Integrity Act" (SB26), and includes provisions to restrict phishing, pharming, and spyware, as well as a state-level version of the U.S. Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA). The problem with this legislation, unlike the ACPA, is that it intends to hold liable a registrar, registry, or "other domain name authority" who "knowingly assists" a cybersquatter in a local alleged cybersquatting case. Who knows how broadly the courts will interpret this "knowingly" language. Despite advocacy efforts to convince the bill's sponsor, State Senator Stephen H. Urquhart, to exempt domain name service providers in a manner consistent with federal safe harbor provisions, the Senator refused and no such amendments were made. Consequently, the bill now awaits Governor Gary R. Herbert's likely signature. Not only will registrars and registries have to inappropriately defend themselves on cybersquatting charges in Utah courts, but the Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA, a trademark protection association of almost two dozen global brand holders that promoted Sen. Urquhart's efforts) intends to lobby Congress for a national provision along the same lines.

FTC Rulemaking Could Be a Game Changer

Potentially the most far reaching initiative is yet to come. The U.S. Congress is currently working on a reauthorization bill for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) which could expand the agency's rulemaking authority. An already approved House bill would give the FTC streamlined rulemaking authority over aspects of the business community, thereby allowing the Commission to pursue policy initiatives with little of the typical bureaucratic red tape. For the domain industry, this could mean, for example, that the FTC may decide to issue a new rule requiring US-based registry operators to enforce strict WHOIS accuracy requirements. A registries' failure to comply with these new rules could lead to fines or civil action. Of course, any cost of enforcing additional WHOIS requirements would be passed through to registrars, and then, of course, on to registrants—ultimately impacting over 115 million registrations worldwide. It's easy to imagine how such enforcement and monitoring costs could dramatically reshape the domain name industry as we know it.

Fortunately, the die has not been cast. The Senate is considering its own version of the reauthorization language, and this ultimately will have to be reconciled with the House bill. Although many businesses are weighing in against streamlined rulemaking, other powerful interests are lobbying for the authority. Trademark protection advocates most likely are among those proponents. While final legislation probably will be part of a broader package, thereby raising its likelihood of passage, this also increases the prospect of buried clauses and complex legal linkages that demand careful scrutiny and comment.

Now is the time for the registrars and registries to contact Congress and/or get involved with coalitions to work on a coordinated push for an ICANN-related exemption from broadened FTC authority. If domain name service providers just sit around and wait to see what happens, they'll only have themselves to blame for consequences.

Written by Statton Hammock, Sr. Director, Law & Policy

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More under: Cybersquatting, Domain Names, Domain Registries, Law, Policy & Regulation, Top-Level Domains, Whois

I have come to acceptance that the community proposal for Expressions of Interest in new gTLDs (EoI) was removed from consideration during ICANN's March 12th Board Meeting in Nairobi. It should have passed, but it got lobbied into oblivion by some in attendance at the Nairobi meeting. They deserve their say, those who oppose it, but quite frequently the arguments used fail logic once one reflects upon them, or contrast them against the facts.

The EoI did not pass, but the silver lining in it all is that it proved that the community could raise up a proposal to the board using the Bottom-Up approach.

I am grateful. I have a well honed ability to find acceptance in things that I don't agree with. I hate the outcome but I would do it all again.

The many stakeholders and applicants who had been trusting dates and time lines that they had been provided in all meetings between the Paris meeting in June 2008 and the Sydney meeting in 2009, and had been growing businesses and reaching out to communities, carrying the message of ICANN and the promise of new TLDs.

These companies, individuals, volunteers, consultants, they all planned their lives, budgets, marketing, and jobs around the time lines that had been coming from ICANN. Sure, delays and adjustments meant the embarrassment of repeatedly revising and communicating new time lines to their clients, shareholders, boards of directors, communities.

And then came the Seoul ICANN meeting. Rather than get the schedule in place and stop the sliding dates and the embarrassment that they were causing ICANN and the interested stakeholders, ICANN instead opted to clam up about dates and time lines.

This not only completely undermined their own credibility; it froze financial support for new TLD applicants of every shape and size and eliminated institutional confidence in ICANN and its new TLD program.

And in that choice to coward away from communicating dates, ICANN really created the EoI. All I did is channel the contempt, cynicism and abject frustrations of the various community members who had timelines pulled out from under them in the Seoul meeting, working to turn that passion into productive effort. So you could say ICANN was the catalyst.

I am grateful that I had the influence, respect and trust from stakeholders to have pulled so many parties together to collaborate and support an initiative which tested ICANN's 'Bottom-up Process'. And I had the privilege of presenting the concept of an expressions of interest process as a way to keep the new TLD program on pace while removing pressure from the staff and board for evaporating the foundations out from under supporters and believers in the new TLD program at the Seoul meeting.

I cannot take full credit for the Expressions of Interest, it came from a number of people in the community, from a number of various stakeholders who did not want to see the momentum die from ICANNs opting at redacting and retracting communication of dates and timelines.

I just had tenacity to be a spokesperson for a large group of stakeholders in the Seoul meeting but could not at all take all of the credit for the EoI. It was humbling to read through the transcript from the public meeting as I notice the many, many supporters who I consider to be leaders in the community who stepped up after I did in support of the proposal at the public meeting.

It was really just a sensible approach of decoupling the application process from the review, assignment and delegation stages of the new TLD program that we had seen originate from the GAC. I explained that the catalyst was the outright elimination of discussion of dates in Seoul, and that I'd chosen to do something positive and constructive rather than give in to the growing cynicism in the applicant pool.

After gathering many in diverse parts of the community and stakeholder groups to provide a draft document to ICANN that contained a number of concepts and submitting it in the comment period that followed the Seoul board resolution, ICANN staff drafted a proposal for an Expression of Interest process and put it out to the community to comment on.

The community rose up to support or not support the overall concept. Not everyone liked every aspect of it, some loved it outright, and many (especially brands who are fighting with their last breath to oppose the new TLDs but ironically are preparing applications and will apply once they can) sought to quash it.

Ultimately it came down to transparency being the root of its demise. Many brands did not want the double-standard of their position on new TLDs exposed, and fears by governments that a public morality issue would creep in with .f-bomb holding up the whole process, because all strings would be released.

It took reverse psychology and intense lobbying in Nairobi for those who wanted EoI their way or no-way, and those people got what they wanted.

I disagree with the board's decision, but the board was requested to pass or fail the EoI and they failed it opting to allegedly continue the momentum of the new TLD program. Using the Paris meeting announcements that stemmed from the board votes to open up the new TLD program in 2008, things had been progressing along until 'overarching issues' got thrown in front of the process, injecting delays.

I am getting a lot of feedback from within the community that there is deep disappointment and outrage falling out of the board decisions. And I am seeing a lot of people still bracing for the tsunami effect from the EoI being voted into oblivion in the tragic events of 3-12 (The ICANN Board decided to withdraw the Expressions of Interest among other decisions).

We'll see some startups pare down their staff and marketing budgets, other participants will close down entirely or completely move their focus. Make no mistake, jobs were lost as a result of the board's decision to fail the EoI.

I am already witnessing gloating by those interested in delaying the introduction of new TLDs who won a small victory for the status quo amidst the zebras and hippos in Narobi. These are not people who ponder the consequences or outcomes, they only relish victories.

Candidly, I was shocked the EoI did not pass. It essentially was just a time honored technique used in intelligent project management to reduce the ambiguity and theoretical concerns and operate in tandem with the solutions to some of the thorny issues that were open. It had every opportunity to thrive and provide benefit to ICANN, to the applicants, to the communities, investors, to the process itself.

There was an opportunity to make the new TLD program real again after Seoul. In Seoul the new TLD program was converted into vaporous concept with hazy, slippery deadlines that have anyone that follows them met with laughter and doubt when presenting timeline estimates.

Apparently the community had really gotten quite a bit of momentum with the Expressions of Interest concept. It looked like it had some promise. Many elements of the concept were attractive and productive.

But the takeaway and probably the most important thing that happened was that the community rose to present an idea, that the board heard that message, and that it even became something to be voted upon at all.

While I watch many of the investors and communities that were in strong support of the new TLD program wither or hibernate in a process that kills jobs during a weak global economy as a result of the March 12th board votes, I remain optimistic that the new TLD program will continue and we'll see those who had the intestinal fortitude and capable war chests ride out the storm of perpetual delay.

And I would do it all over.

I have not lost my faith in the community. I hope the community has not lost faith in ICANN, and I would encourage the community not to become stoic when their efforts appear for naught like we were shown.

My heart goes out to those who have families to feed that were impacted by the decisions the board made.

Written by Jothan Frakes, Chief Operations Officer at Minds + Machines

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More under: ICANN, Top-Level Domains

Last week at the ICANN meeting in Nairobi, a plan was announced by ICANN staff to create a "CERT" for DNS. That's a Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) for the global Domain Name System (DNS). There are all kinds of CERTs in the world today, both inside and outside the Internet industry. There isn't one for DNS, and that's basically my fault, and so I have been following the developments in Nairobi this week very closely.

As the original founder of DNS-OARC (that's the Operations, Analysis, and Research Center for DNS, on the web at WWW.DNS-OARC.NET / see related CircleID interview), I've fielded a lot of questions from folks asking me what I think about all this. The original DNS-OARC plan (written in 2002 or so) called for a 24x7 monitoring and response and coordination function very similar to what's now being proposed by ICANN. Everybody I talked to in 2002 understood the need for this, based on the excellent track record of US-CERT and JP-CERT and even the IT-ISAC. We knew it had to be done by the DNS industry itself, rather than added to the remit of some existing government-supported CERT or ISAC.

Somewhere along the way we got distracted. Or to more accurately place the blame, I got distracted. DNS-OARC was a huge undertaking, and one that I significantly underestimated.  Internet Systems Consortium (ISC) started DNS-OARC using NSF research money, and I think NSF was happy with our results—but producing those results used up a lot of ISC's management bandwidth. DNS-OARC has received unprecedented participation and support from members of the DNS industry, who had never done anything quite like this—but the cycle time for bringing in new members was six to 18 months rather than the six to 18 weeks I planned on. Much has been achieved, but building the data and resources needed to develop OARC's necessary "critical mass" was something that ISC had to rely on partners and members for, and those folks have busy lives and long to-do lists even without this kind of stuff.

Eight years on, ISC has successfully spun DNS-OARC out as a separate non-profit corporation with its own board of directors. DNS-OARC has some fifty (50) members, comprising an unprecedented community of the key technical people from major DNS TLD registries, root operators, vendors and service providers. It has created a set of tools, experience and infrastructure vital for monitoring and analyzing the health of the DNS, and has accumulated an unparalleled set of DNS data captured from the live Internet.

But all this took years longer than I expected, and may have been a more dramatic time investment than DNS-OARC's elected trustees were expecting.

So the reason there is nothing like a "DNS CERT" in the world today is that I, as the founder of DNS-OARC, said that DNS-OARC would handle it, and then I didn't follow through. I plead ignorance and ambition—we got a lot of other great stuff done, including the existence and independence of DNS-OARC itself, so I'm not exactly weeping with guilt. But, when Rod Beckstrom (President of ICANN) got up at the microphone in Nairobi and said, the world needs something like this, and if nobody else is going to build it, he would, I thought, he's absolutely right, it's still 2002 in here, and it's time we—the DNS industry—got this done. We need a 24x7 monitoring and response and coordination function, with full time analysts looking at real time DNS events and participating in a global mesh of DNS NOCs.

Beckstrom's vision that some $4.5M is needed to get DNS-CERT properly off the ground is to be commended, and is one familiar to us at DNS-OARC, where our reach has regularly exceeded our grasp. But we've also learned some lessons over the years, not least that the DNS community guards its autonomy fiercely, and will react adversely to anything that smacks to them of unilaterally imposed central control. Something like a DNS-CERT can only be done at the grass roots level, which is both a constraint and a boon. This explains some of what we've been hearing in the hallways at how, despite its merits, there is some disquiet about the way the DNS-CERT proposal was presented. It is exactly why we went for an autonomous, neutral, membership governance model for DNS-OARC. We have to work cooperatively to ensure that DNS remains 100% available to serve as the Internet's map.

I call upon the world's governments, and upon the gTLD and ccTLD operators, and upon ICANN itself as well as other Internet governance organizations including CENTR, to support DNS-OARC Inc. in finishing what I started; and I call upon DNS-OARC Inc.'s trustees and members to use ICANN's excellent "gap analysis" for the "DNS-CERT" as the starting point to make this happen.

So, the next phone call all of those folks get may be from me, making this appeal personally. Let's make 2010 the year we (all) finally get this done.

Written by Paul Vixie, President, Internet Systems Consortium, Inc.

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More under: DNS, ICANN, Internet Governance, Security

Until today's announcement by Canon, no large brand had broken the "thin brand line" by revealing their plan to apply for their own new top-level domain. Now with Canon's announcement, other major companies have been challenged to either announce their TLD plans or else state that they plan to forgo the chance to brand themselves at the top level of the domain name space.

Until now, in public, large brands have marched in lock step in opposition to new top-level domains, ostensibly because of the high cost of defending and enforcing their marks in multiple new namespaces. The worst-kept secret in the industry, however, is that brands have been making private plans, and brand-service registrars have been prepping their clients for new gTLDs in anticipation of healthy fees for application submission services.

Canon, at least, has decided that the marketing benefits of their own top-level domain outweigh the costs. In the U.S., legal departments, which are good at identifying risk—though not necessarily expert at quantifying it—, exercise a much stronger presence in the corporate boardroom than they do in European and Asian companies.

Could it be that the highly defensive stance of U.S. intellectual property interests, hardened by the file-sharing wars, is not shared by the rest of the world's brands?

In Japan, Canon has decided to cast its lot with the money-makers instead of the money-hoarders. I predict we will see more brands opt for engagement with the Internet by visibly branding themselves with their own new gTLD, but that the the last ones to do so will come from the United States.

Written by Antony Van Couvering, CEO of Minds + Machines

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More under: Domain Names, ICANN, Top-Level Domains

With $72 billion invested in mobile broadband it would be hard to argue that this market is suffering from a lack of investment.

More than half of this is taking place in Asia. Over the last two years close to 300 mobile operators in 120 countries have launched mobile broadband networks (using the 3G HSPA technology) and some 70 of these are already planning the next upgrade of their networks using the LTE technology—the first $5 billion of investment money has been committed to that technology.

The two countries that are ahead of the pack in this are—where else but in Scandinavia?—Sweden and Norway.

Japan and Korea are also moving in this direction but they are using different technologies.

Within that same short time period over 200 million subscribers have embraced mobile broadband and, as reported previously, this has caught many mobile operators unprepared. They were still peddling their mobile portals while the apps available on smart phones almost instantly overtook a market that the mobile operators had been trying to build up for ten years.

Because of the success of this market mobile operators are now scrambling to keep up with an enormous demand for mobile broadband access. They are eager to get at least their share of the access market and competition is driving them to charge ever less for simple broadband access. As a result of this the margins available for mobile operators are being squeezed more and more.

Does that mean that mobile operators will be relegated to becoming pipe suppliers? Not necessarily. They have a number of very powerful tools that they can use. They know mobile customers better than anybody else and they are able to provide a very reliable and secure service—so much so that banks are using their networks to deliver financial services. This has built a powerful trust relationship between operators and some very key service providers. The mobile operators are the only ones who have a very secure identity management service on their networks that can be used by these financial institutions, and (if the mobile operators permit) by others also.

Furthermore, mobile networks are excellent for mobility applications such as GIS, location-based navigation, etc. Again, the mobile operators are currently the only ones who have access to this user information.

It then comes down to whether the mobile operators will be able this time around to also develop business plans that are going to make it attractive for other providers to utilise the network. This will require open networks, wholesale, MVNOs, etc. The question is will they indeed this time around do change their business models, or will they again wait for others to eat their lunch.

Mobile operators and their supporters all talk about a range of essential services such healthcare, education, public safety and so on. Lessons learned from the past will hopefully encourage operators to open up their networks to these public sectors. It is not too difficult to predict that, if this does not happen and consumers want to make more use of mobile broadband infrastructure for such services, regulation will be used to force the operators to open up to these new social and economic opportunities.

What might change their attitude this time is the fact that they now nearly all operate in saturated markets. There are very few new users that can be connected—certainly in the developed markets. So today there is certainly more urgency among the mobile operators to change their business models to cater for the new opportunities. Also, it will only be a matter of time before OTT providers such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, eBay, Skype and others will have more sophisticated applications in competition with the mobile operators.

One of the main problems still being experienced by operators at the moment is a lack of sophisticated middleware that would allow them to deliver these new applications more efficiently and effectively. For instance, the many BSS/OSS systems within the mobile operators' organisations are making it very difficult to deliver real-time and on-demand services.

Who will win?

The judges are still out on this. There are the smart device operators like Apple, with their proprietary applications; companies like Google and Microsoft, with devices based on Operating System (OS) innovations; and the mobile operators, who recently formed an alliance to also develop their own apps stores. This broad level of competition will drive innovation and those who are able to deliver the best customer experience are going to be in the lead here.

Over the next few years the mobile market will pass the $1 trillion revenue mark. The stakes are high, the rewards are great, and the future looks very bright indeed. So may the best one win.

Written by Paul Budde, Managing Director of Paul Budde Communication

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More under: Access Providers, Broadband, Mobile, Telecom

On March 15, 1985, symbolics.com was the first .com registered in what had yet to be labeled the "world wide web." While it took nearly a decade for the domain—and the consumer Internet—to take off, today there are over 80 million .com websites and the domain is a prominent feature of one of our culture's most iconic developments.

While its economic and social impact is undisputed, for the first time the economic impact of .com has been quantified in a new study that found that the domain serves as a platform for $400 billion in annual economic activity.

Read full story: External Source

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More under: Domain Names, Top-Level Domains

This article on cloud appeared in the Economist.com on April 12th 2001 titled "The Beast of Complexities" Stuart Feldman of IBM, mentions these examples. Quote 'Picture yourself as the product manager of a new hand-held computer whose design team has just sent him the electronic blueprint for the device. You go to your personalized web portal and order the components, book manufacturing capacity and arrange for distribution. With the click of a mouse, you create an instant supply chain that, once the job is done, will dissolve again." unquote.

Another example quote "Imagine, says the man from IBM that you are running on empty and want to know the cheapest open petrol station within a mile. You speak into your cellphone, and seconds later you get the answer on the display. This sounds simple, but it requires a combination of a multitude of electronic services, including a voice-recognition and natural-language service to figure out what you want, a location service to find the open petrol stations near you and a comparison-shopping service to pick the cheapest one." unquote.

In the same article he also lamented that so far, nobody has found a silver bullet to kill the Beast of Complexity.

The silver bullet for cloud computing 'could' be a new operating system, a cluster of applications offered like the MS Office suites supporting cloud computing, a TLN (Top Level Network) instead of TLD, to enable users to register, may it be individual, business or service 'plus' all those registered in TLDs, the new set up has to be 'all inclusive'. The magnitude is staggering, this would bring into play number analogy which could provide space for all and yet not run out of numbers, at the same time allow multiple users to have the same namespace.

Once that is in place, comes the question of common standards which Vint Cerf was talking about, it would not be easy to make people come together to set and accept common standards, it is only services like say email, which compel every body to adopt to common standards.

Stuart Feldman also mentions that Cloud computing is something big that is happening in the industry—as big as the rise of the PC in the 1980s, unquote this is even true today after a decade.

Written by Virendra Gandhi

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More under: Cloud Computing

The FCC recently published some tools to let consumers measure some internet characteristics.

The context is the FCC's "National Broadband Plan". I guess the FCC wants to gather data about the kind of internet users receive today so that the National Broadband Plan, whatever it may turn out to be, actually improves on the status quo.

The motivation is nice but the FCC's methodology is technically weak.

There are several goals to which the National Broadband Plan ought to aspire:

• That consumers have a subjective sense that their use of the internet is fast and without unacceptable delays. I picked a subjective standard here for reasons to be discussed later in this note.
• That reliability of consumer access is high and that the time for providers to detect, diagnose, and repair problems is low (and not expensive to providers.) It seems that these matters of reliability are routinely ignored, yet they are of paramount concern, particularly as the internet becomes more and more a part our health and safety systems; it will be a sorry day if someone picks up their internet based VoIP phone to call 911 and the link (or some necessary ancillary service, such as DNS) is down for an extended repair.
• That consumers' have a real foundation to believe that their use of the net is private and not being used either to generate marketing data about them.

This note will address only the first of these goals.

The first thing that is wrong is that the FCC's tools are not well focused with regard to exactly what parts of the internet they are measuring. And second, the measurements that are taken are too vague to be of more than anecdotal value.

I've drawn up a simple diagram to illustrate.

This is a simplified diagram, it is intended to focus on that part of the net of concern to the National Broadband Plan. In particular it looks at the part of the net that represents the "internet" product sold by today's Internet Service Providers (ISPs). The arrows in this drawing are interfaces where these clouds join, they are not communications lines.

This diagram shows things as connected clouds because that more accurately represents the things that make up the way that user's connect to the internet. The basic parts of the diagram are these:

• User Network: Many users today, and probably nearly all users in the future, will have networks, often wireless, within their homes. The quality and traffic of those networks will have a substantial effect on consumer's perceptions of net quality (and ISPs will bear increasing non-reimbursed costs when their customers have troubles in his part of the net.) However, except with regard to the maintenance issue, the user's home network cloud ought to be considered neither as part of either the National Broadband Plan or of the FCC's Consumer Broadband Test.
• User Access Link and User's ISP Cloud: I have shown the provider ISP's path as two parts. First is the part that runs from the router of "modem" at the consumers home or office to the provider's first IP router. The second part is the provider's internal "backhaul", i.e. the IP network inside the provider. It is important to consider these two parts separately.
  • User Access Link: This is the part of that today's ISPs advertise to consumers; this is the part about which the claims of umpteen megabits/second download are made. In general the User Access Link is the IP "hop" between the user's home modem or router and the first IP router within the ISP. Often this "link" is composed of several communications technologies. For example what appears to the consumer to be an Asymmetrical DSL link (ADSL) might be composed in full or in part of ATM or other non-IP switching technologies that exhibit many of the congestive and impairment behaviors found in IP networks. There may be MPLS paths that simply do not show up in "traceroute". Moreover, the User Access Link may have an IP Maximum Transmission Unit size that is less than the 1500 bytes that is presumed by a considerable amount of end-user network applications and protocol stacks; that difference can have a substantial negative impact on some forms of network traffic (video) and almost none on others (VoIP). The User Access Link should not be considered as a private path that is not shared with other users' traffic.
  • User's ISP Cloud: This is that portion of the ISP that carries traffic to and from customers User Access Links. Some resources that are critical to user perception of network speed may be located here, most particularly domain name system (DNS) resolvers, web caches, email servers, and the like. For small ISPs the "ISP Cloud" might be as simple as a small Ethernet at the provider's facility; for larger ISPs the "ISP Cloud" might be an national or international network of substantial size and power.
• Internet: This is the vast landscape of the internet except for those content providers with which the ISP entered into special traffic exchange arrangements.
• Private Peering to large content providers: This is often where the largest of the large network traffic sources and sinks are to be found. This is the land of Google/YouTube and of content distribution networks. Content to/from users might be able to flow via the internet to those places but in order to provide faster access and to give the large content providers better control over the quality of their products both ISPs and large providers often prefer to create these kinds of special peering relationships. This is a game for big players; small ISPs and smaller content providers are often not able to play at these tables.

  (Please note that I am using the word "peering" in a way that may be different from its use in settlement-free peering between ISPs.)

The portions of interest to the FCC's National Broadband Plan are the part between "A" and "B" and between "A" and "C". These are shown inside the yellow box.

So what does all of this have to do with the National Broadband Plan in general and the FCC's Consumer Broadband test in particular?

First of all, we must recognize that a user's perception of network quality and speed is a complex function that involves the entire path between the user and the remote service.

Many protocol stacks and applications can degrade badly even if one seemingly small aspect changes. For example, the speed with which domain name system (DNS) queries are answered is often a major, or even the dominant, component of how quickly web pages are fetched and rendered. Indeed with the increasing number of "analytics" web bugs and links to "share" content the number of DNS queries involved in a page fetch can be quite surprising.

And DNS responsivity is a matter that involves more than mere bandwidth.

Other applications degrade for other reasons. VoIP is often made incomprehensible by even small amounts of packet reordering, something that can occur quite often as a result of certain wireless technologies, load-balanced pathways, or routing behavior. And applications that use large packets, applications such as high quality video, can be badly affected by fragmentation of packets due to link MTU values of less than about 1500 bytes.

There are many characteristics that play a part. Among these are Quality of Service (QoS) handling, queuing disciplines and drop policies in routers, and congestion handling in protocol stacks. Moreover there are an increasing number of protocol "accelerators" that try to obtain better user performance by abandoning the protocol etiquette algorithms that are built into well implemented TCP stacks. Those accelerators may create local benefits to their users, as long as the number of such users is small, but they damage the experience of other users.

The National Broadband Plan tends to be involved only with the "User Access Link" part of my drawing.

Yet the FCC's tests tend to lump all the parts of the drawing into one number thus masking the contribution of each part.

A national broadband build-out that does not deal with the entire system will be a waste of time and money. A user whose ISP has a magnificent broadband User Access Link but inadequate backhaul and connectivity to the internet at large is a user who is going to be dissatisfied.

Thus for the FCC's tests to be meaningful they need to do two things:

• They need to isolate and separately report the attributes of the User Network, the User Access Link, the User's ISP Cloud, and the degree of private peering to large content providers.

• The attributes that are measured need to be much deeper than "bandwidth" and "latency" and "jitter". I would recommend that the FCC look at the way that tools like PathChar and Pchar construct a detailed hop-by-hop analysis of network paths. Those tools require many thousands of packets over many tens of minutes for each hop in a path. In my own work I began (but never completed) a project to design a protocol to enable the fast and inexpensive measure of paths characteristics for proposed packet flows. That work is visible on the net at http://www.cavebear.com/archive/fpcp/fpcp-sept-19-2000.html.

Written by Karl Auerbach, Chief Technical Officer at InterWorking Labs

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More under: Access Providers, Broadband, Policy & Regulation, Telecom

For those closely following the ICANN Meeting in Nairobi this week, the EOI (Expression of Interest) model seemed like a foregone conclusion. In fact, ICANN had scheduled a webinar on March 18th to explain the process despite the complaints of the community and large-scale disagreement amongst proponents of the EOI.

As proposed by ICANN staff, the EOI model would have required that all entities wishing to apply for a new generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) during the first round to submit basic information including the requested string and a fee of $55,000.

However, much to the collective surprise of the ICANN community, the ICANN Board voted against the proposal, citing many of the reasons noted in the comments submitted by MarkMonitor.

Members of the ICANN Board stated that confusion regarding the purpose of the model existed, and that moving forward with such a model would have added another two to three months to the process. Furthermore, that resources were being taken away from solving the "underlying problems” was also cited as a reason to vote against the model.

While the EOI was expected to provide exact information about the number of applicants expected in the first round, one of the Board Members stated that having this "extraordinary precision" was not necessary due to the fact that the "Internet is a—as a system, exhibits enormous dynamic ranges in load in every aspect."

Interestingly enough, another Board Members stated that at the beginning of the week that he had planned to vote in favor of the EOI, but by the end of the week it had become apparent that a mandatory EOI did not have the consensus of the community.

With this result, brand rights owners and others will be able to keep their plans confidential until they are ready to apply and prepare for the application or objection process, without additional worries or early investment in the gTLD process.

So, it is without any sorrow or regret, I say RIP EOI.

Written by Elisa Cooper, Director of Product Marketing at MarkMonitor

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Following in the footsteps of Lethic, Waledac and Mariposa, yet another botnet has been taken offline. Not completely, though, it was only a partial disconnect. The Zeus botnet, also known as Zbot, is a trojan password stealer that captures passwords and sends them to the attacker. From ITWorld:

March 10, 2010, 04:10 PM — IDG News Service —

The Zeus Tracker administrator, who asked not to be named, said that at first he thought that there had been some type of technical error in the Zeus code. On further investigation, he discovered that Troyak had been taken offline, which in turn knocked the networks hosting the botnet servers off the Internet.

Unlike the Waledac takedown, which was removed with a court order, and Mariposa takedown which was done by police authorities, or even the Lethic takedown done by Neustar which operates the .us ccTLD, this time around it was done by eastern European network providers. Thus, this takedown more closely resembles the 2008 McColo takedown which resulted in spam levels plummeting by 40% (our figures) to 70% (others' figures). According to The Register, the network providers Ukraine-based Ihome and Russia-based Oversun Mercury severed their ties to the ISPs in question (Troyak and Group 3). Unfortunately, it also meant that the legitimate customers on those ISPs also had their ties to the Internet disconnected. I bet their customer support desks had their phones ringing off the hooks. I can just imagine the conversation.

Customer: Why can't I connect to the Internet? I'm paying for your service!
Response: Well, sir, no one can. We've been disconnected.
Customer: What? Why?
Response: For engaging in cybercrime.
Customer: Oh. Well, that explains it.

Cisco issued a statement that this takedown "depeered" the botnet. What this means is that the drones that perform the actual password stealing, fast-fluxing, etc, can no longer (temporarily) make contact with command center. The drones are aimless, kind of wandering around with no direction, no purpose and no motivation (a lot like the entire population of Canada would have been had we lost the gold medal game in hockey two weeks ago at the Olympics). It's kind of like if a military unit were out in the jungle taking orders from central command, and central command is knocked out, the unit will stand around forever doing nothing. The unit is still there, but they are not going to do anything until they get their orders. Since their orders will never come, they will never do anything. It's classic bureaucracy in action.

It's important to note three points:

1. The entire C&C center wasn't taken down, only about a third of it
2. It will be rebuilt eventually. The orphaned drones no doubt had some of their instruction locations hard coded, or maybe specified in a config. The botnet operators will send out new malware with new instruction set locations, and users will install the software. These systems will become re-infected and point to other locations upon which to download updates and the whole cycle will start all over again. It will take time, true, but Zeus will be back.
3. Those who took down this botnet wish to remain anonymous. Whatever their reason is, they aren't claiming responsibility.

It remains to be seen what the impact of this take down will be on the malware world.

Written by Terry Zink, Program Manager

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More under: Cybercrime, Malware, Security, Spam

For those participants that have been working rearranged hours and participating remotely in connection with ICANN's Nairobi meeting, here is a chance to sleep in. While ICANN Board tea leaf reading is not an exact science, there is a great deal of predictability to ICANN's actions so here are my big three predictions for tomorrow.

#1 – ICANN Board Approves the EOI

Kristina Rosette, GNSO Counsel representative highlighted how ICANN had already announced a webinar on March 18th to talk about the new gTLD process and the EOI/Pre-Reservation process. Now while ICANN staff promptly edited this page after Kristina's statement in the public forum, to include the following disclaimer (SUBJECT TO BOARD DECISION), this appears to be preordained based on the additional facts listed below.

#2 – Launch of the Global Communication Plan

The Seoul meeting was interesting as it was one of the first ICANN meetings were there was an absence of artificial timelines in connection with the launch of the new gTLD process. This meeting was also largely absent of timelines, expect for those attendees that managed to sit in on the new gTLD staff briefing given by Kurt Pritz to the Registrar Stakeholder Group. While the first slides in Kurt's presentation where almost identical to the other public presentations, the last two saw the re-emergence of project times. These slides were entitled "Applicant Guidebook V4—Shortest Path" and "Expression of Interest (EOI)—Shortest Path." While this power point presentation given to the registrars is not currently available on the ICANN website, I am sure that within minutes of this article being published it will timely appear on the ICANN website much like the update to the March 18th webinar.

#3 – Approval of the ICM Application

Today on the ICANN correspondence website there appears a private and confidential communication submitted by ICM to ICANN to settle its dispute. Given that this "private and confidential" communication is now public is a reasonable indicator that ICANN will accept the offer. The only suspense is if ICANN approves the last 2007 registry contract posted for public comment, or if it re-opens contractual negotiations. Given that re-opening negotiations would subject ICANN to intense lobbying from certain stakeholder groups that feel rather passionately about this subject and how this might distract staff from its Brussels' deliverables, it is a safe bet to predict that ICANN just bites the bullet and executes the 2007 agreement.

Shock and Awe

Regardless of what actions the ICANN Board takes tomorrow it will be criticized. Therefore, given the new style leadership demonstrated by ICANN President and CEO, Rod Beckstrom and Chairman Peter Dengate Thrush, I predict ICANN goes 'all in." While it may take several years to determine whether the ICANN Board made the right decision in Nairobi, this much is guaranteed for sure, ICANN's actions represent a global economic stimulus plan for attorneys of epic portions that will be paying dividends for year to come. Let the fun begin, and let the chips fall where they may.

Written by Michael D. Palage, Adjunct Fellow at The Progress & Freedom Foundation

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More under: Domain Names, Domain Registries, ICANN, Internet Governance, Top-Level Domains

The internet is among a record 237 individuals and organizations nominated for this year's Nobel Peace Prize. The number of nominations surpasses last year's record of 205 nominations. The internet's nomination has been championed by the Italian version of Wired magazine for helping advance "dialogue, debate and consensus".

Read full story: BBC

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The venerated BBC World Service recently commissioned a polled involving more than 27,000 people across 26 countries. The findings are unremarkable: some 87% of Internet users believe that Internet access should be a basic right, and more than 70% of non-users believe that they should have access to it.

Depending on your country, the Internet has been available for ten years or more, and for individuals—at least in the developed world—it has since become ingrained in psyches as an essential commodity, akin to access to fixed-line telephony, electricity and potable water. For a growing number, the Internet is essential for work, for a greater number it is the first port of call for problem solving and information (Wiki and online Yellow pages come to mind) or getting things done (banking, finding out timetables for travel, etc). Most governments, too, now take the Internet as a key component of infrastructure, crucial to a nation's future socio-economic potential.

What governments may do with the Internet is another matter. A decade's experience and use of the service has enabled a growing number of governments to manhandle the potential dangers of hacking, fraud and privacy as a means to tighten the screws on their own control of access, and of their nationals' use of it. This is rightly opposed by the users themselves, over half of whom surveyed for the BBC believing that no government should be empowered to regulate the Internet.

In Europe, the 'three strikes rule' threatens to become more fashionable, following measures first proposed in France: there, the Création et Internet Bill failed in 2009 when France's Conseil Constitutionnel ruled that it leaned too much to 'guilty until proven innocent' and that it threatened major sanctions (Internet disconnection and a national blacklist on access) without judicial oversight. Nevertheless, the government shoehorned the Bill a second time, which this month came before the National Assembly for debate.

The Bill proposes that the scheme be administered by a newly formed group called HADOPI. ISPs notified about alleged file-sharing would be required to send an e-mail to the customer involved, a registered letter at the second alleged offence and, for a third offence, terminate access for up to a year. A database managed by HADOPI could presumably prevent blocked users from switching ISPs.

Italy looks like adopting a similar approach. Having in 2009 sued the Swedish The Pirate Bay site and attempted to force ISPs to block access to its content, the more recent charging of Google executives with criminal charges resulting from YouTube content denotes a government leaning towards authoritarianism regarding the Internet. The Italian three-strikes proposal would be complemented by a requirement that all blogs register with the government.

In the UK, meanwhile, the government is pushing through its controversial Digital Economy Bill, which proposes empowering regulators to disconnect or slow down Internet connections of persistent illegal file-sharers. Amendments to the Bill passed this month at the report stage at the House of Lords before its third and final reading in the House of Commons, could in theory force sites such as YouTube which host copyright-infringing material to be blocked or forced offline. The UK's three-strikes rule is similar in its essentials to those of France and the UK, with disconnection following two warnings.

At the European Union level, the European Parliament was initially critical of the three-strikes schemes, largely due to the absence of judicial review. However, this month the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) was put forward for debate between the US, the EC, Japan, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Canada and Mexico. Aimed at preventing online counterfeiting, it threatens to punish ISPs for content delivered.

Polls show the sincerity of popular regard for a free Internet, and suggest that to tackle piracy other solutions than blocking ISPs and throwing citizens offline should be considered. Until they are considered, citizens should, as always, be vigilant about what their governments are legislating, lest they find themselves with a thoroughly policed Internet far removed from what they now know it to be.

Written by Paul Budde, Managing Director of Paul Budde Communication

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More under: Access Providers, Censorship, Internet Governance, Policy & Regulation, Privacy

Today is the morning of the most revered Thursday in the ICANN meetings calendar—The public forum. It is tradition personified. It is the day when the show and the showcasing really begin. It is the stage and the choreography of the open microphone that can help influence ICANN decisions one way or another and make the supposed bottom up model appear at its best. Often, it serves to inform the board of issues they may have overlooked, other times it is a pre-planned, pre-arranged and choreographed in advance by proponents aiming to influence the board like a popularity contest. This special day precedes the Friday when the ICANN board makes its decisions, in public, adopting resolutions on many vital issues.

ICANN Nairobi carries serious expectations by the community of the ICANN Board to stand up and be counted. On the card are the .XXX fiasco, The Expression of Interest, which I and others have called the expression of "Special" Interest as well as on the New gTLDs implementation which is still littered with many unresolved overarching concerns, and not forgetting the Review mechanisms to oversee ICANN performance per the Affirmation of commitments, which may end up being loaded up with ICANN loyalists.

However, this Thursday and this Friday are unlike any of the previous years. They represent crossroads in ICANN's path that will determine its credibility that will shape its role and influence for years to come under the Beckstrom / Dungate Thrush leaderships. The resolutions ICANN do adopt this Friday or if it chooses to defer decisions on some instead of addressing them squarely will either boost ICANN's credibility or damage them irreparably.

By Friday 12pm Nairobi time we all should know if the ICANN board and its leadership possess the wisdom and far sightedness of a Solomon or a Joe Blog. Whether they are up to the task, challenge and responsibility bestowed on them by the Affirmation of commitments to rule over the entire global internet will also be known. By noon we will know if they have exhibited the needed leadership, diplomatic, and executive skills and the sincerity to show they can rule over the global internet in a fair, equitable and ubiquitous manner to all its stakeholders from Akron to Afghanistan, from DC to Damascus, from Beijing to Bangalore, delivering on its Affirmation of Commitments (AOC) mandate of ensuring accountability, transparency and the interests of all global Internet users as well as promoting competition, consumer trust and consumer choice.

Most important and most compelling of all other issues in Nairobi is .XXX . No matter how the board acts ICANN's credibility will be impacted. If the board instructs staff to execute the 2007 registry contract with ICM, ICANN indirectly admits it was wrong and creates a precedent that its board decisions will be questioned endlessly and can be reversed by an Independent Review panels in the future. If the board chooses not to instruct staff to execute the 2007 contract, it raises serious concerns over the seriousness of the AOC and the review mechanisms over ICANN and the New gTLDs. The board may defer some decisions to a later date citing some excuse in order to gauge a better result and prospect.

But this raises new questions I don't hear much in the ICANN corridors:

A – Does or doesn't ICANN consider itself as a "Global Public Service Provider" ?
B – Isn't ICANN a" Global Monopoly Public Service Provider?
C – As per the AOC, what if ICANN is seen to have failed based on the AOC review panelists?
D – What happens next?

In a competitive market if I am a customer of AT&T and they fail me I switch to sprint or Verizon, it is also called consumer choice. But where is the choice in the ICANN role and what happens if ICANN does fails. Does the community issue statements and press releases calling on ICANN once again to improve it like we have the last ten years. This is hardly choice or competition. ICANN needs to remember the difference between the internet world dealing with it because it respects it and sees it providing a great service as a global monopoly Versus being the only game in town ( the world actually). If ICANN was a service provider in a competitive market, I wonder how many would continue using the ICANN service based on its current levels of "Constituents Satisfaction" if another one can serve them better, faster, and cheaper. Are Google or Microsoft listening, or should ITU the only one aiming at this role?

Other bloggers / friends who are dissatisfied with ICANN wrote and what I add.

Jonathan Zuck: "But when the Chairman backed away from that stance earlier this week in Nairobi, it became clear that we should have held our breath a little bit longer".

I say to Jonathan: Stop holding your breath, no human can keep their breath that long, how long have the IDN communities been waiting for IDN gTLDs. ICANN's rational show a clear monopolistic style of management that knows there is nowhere for you to go and get the service you seek of ICANN anywhere else. Welcome to ICANN style of competition and choice.

Andrew Mack: "A Little Flexibility from ICANN and We Might Just Get IDNs… for Everyone"

I say to Andrew: The little flexibility you hope for in ICANN is like the short distance that appears between stars when you look up to the night sky. In reality these stars are light years apart. And so is ICANN on IDNs for everyone, I can speak on this matter as an expert on IDNs who has served on the ICANN President Advisory Committee on IDNs since its inception in 2005.

I will post my verdict after Friday 12pm Nairobi Time.

Written by Khaled Fattal, Chairman and CEO

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More under: Domain Names, ICANN, Internet Governance, Top-Level Domains

Or at least majority of 895 technology stakeholders' and critics' that were recently surveyed by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project and Elon University's Imagining the Internet Center. Some of the quantitative results from the expert group include the following:

Google won't make us stupid: 76% of these experts agreed with the statement, "By 2020, people's use of the Internet has enhanced human intelligence; as people are allowed unprecedented access to more information they become smarter and make better choices. Nicholas Carr was wrong: Google does not make us stupid."

Reading, writing, and the rendering of knowledge will be improved: 65% agreed with the statement "by 2020 it will be clear that the Internet has enhanced and improved reading, writing and the rendering of knowledge." Still, 32% of the respondents expressed concerns that by 2020 "it will be clear that the Internet has diminished and endangered reading, writing and the rendering of knowledge."

Innovation will continue to catch us by surprise: 80% of the experts agreed that the "hot gadgets and applications that will capture the imaginations of users in 2020 will often come 'out of the blue.'" Some of the best answers are in Part 3 of this report. Respondents hope information will flow relatively freely online, though they expect there will be flashpoints over control of the Internet. Concerns over control of the Internet were expressed in answers to a question about the end?to?end principle. 61% responded that the Internet will remain as its founders envisioned, however many who agreed with the statement that "most disagreements over the way information flows online will be resolved in favor of a minimum number of restrictions" also noted that their response was a "hope" and not necessarily their true expectation. 33% chose to agree with the statement that "the Internet will mostly become a technology where intermediary institutions that control the architecture and ...content will be successful in gaining the right to manage information and the method by which people access it."

Anonymous online activity will be challenged, though a modest majority still think it will possible in 2020: There more of a split verdict among the expert respondents about the fate on online anonymity. Some 55% agreed that Internet users will still be able to communicate anonymously, while 41% agreed that by 2020 "anonymous online activity is sharply curtailed."

Related Links:
The Future of the Internet IV (Webpage / PDF)
Doc Searls sharing his my full responses to all the questions

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What's going to happen this week on .XXX? Nairobi is the first public board meeting since the independent review panel's nonbinding declaration in February that ICANN acted against its own rules in refusing to go ahead with .XXX. Reports that ICANN is going to 'do something' about .XXX have gone around the world via BBC news, and even surfaced on the radio in rural Ireland. The ICM team are out in force here in Nairobi, and there is endless speculation about what will happen at the Board's meeting on Friday.

ICM has no interest in being fobbed off with an invitation to join the new gTLD application process. That process is horribly delayed, of still uncertain timing and outcome, and would expose ICM to immediate competition from other porn-related TLDs. ICM has assiduously played by the rules and understandably does not wish to go to the back of the queue.

This could go one of two ways. First and most likely, the Board will fulfill its legal obligation to consider the panel's decision by having, and being seen to have at its public meeting on Friday, a discussion of the ruling. Then, perhaps regretfully, it will punt on any action by adopting some sort of delaying mechanism. One way to buy time and maybe even some credibility would be for the Board to put the 2007 registry contract with ICM out for another round of public comment. ICM says it will take legal action if there's any delay, though this might be hard to justify if it's 'just one more' round of public comment.

The second possibility is that the Board simply directs staff to execute the 2007 registry contract with ICM. This could and should happen. The US administration has changed and is no longer as beholden to the religious right. The remaining opposition within the GAC is likely quite isolated and far more concerned about new gTLDs in general. .XXX has been a thorn in the Board's side for several years, undermining ICANN's credibility and costing both parties around $6 million dollars. It can't go on. In arguments for 'not now': it would be a dramatic step that repudiates ICANN's past actions. The 2007 contract may no longer be fit for purpose. No one wants to be the host city or the CEO to open up the floodgates to yet more porn on the Internet.

Like any long running disagreement, the facts and sequence of events are in dispute. A posting by CEO Rod Beckstrom on the ICANN blog included an incomplete timeline and didn't commit to implementing anything more than the narrowest legal interpretation of the panel's findings. Many commenters attacked this, saying ICANN should just get on and do the right thing. This week in Nairobi CEO Rod Beckstrom has distanced himself from the blog posting, saying it was written by ICANN's General Counsel John Jeffrey. While that's not the most courageous stance I've ever seen, I hope it signals a move toward decisive action on .XXX.

Why is .XXX so difficult to sort out? The .XXX application triggered the perfect storm of conflict that got right to the heart of ICANN's mission and its point of deepest vulnerability. The average quango bumbles along for decades and never faces the precise set of people, motivation and cause with the potential to tear it apart. ICANN does so about every five years.

The .XXX affair exposed ICANN's core vulnerability, and gave flesh to all the conspiracy theories about the US government 'controlling the root'. The independent review panel's account sets out in black and white the invincible pressure on ICANN caused by a right wing religious lobby group's letter writing campaign to the US Department of Commerce. The panel drew strongly on Paul Twomey's statement that in the summer of 2005 the DoC said it would not put .XXX into the root. The version of events now in the public domain has not been publicly contested by the DoC.

The DoC's threat to unilaterally keep .XXX out of the root meant that ICANN, having gone through its whole consultative process and come to a decision well within the limits of its powers, would have publicly and finally been stripped of every last rag of its authority and raison d'etre. If this had been made public, ICANN would have been finished. At that point in the global Internet governance debate, the proof that the US government felt free to interfere in ICANN's work and exercise ultimate control over the Internet root would have fatally weakened the case for multi-stakeholder governance.

Not surprisingly, ICANN's leadership decided that is own failure to honour its commitment to ICM was the lesser of two evils. For the second time in eighteen months, ICANN faced down an existential threat and limped away, badly damaged. A legitimate question we can all ask ourselves is 'was it worth it'?

From the relative comfort of a lawyer's briefing room, it's easy to condemn ICANN's then leadership for not following through on the .XXX contract. ICANN's leaders faced the appalling dilemma of 'bombing the village in order to save it'. All ICM wants to do is run a registry and make some money. They played by the rules and didn't want to be drawn in to a world of international realpolitik. But there's no denying that's the world this dispute lives in. The legalistic nature of the dispute means ICM and most critics focus on ICANN's abrogation of its own procedures. This is important, but narrows the view too much to appreciate the big picture.

Who is the most at fault? Political appointees at DoC allowed religious extremists and bully boy tactics to drive policy on the stewardship of a global resource. They let momentary, parochial domestic impulses over-ride America's larger interest in a free and global Internet.

Stuart Lawley of ICM was absolutely right when he told me a couple of days ago that this issue is about much more than just a smutty little porn thing. It's a test of ICANN's accountability. The independent review panel is the jewel in the crown of ICANN's accountability mechanisms. Its declaration demands a substantive response, not just a discussion of the issues.

But .XXX is about more than ICANN's accountability, too. On a day in Nairobi that included a closed session on the role of the Government Advisory Committee and ICANN's institutional evolution, the transparency and accountability of individual governments should be in the spotlight, too.

Written by Maria Farrell, Independent Consultant

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The National Broadband Plan that the FCC will present on 17 March will set the USA on a completely different telecoms path. This plan will hopefully show Congress that it is worthwhile making the legislative changes that will deliver the social and economic benefits of a national broadband infrastructure.

Groundwork for a new direction in telecoms

Shortly before Barack Obama won the election in 2008 I started to work with what became the Obama Transition Team on some of the US telecoms policies. Obama and his small team of technological experts were aware of the developments in Australia—particularly in relation to the need for trans-sector policy on broadband infrastructure.

Together with a team of national (US) and international experts we prepared half a dozen 'BigThink' strategy reports for the Obama Team in the White House.

We also established a good relationship with the FCC (Blair Levin's team) and NTIA (Larry Strickling).

ALL parties publicly agreed to a trans-sector approach and many of our suggestions are clearly reflected in the stimulus package (open networks) of the FCC national purpose strategy. And our suggestions also appear in the upcoming National Broadband Plan—in the trans-sector approach to the public safety sector and the proposed mobile broadband infrastructure for this sector.

Visionary plan now needs legislative action

However, if we're talking about 'national purpose' a transformation of the telecoms industry is crucial, and the FCC has been specifically forbidden by Congress to address this topic.

The National Broadband Plan will most certainly highlight the benefits attached to a 'national purpose' policy but it is up to the Congress to make it happen. The plan will provide a new, visionary direction for telecoms in America but unfortunately in its current state it is a toothless tiger. It will be up to Congress to take action through legislation—without that it will be impossible to implement the plan in any timely fashion.

As matters stand at the moment the plan is the best the FCC can do. They should be applauded for the work they have done so far—they have laid the foundation for a totally new telecoms direction in the USA.

All of these trans-sector/national purpose policy proposals require very significant changes to the way the telecoms industry works and if—as has been stipulated by Congress—this can't and therefore will not be addressed in the Plan.

Affordable access to broadband infrastructure

Another key to telco transformation is the creation of a level of 'affordability' both for the end-users and for the sectors that could use the infrastructure, you won't get this without tough legislation.

To just get very fast broadband to American homes in isolation from this trans-sector approach is fairly useless. While you might get such a service to all homes the reality is that without a utilities-based trans-sector approach towards the underlying broadband infrastructure it will be impossible to make that an affordable service. We only have to look at the charges that currently apply to such (fiber-based) broadband services to realize that probably only about 25% of Americans can afford this.

While not defined as such in the USA, broadband is simply infrastructure. (Access to that infrastructure is now declared a national right in several European countries.) A problem in the US legislation is that the previous Administration gave broadband the unusual classification of 'an information service' and not an access service.

National purpose good for the nation and for lowering the consumer bill

If the trans-sector approach is applied other sectors (healthcare, education, energy, public safety) can be directed by the government to start using this network—thus paying their share towards the cost of the broadband infrastructure—for the delivery of their services, e.g., the monitoring of aged people from their homes to reduce the need for hospitalization.

This has to be a government-driven approach as the social and economic trans-sector benefits fall outside the balance sheets of the telco providers. These benefits need to be carefully monetized and used as input by the government in developing government policies in these areas. The OECD has indicated that the savings made by using the broadband network for healthcare, education and transport alone could pay for the deployment of a national broadband network.

Unfortunately the economic benefits are very hard to calculate. But was it possible to predict the benefits of the electricity network when it was built? The naysayers in those days said that it was outrageous to pay for infrastructure that would simple replace candles.

Structural changes to the industry are needed

In order for those sectors to be able to deliver these services the broadband infrastructure needs to be made available to them on a utilities basis. This can't be done within the vertically-integrated structure of the telecoms industry. An open network policy is required, and that is clearly not on the table in the United States—at least not for 90% of the infrastructure that will be involved in its National Broadband Plan.

So, yes, even without legislative changes the new broadband plan might indeed deliver broadband to most people in the USA—but at what cost to the average American citizen? For the moment at least, the incumbents can't believe their luck at the honey pot the government is placing in front of them. They are in a prime position to deliver these networks and they will not be required to do this at an affordable price. The government will pay the going rack rate which will include a very fat premium to the carriers on top of costs.

This situation cries out for structural changes to the industry, but it doesn't look as though change will take place in the foreseeable future.

The end result is that access to broadband will remain significantly more expensive to Americans than to people in countries that opt for an open network and utility approach towards basic infrastructure.

Regional and Rural America will be second rated

Another result will be that regional and rural users will get a second-rate service (lower speed). There is no way that those premium prices charged by the incumbent telcos can be afforded to build an equivalent broadband network in regional America. This is a very dangerous development as it will undermine the delivery of the trans-sector services to those communities. Healthcare, energy and public safety services require Qos, security, reliability, privacy protection, etc. A second-rate network will certainly compromise some of that and might even render it unacceptable for the usage of such service.

As mentioned above, the incumbents are jumping up and down with joy and—in relation to voluntary cooperation to give some spectrum back—the broadcasters are arrogantly saying 'over my dead body'. But in reality, and based on decades of anti-competitive behavior, who among these players will voluntarily give up their monopolistic rents as requested by what is, in that respect, a rather powerless FCC.

The ball is now in the court of Congress

Congress should take a very hard look at itself and answer some these questions before propping up an outmoded telecommunications structure. This money can only be spent once and at present it appears that without structural changes to the industry the new National Broadband Plan will not provide the right foundation for those national interest investments. It would be impossible to successfully implement these policies without simultaneously addressing the structural issues in the industry.

We have top-class people involved in the development of the National Broadband Plan—the ones mentioned above, as well as the excellent team of extremely hardworking people that Blair Levin has built up.

So that's not the issue. The issue is the failure of the American political system.

For the first time in its history a different approach is being taken towards telecoms in America—we now accept such notions as open networks, network neutrality and trans-sector/national. Let us hope that Congress now takes the baton from the FCC and supplies the legislative follow-up that is required to implement this very important first step.

The plan, as it will be presented on 17 March, has gone as far as the FCC can take it. It is now up to the legislators to be visionary—to make sure that the National Broadband Plan is followed up with legislation that will enable the telecoms industry to deliver the enormous social and economic national benefits highlighted in the plan.

Written by Paul Budde, Managing Director of Paul Budde Communication

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More under: Broadband, Policy & Regulation, Telecom