In my opinion, The Internet Society can and should be the most important advocate for a better Internet. It hasn't been during the seven years I've been active. With US$30 million in annual subsidy from ICANN's delegation of .org registrations, we have far more resources than any other independent organization. 

Instead, ISOC policies have been so uninspiring membership has fallen from 110,000 to the 40,000's. The Internet in this period has more than doubled in size and ISOC has been spending US$millions each year on membership development, communication, etc. (The 110,000 figure is from the ISOC home page early in the year. It probably was inflated, which would be an even bigger problem.)

Sullivan is a respected technologist with experience at the IETF & in ICANN issues. I've had some back and forth over the years; he's well informed on those topics. I'm sure he believes "The Internet is for everyone," the old slogan of the Internet Society.

Former CEO Kathy Brown said ISOC must be, "Global, Independent, Democratic, Open, & Transparent." and a "Bottom-up multistakeholder organization." Kathy is extremely capable and a friend, but couldn't find a way to deliver on her promises. We need strong, independent chapters. On policy, we need concrete proposals that will make a difference and inspire people to join. Here are some ways.

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In a retrospective look, George Ford of the Phoenix Center finds, "no economic payoff from the 15 Mbps speed difference." He's comparing 10 Mbps versus 25 Mbps broadband speeds in 2013-2015 in the U.S. Better broadband is great, but economic claims range from well-paid gibberish to essentially unproven. (My gut is there is an effect, but it's too small to prove. Those "1.3% of GDP" type figures are absolutely unsupportable and embarrassing when quoted.)

Anyone with common sense can see this is on target. Few websites run over a megabit or three. 10 megabits is enough for 2 HD videos, plenty of surfing/homework, and five music channels. Higher speeds are great for pirating music, playing games, watching 3-5 HD TV (or sharp 4K TV,) and folks like Jennie, who does video professionally. But Jennie's business wouldn't suffer greatly if occasionally her uploads run overnight. 

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Yandex 230Yandex, Russia's search engine, was hours from being completely shutdown by order of the Moscow Court. They had no choice but to block alleged piracy sites. The suit was filed by Gazprom Media, controlled by Gazprom, which is controlled by the Russian state, which is controlled by Vladimir Putin. 

Google and Facebook would almost certainly be vulnerable if the decision is upheld. So could any site that disregards Russian law, which certainly would find much of the Western press criminally liable for "libelous" reporting about Russia. In a case heard in a Russian court, I doubt  The New York Times would have much hope, especially after the American President's attacks on the press. 

Ironically, the best reason for Russia to shut down Google is to protect Yandex and Vkontakte. Economists speak of "infant industries." Tencent, Alibaba, and perhaps Baidu have been able to compete with Google and Facebook. None of the European are within half a trillion of the scale of the U.S. giants. Only those protected - the Chinese - have cracked the top ten. 

Even Vladimir Putin's massive popularity would suffer if he blocked Google and Facebook.  He has to lay the groundwork for legitimacy.

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NYU Wireless funders 230Some of the very best ideas in telecom go nowhere because it's so hard to get funding. A world-renowned researcher struggled recently although his ideas were endorsed by some of the best in the business. (I think that's solved.) The U.S. is paying a very heavy price for letting Bell Labs go and not requiring the remaining companies to invest in research. 

Fortunately, many of the top Professors have found corporate funding for their research. Gerhard Fettweis is Vodafone Professor at the University of Dresden. NYU Wireless, probably the world's leading 5G center, has 16 funders in the picture at left. Nokia sponsors their Brooklyn 5G conference, the best of the year.

Some China fearing Congressmen want to knock Huawei off that list because they are Chinese. Huawei now spends more on R & D then the next three telecom suppliers combined. They are the world leaders in several areas of telecom technology, so they bring expertise as well as technology. Huawei provides support to almost every major academic research center. I visited many, and the Huawei support has made a difference.

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India mobile phones Economic Times IDCApple sales in India are down 30% this year. ET has a good write-up. India now has the second largest smartphone market in the world. They don't want all the profits and jobs going to Chinese and Koreans. India is using 20% tariffs to encourage, "Make in India." The first factories are mostly simple assembly, but India has a plan to rapidly increase local content as well. Samsung has just opened a $107M plant.

The emerging Indian phone market was devastated the last few years by lower-priced Chinese companies. Three of the top five mobile brands in 2015, but aggressive Chinese competitors and a quick shift to 4G  knocked them out of the running.  Apple has been demanding huge giveaways from the Indian government before starting manufacturing. "We're Apple. India needs us." India refused, and Xiaomi & Vivo have been grabbing the market. Apple probably still makes the best phones in the world, but half a dozen others are so close the functional differences are trivial.

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Vint Blockchain 230Bitcoin's unreal hype has obscured that it is mostly used to facilitate drug deals, ransomware, tax evasion, and even the occasional murder for hire. After the 60% price drop, demand for bitcoin mining gear has fallen so much TSMC has to lower sales estimates for 2018. (That's good news for telecom. Qualcomm and probably others are close to going into production on 5G chips at TSMC. But Apple has bought up so much of TSMC's 7 nm capacity that chip quantities could be severely limited until well into 2019 unless TSMC demand drops.)

Now, Austrian Ambassador in Tehran Stefan Scholz has suggested it could be a powerful boost to the European intent to bypass the U.S. economic blockade. That could provide demand for $billions of bitcoins.

Financial Express quotes Scholz, "One of the ways for safeguarding European interests in Iran is to tap the digital payment methods and cryptocurrency channels." He added, "unorthodox and innovative measures" were being considered to allow banking transactions to continue. We are all in this together, since the EU is facing a net loss of 10 billion euros ($11.7 billion) in lost trade with Iran next year."

Blockchain is potentially good stuff, routing around institutions in a sometimes useful way.

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For Google, Facebook, & phone companies, the regulator offers a clear statement: "Each user owns his/ her personal information/ data collected by/ stored with the entities in the digital ecosystem. The entities, controlling and processing such data, are mere custodians and do not have primary rights over this data." This applies to "all entities in the digital ecosystem, which control or process their personal data."

Potentially important, "The Right to Choice, Notice, Consent, Data Portability, and Right to be forgotten should be conferred upon the telecommunication consumers." Data Portability is crucial to any large-scale challenge to Facebook's near monopoly, althought that remains a difficult task.

TRAI  other sensible suggestions include:

"It should have provisions for revoking the consent, at a later date, by users."

"Multilingual, easy to understand, unbiased, short templates of agreements/ terms and conditions be made mandatory."

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OFCOM logo 230Steve has earned respect for OFCOM's technology ability. He's leaving after 18 years, some of which he spent as acting CEO. Previously, he had been a world-class Astronomer and part of the boom time startup scene. He may be heading for business; his Linkedin now says, "I am looking for a new role where my skills and experience will let me make a difference." Sounds like he doesn't intend to become a lobbyist, like so many here in the U.S. Steve writes, "I really don’t know what I’m going to do next. I never planned to become a regulator, but I ended up really enjoying my time at Ofcom. So it will be interesting to see what turns up!"

Under Unger, OFCOM has done advanced work in spectrum sharing and network measurement. 

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More Articles ...

  1. FOIA T-Mobile-Sprint filing
  2. China: We Lead 3GPP Wireless Standards
  3. Breaking: AT&T, Verizon, Google & Others Are Selling Your Location to Hedge Funds and Others
  4. "If Net Neutrality Is Repealed, the Internet Will Die!” Factcheck.
  5. The Smoking Gun on 5G Speeds
  6. AT&T's Silly Work Confuses the Effect of Sprint-Tmo
  7. Will Times Reporting "Implausible Promises" Kill T-Mobile-Sprint?
  8. Factcheck T-Mobile/Sprint
  9. Ich bin ein ZTE - China's Response
  10. The Color Of The Net Has Changed
  11. New York's Truthtelling CTO Miguel Gamiño: "No Choice" But To Quit FCC Broadband
  12. Today's Internet: More BRICS Than Westerners
  13. Trump And Putin Want To Control Internet Governance
  14. ICANN's BIg Decision: WHOIS Anonymity For Everyone Or Just Those Who Pay
  15. AT&T's "Riverboat Gambler" Whitacre Up for Trump's Man in Mexico
  16. BT Ordered to Unbundle
  17. WTF! China Hawks Want 5G Gov Net. Ain't Gonna Happen
  18. Newark Could Be the Largest U.S. Muni Broadband Network
  19. Historic: Facebook Will Pay Taxes and Internet Tolls in Korea
  20. Rosston's Nightmare: Broadband Prices Go Up, Up, Up
  21. Pai, Speaking of Immigration, Put His Career on the Line
  22. How To Preserve The Internet Beyond ICANN: Robust Interconnection (Part 1: The question)
  23. ICANN CEO's Promise to China of a Seat At The Table
  24. Kathy Brown's Leaving; Can the Internet Society Now Become Global, Independent, Democratic & Transparent?
  25. Times of London: "YouTube a shop window for child abuse videos"
  26. Sorry, Ajit Pai: Smaller Telcos Did Not Reduce Investment After NN Ruling
  27. ICANN Continues Excluding Russia & China From the Board
  28. Professor Noam's "Many Internets"
  29. Russia Orders Alternate Root Internet System
  30. Elders Bearing Witness: Vint, Timbl, & Many More

The world needs a good news source on Internet and telecom policy. I hope to create one. Catch a mistake? Email me please.  Dave Burstein

Latest

Professor Noam's "Many Internets" http://bit.ly/ManyNets

Until about 2010, everyone agreed the Net was a "network of networks," not a monolithic entity. There was a central authority, ICANN, keeping track of domain names, but that was a minor administrative function.
Columbia Professor Noam suggests we might be better off accepting that some nations or groups might want to organize their networks differently. It's easy to see demand for an Internet with much more effective filters against material some think harmful to children. (Any 10 year old can easily find porn today. Many do.)
Internet translation is getting better very quickly. You might want an "Internet" that translates everything into your language. Google Chrome translation isn't perfect but I was able to research most of this story on Russian language sites. With a few more years progress, I might welcome an alternate that brings me everything in English, including caching for better performance.
De facto, Internet news is already split, as hundreds of millions only get their news from Facebook. Google AMP pages, including for news, also favor selected parts of the net
Centralizing the DNS doesn't prevent censorship, as the Chinese have demonstrated. There are many Jewish and Muslim fundamentalists who want to block what they consider blasphemy and limit free speech. See http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/21/nyregion/ultra-orthodox-jews-hold-rally-on-internet-at-citi-field.html . More from Noam http://bit.ly/ManyNets

Russia Orders Alternate Root Internet System http://bit.ly/RussiaDNS
It's actually practical and not necessarily a problem.The Security Council of the Russian Federation, headed by Vladimir Putin, has ordered the "government to develop an independent internet infrastructure for BRICS nations, which would continue to work in the event of global internet malfunctions ... This system would be used by countries of the BRICS bloc – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa." RT
Columbia University Professor Eli Noam and then ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé have both said such a system is perfectly practical as long as there is robust interconnection.
Actually, the battle over ICANN and domain names is essentially symbolic. Managing the DNS is a relatively insignificant task, more clerical than governing. ICANN Chair Steve Crocker pointed out they had very little to do with policy.
Some will claim this is about blocking free speech but that's rhetoric. Russia doesn't need to fiddle with the DNS for censorship, as the Chinese have demonstrated. The wonders of the Internet will continue so long as the resulting nets" are robustly connected. The ICANN and U.S. policy goal should be to help create that system for interconnection.
I expect contentions that “The Russians are taking over our Internet” and “They are splitting the Internet.” The Internet is a “Network of Networks.” It is not a monolith so what would “splitting” it mean or do?
After the WCIT, China realized that ICANN and the DNS are side issues not worth bothering about. They have been building alternate institutions including the World Internet Summit in Wuzhan and the BRICs conferences.  The Chinese have put their main work where decisions that matter are made. Wireless standards are set by 3GPP, where nothing can be approved without China's consent.
The American battle at ITU is proving to be a historic mistake.
Why does Russia want an independent Internet?
They fear that Western sanctions on Russia could cripple the Russian Net. Communications minister, Nikolay Nikiforov, worries about, "a scenario where our esteemed partners would suddenly decide to disconnect us from the internet." I think that's highly unlikely but Nikiforov points out, “Recently, Russia is being addressed in a language of unilateral sanctions: first, our credit cards are being cut off; then the European Parliament says that they’ll disconnect us from SWIFT."
It makes sense for the Russians to be prepared for such a contingency as the Cold War has been warming up on both sides. "Britain's top military chief Air Chief Marshal Sir Stuart Peach just made headlines warning Russian subs "could CRIPPLE Britain by cutting undefended undersea internet cables." Much more http://bit.ly/RussiaDNS

ICANN Continues Excluding Russia & China From the Board http://bit.ly/CEOPromises
No wonder Russia wants an alternate root. Three years ago, ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé promised "a seat at the table" to Chinese Premier Li. ICANN welched and this year added two more Americans.
Almost all the ICANN board is from the U.S. and close allies; only about 4 of the 18 board members are from countries on the other side of the North/South divide in Internet policy.  Claiming ICANN represents the Global Internet is inappropriate. China is 1/3rd of the Internet but has no representation on the board.
I know many of the board members. They are all basically honorable but generally share a strong opinion on North-South issues.
Larry Strickling of the U.S. government knew just what he was doing with the IANA transition. He handed over to a board with similar positions as the U.S. government.
"The system is unsustainable while it excludes half the world," I have been saying since 2012. More, including the transcript of Fadi's statements,http://bit.ly/CEOPromises

Sorry, Ajit Pai: Smaller Telcos Did Not Reduce Investment After NN Ruling http://bit.ly/SorryPai
Pai justifies his NN choice with the claim, "The impact has been particularly serious for smaller Internet service providers." #wrong (Actually, NN has minimal effects on investment, up or down, I’m convinced. Competition, new technology, customer demand and similar are far more important.)
The two largest suppliers to “smaller ISPs” saw sales go up. Adtran's sales the most recent nine months were $540M, up from $473M the year before. 2016 was $636M, 2015 $600M. Calix the last nine months sold $372M, up from $327M. The full year 2016 was $459M, up from $407M in 2015. Clearfield, a supplier of fiber optic gear, was up 8% in sales in the smaller ISPs.
There is nothing in the data from others that suggests an alternate trend. Anyone could have found this data in a few minutes from the company quarterly reports.
The results in larger companies are ambiguous. I can "prove" capex went up or went down by selecting the right data. The four largest companies' capex - two/thirds of the total - went up from $52.7B in 2015 to $55.7B in 2016. The result remains positive after making sensible adjustments for mergers and acquisitions. That's as close to "proving" that NN led to increased spending as the facts chosen to prove the opposite.
Actually, whether capex went up or down in 2016 tells us almost nothing about the choice on neutrality. Everyone knows a single datapoint could be random or due to other causes. Much more, including the source of the errors http://bit.ly/SorryPai

Elders Bearing Witness: Vint, Timbl, & Many More http://bit.ly/VintTim
Vint Cerf, Tim Berners-Lee, Steve Wozniak and more than a dozen true Internet pioneers wrote Congress to protect Neutrality. The best Congress money can buy didn't listen but I wanted to reproduce their letter.
I hope they are wrong believing "is an imminent threat to the Internet we worked so hard to create." My take is the impact will be moderate in the short run.
From the letter:
We are the pioneers and technologists who created and now operate the Internet, and some of the innovators and business people who, like many others, depend on it for our livelihood. ... The FCC’s proposed Order is based on a flawed and factually inaccurate understanding of Internet technology. These flaws and inaccuracies were documented in detail in a 43-page-long joint comment signed by over 200 of the most prominent Internet pioneers and engineers and submitted to the FCC on July 17, 2017.
Despite this comment, the FCC did not correct its misunderstandings, but instead premised the proposed Order on the very technical flaws the comment explained. The technically-incorrect proposed Order ... More, including the full list, http://bit.ly/VintTim

 

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