In 1995, 77-year-old Nelson Mandela electrified ITU Geneva predicting, "in the 21st century, the capacity to communicate will almost certainly be a key human right. ... Justice and equity demand that we find ways of overcoming the division between the information rich and the information poor. If more than half the world is denied access to the means of communication, the people of developing countries will not be fully part of the modern world." Journalist and former rocket scientist Lee Goldberg tells me he will never forget that day. 

ITU Secretary-General Houlin Zhao reminded ITU Telecom World 2018 in Durban that Mandela's dream has not been fulfilled. Four or five billion people cannot afford the Internet. The technology is ready; Reliance Jio is making a profit selling gigabytes of 4G to 250 million Indians for about US$4.

One easy way to make a difference is to join me on ITU Focus Group 2030, working towards 6G. Some of the work is about carrying holograms and sub-millisecond latency. There also is a proposal to continue to enhance mobile broadband by making sure standards include ways to deliver affordable broadband to everyone. Sign up in minutes at http://bit.ly/6Gfuture, lower right corner. Email me for help daveb@dslprime.com. 

Click through for Mandela's words. They remain crucial 23 years later

Pai, O'Reilly, and the telco lobbyists proclaim the new FCC rules will result in far more 5G small cells deployed. They are wrong, as any conscientious reporter could have discovered. The new rules by some estimates will move US$2 billion from the cities to the telco bottom lines. (I think that's a high estimate but haven't looked closely.)

Some cities have ridiculous rules that should be changed, but the industry has long proven they can almost always be dealt with. The primary result will be lower charges to the telcos. Most of the savings will go to shareholders rather than increased investment, per Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg.

I knew the promised construction boom was hogwash because the companies were telling Wall Street they would keep capital spending roughly flat. They won't be spending much on more small cells. This was confirmed by CEO Jay Brown of Crown Castle, with the largest deployment of small cells in the U.S. 

I wouldn't look at that and assume that we're going to see a material change in our 18 to 24 month deployment cycle. In fact, we don't believe that will result.

Brown has 30,000 small cell sites deployed and 30,000 more contracted for. They are designed to serve two or three customers, but he's having a hard time finding more than one in many places. Verizon and the other telcos have been cutting drastically the number of small cells they will need. 

Ericsson is negotiating how much to pay for corruption while Vestberg was CFO (2007-2009) and CEO (2010-2016) of the Swedish company.  The company said the fines were likely "material," which for a US$24 billion (sales) company sounds like billions. 50 people have been fired. 

Vestberg so far is doing an excellent job at Verizon so the Board will probably not fire him. The payoffs while he was at Ericsson made international news in 2015, so the Verizon board knew this was coming when they hired him. The stock market also is ignoring the news of the likely fine; Ericsson is up 5% today.

It is highly unlikely that Vestberg, a highly involved manager, didn't know what was going on. 

Likely soon to pass, the new "European disclosure order" and "European confiscation order" will allow any EU government to request any data from any ISP or data store anywhere in the EU. The right-wing Hungarian government could demand everything ever sent by the local opposition. Russia could obtain almost anything with the help of friendly clients. Sweden could request every email and data stored by two dozen contributors to Wikileaks and hand them over to the United States. 

Axel Petri of Deutsche Telekom has now spoken up, asking to be paid for the work and require approval from their own government. DT is not a natural opponent of government control. The cynical might say DT is afraid of its own government getting information on corporate executives hiding income in Cyprus bank accounts. In any case, they are on target. 

I recently connected on Linkedin to a slew of telecom engineers in Iran. I'm sure that raised flags with the security people in many countries. An Iranian connected and Linkedin recommendations took it from there. I noticed many employees from the European vendors and wrote Nokia, Ericsson, and Samsung ban could cripple U.S. 5G (Satire) http://bit.ly/NFsatire

Because this is proposed by the government, passage is likely. Yet again, the developing world is pulling ahead on important policies. India also has advanced net neutrality.  

The Hindu summarizes: "The proposed Data Protection Bill 2018 essentially makes individual consent central to data sharing. The report notes that the right to privacy is a fundamental right. Unless you have given your explicit consent, your personal data cannot be shared or processed. Of course, this also means that the onus lies on you to make an informed choice.

Next, the draft bill also states that any person processing your personal data is obligated to do so in a fair and reasonable manner. In other words, your data should be processed only for the purposes it was intended for in the first place. Failing to meet these provisions can cost companies dear, with the bill laying down penalties that can go up to ₹15 crore or 4 per cent of a company’s total worldwide turnover.

​​The Internet Society has a $30M/year subsidy from .org registrations. It can and should be the world's leading advocate for a great Internet for everyone. I'm on the ISOC-NY Board and sent this note.

Folks

I- and I believe many of you - believe bringing down the cost of access is crucial to bringing the Internet to everyone. As things change in the Internet Society, I think we should look at how we can influence decisions that directly affect the cost of access.

In the U.S., Trump's FCC wants to severely cut back on Lifeline, the program to connect the poor. Commissioners Copps & Tristani will lead a

Speakout to Save Lifeline  Wed., Sept. 26, at 10 a.m. EDT at FCC headquarters, 445 12th St. SW, Washington, D.C. I hope Andrew encourages Internet Society employees to attend, making up their work later on.
In India, the telcos are trying to undermine the local efforts to connect to the remarkable BharatNet. BharatNet has brought fiber to literally hundreds of thousands of villages and hundreds of millions of people. This is by far the most important effort in the world to bring the Internet to the rural poor. ISOC, especially our Indian chapters, should be leading the effort to make sure BharatNet delivers robust Internet affordable to all. (Details on both below.)

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.

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.