Global Domain Name and Internet Policy News
Russia might be reeling from an “armed mutiny” at home and a botched invasion of Ukraine, but that hasn’t stopped it from pushing a plan for centralized United Nations oversight of the internet. An unfortunate new wrinkle is that Moscow’s approach appears to be getting some support from U.N. Secretary General António Guterres.
[news release] The cost of Internet services has inched downward across the globe in 2022, according to Facts and Figures, the annual worldwide overview on the state of digital connectivity from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
The campaign to elect the next Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union has entered the final stretch, with UN member states assembling in Bucharest, Romania this week to cast their votes between the Russian-supported and US-backed candidates vying for the top job.
Aim of getting the whole world connected remains elusive despite increased web use amid pandemic
[news release] An estimated 2.7 billion people – or one-third of the world’s population – remain unconnected to the Internet in 2022.
ICANN’s meetings are starting to get back to normal with in-person attendances. In an announcement during the recent ICANN74 in The Hague, DENIC, eco and ICANN announced the ICANN78 annual general meeting will be held in Hamburg, Germany, in October 2023. And ICANN has scheduled the first Global Domains Division Summit since May 2020’s cancelled GDD Industry Summit in Paris for Los Angeles in November 2022.
Nearly 3 billion people – or 37% of the world’s population – have never used the internet, according to the United Nations, despite the Covid-19 pandemic driving people online.
Millions of homes and businesses access global networks through the cost-efficient Passive Optical Network (PON) technologies standardized by ITU. The next generation, known as “Higher Speed PON”, will provide for speeds of 50 Gbit/s per wavelength, up from the 10 Gbit/s of its predecessors.
The Internet and the World Wide Web application have transformed daily life and work for more than half of the world’s population. And the actions of those who are online increasingly affect everyone, including the 3.7 billion who are not yet connected.
[news release] A new policy brief from ITU and the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI), finds that high costs for Internet access relative to income remain one of the main barriers to the use of information and communication technology (ICT) services worldwide. Taking income differences into account, a mobile broadband subscription with at least 1.5 gigabytes (GB) of data costs around four times more in developing countries than in developed ones.
Russia is engaged in a brazen but little noticed effort to set new rules for cyberspace — even as it flouts the existing ones. Last week, in an encouraging step, a United Nations telecommunications body pushed back.