ITU is publishing a major new Report on the impact of the financial crisis on the ICT industry, "Confronting the Crisis: Its Impact on the ICT Industry", on Monday 16 February 2009, when the ITU Secretary-General Dr. Toure is due to speak at GSMA Barcelona on this subject.

The Report covers the major impact of the financial crisis on investment & financing, consumer demand, regulation and changing telco strategies in response to the crisis. It also examines the impact of the crisis on different technologies, including mobile telephony, WiMAX and Long Term Evolution (LTE), broadband Internet and NGN and the satellite industry.

The Report features invited insights from leading experts from the World Bank, OECD and UNCTAD, as well as industry analysts including Informa, Analysys Mason, Deloitte & Touche TMT Predictions, Point Topic and Maravedis. The leading trade associations, the GSMA and the WiMAX Forum, also contributed insights on the outlook for the mobile and WiMAX industry respectively.  On 16 February 2009, ITU will launch a website to coincide with Dr. Toure's speech featuring all these invited contributions and more, including perspectives on the regional impact from Balancing Act Africa and the Arab Advisors Group.

This Report will be available soon - for further information, please contact pressinfo@itu.int.

The CEO of Celtel Kenya, Mr David Murray, is quoted by the East African Standard as suggesting that there may be a natural limit to the size of the mobile market in Kenya. Mobile communications have been the fastest-growing market segment of telecommunications around the world, not just in Africa,but Mr. Murray warns that, despite the growth, the country’s economy may not be able to support more than three operators. Mr. Murray is quoted as saying that "the economic reality is that if you look around the world, countries bigger and wealthier than Kenya cannot support four operators."

The Kenyan mobile market is divided between Celtel Kenya and Safaricom, Econet Wireless and France Telecoms, who have just acquired the controlling stake in Telkom Kenya and is expected to rollout mobile phone operations in the country. With a population of 34 million, mobile Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) is less than $10 per month.

Murray reckons that survival will be determined by creativity on the marketing front, product development and network reliability. One example is Celtel International's One Network service, the first-ever borderless mobile network in the world without roaming call surcharges or payment to receive incoming calls. The One Network service has recently been extended to cover twelve countries, equivalent to an area more than twice the size of the European Union.

To read the full article, please see here.

WiMAX Counts.Com reports that WiMAX has expanded rapidly in Africa over 2006-2007. At the beginning of 2006, the WiMAX subscribers in Africa numbered just a few thousand. But by the end of 2007, Africa accounts for more than 20,000 WiMAX subscribers. Users are mostly business customers, who have access to 10’s or 100’s of internal users, in contrast to residential access. Over this year, the subscriber numbers have grown at an average rate of 28% per quarter, and the growth from Q2 to Q3 2007 alone was 36%.

There were several new deployments that took place during the second half of 2007. There are now around 15 commercial deployments of BWA/WiMAX in the region, with around half of them started this year. A further 10 operators are trailing or evaluating the implementation of a WiMAX network.

The lack of traditional fixed line telecom infrastructure in the region opens up big opportunities for WiMAX to provide broadband Internet to the many rural and underserved areas that cannot be addressed with wired technologies. African operators are poised to spread the benefits of WiMAX. There is also a low penetration of broadband subscribers. Out of the 922 million inhabitants of Africa at the end of 2006, only 43.6 million were Internet users, and only 1 million had a broadband connection.

For the full article, please see here.

Mobile phone service provider Celtel has expanded its roaming service offer to 12 African countries, enabling around half of all African mobile phone subscribers to communicate across national borders, without incurring extra costs.

Celtel's roaming service is now available in Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Sudan, Burkina Faso and Malawi, as well as the Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Launched a little over a year ago, Celtel's roaming service will extend services to a population of nearly 400 million people, living in an area twice as large as western Europe. "This is a feat that not even European firms have achieved," said Anna Othoro, the marketing director at Celtel. Although Celtel is yet to announce an upgrade to 3G services like its competitor Safaricom, market-watchers believe Celtel's strategy could be a high-volume strategy targeting larger numbers of users to use more accessible services.

For more information, please see the article in the Business Daily.

Discussions on the impact of submarine cable connectivity on the cost of Internet connectivity are hotting up in Kenya, according to Business Daily Africa.  Following the landing of the first submarine fibre optic cable in the East Africa Marine System (TEAMs) project scheduled to arrive in Mombasa in Q2 2009, the Kenyan Government has projected that Internet connectivity costs are likely to fall to $500 (Sh33,000) per megabit per month (a reduction of more than 80 per cent from the current average of $5,000 per Megabit).

The submarine cable is expected to land in Mombasa by second quarter of 2009 and terminate in Fujaira, Dubai. The TEAMs cable has a projected life span of 25 years. The Kenyan government has a 40 per cent stake in the project, with Dubai’s Etisalat holding 15 per cent. A 45 per cent stake has been reserved for private telecommunication companies. So far, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania and Southern Sudan have expressed an interest in participating in the project.

IT firms, including UUNET, will have to connect to an Internet Service Provider (ISP) based in Fujaira before bringing the service — with a mark-up to local companies. The $500 figure "can only be for the last mile, the layer two services, and the raw pipe — WiMAX or KenStream that you get from Telkom Kenya. There is no IP service that can be sold for $500 per megabit per month,” stated UUNET Managing Director, Geoffrey Shimanyula.

Information permanent secretary, Bitange Ndemo, maintained however that the $500 price was achievable with the a fibre optic cable. Transit costs from Fujairah to Europe and US stands at between $55,000 to $100,000 per year, which Dr Ndemo insists is still in line with the Government’s estimates.

For more information, please read the full article.

The Japanese Ministry of Information and Communication has recently published a report on Network Neutrality, which notes that simply increasing the number of Internet exchanges may not be enough to address Internet traffic flow problems.

In Japan, Internet exchange (IX) points  for ISP peering are concentrated in Tokyo and Osaka areas, with only a few IXs in local regions. In most cases, the local ISP routes its traffic through an IX located in Tokyo or Osaka. However, lines have a high cost burden (even when they are shared among multiple ISPs) and supply on backbone infrastructure is extremely tight.

In order to improve information traffic flow, increasing the number of local IXs in itself would not solve the network traffic problems: "In addition, it is necessary to respond to increases in cost burden and insufficient capacity on the relay backbone. One important measure is to equip local IXs with cache servers for information aggregation. Fetching information from a local cache would ease network pressure and improve the Internet usage environment for all local users. Therefore, from the viewpoint of cache aggregation on local servers, it is appropriate for administrative authorities to support cooperation between related operators and to take necessary measures (for example, by considering how the system should deal with issues such as copyright protection)" (page 29).

For more information, please see here.

According to its third quarter 2007 results, MTN Group serves 54.1 million people in 21 countries, making it the largest operator in Africa and the Middle East, with over 64,000 new customers a day. September figures show that the number of MTN's subscribers jumped 12% since June.

MTN's South African network is the cornerstone of its activities, with subscribers rising 3% to 14 million. Nigeria is MTN's other cash cow, with 14.9 million customers each spending an average of $17 a month. That represents a 7% increase in customers, as well as a healthy 4% rise in their spending. MTN is investing heavily in improving infrastructure in Nigeria to cope with the growing demand.

MTN's Middle East and North Africa region saw 36% growth in customers, with its new Iranian network winning 1.7 million more users. Irancell serves 3.7 million people, each spending an average of $11 a month.

For further information, see Issue 378 of Balancing Act Africa here and the Session One background paper prepared for the Connect Africa Summit.

Nigeria is celebrating the six year anniversary of the launch of GSM services in the country, according to the Nigerian Communications Commission. Through the award of five mobile licenses, the NCC facilitated a phenomenal expansion of telephone lines in Nigeria from just 450,000 operational lines in May 1999 to over 38 million lines by July 2007, boosting teledensity growth from 0.4 per 100 inhabitants to 24 per 100 inhabitants. The capacity for growth in the number of phone lines in the country over the next decade remains quite high, as some parts of the country are yet to be covered.

In January 2001, three licenses were awarded to ECONET Wireless now (CELTEL), MTN and MTEL, a subsidiary of the incumbent operator. Nigerian Telecommunications Limited (NITEL) was also awarded an operating license as a National Carrier. In 2002, a fourth Digital Mobile License was issued to Globacom (Glomobile). A fifth Mobile License (with GSM spectrum) was awarded to Emerging Market Telecommunications Services Limited earlier this year. Blossoming competition in the mobile market has led to reductions in the price of mobile subscriptions and services and resulted in nearly a quarter of all Nigerians becoming mobile subscribers.

To celebrate the six year anniversary, the Nigerian Communications Commission has issued a press release covering all major aspects of the telecom market - investment, revenues, tariffs, consumer protection, universal service provision and licenses, as well as the Digital Bridges Institute and other programmes. For more information, please see here.

The UK regulator for communications, OFCOM, has today published its fourth annual report on The Communications Market 2007. The report reviews convergence in the market for communications in the UK, as well as trends in the television, radio and telecom sectors. The report is packed with useful analysis, description of trends and discussion of their implications for the future of the telecom industry.

For more information, please see here.

An excellent study, packed with data and statistics by Eria Hisali, a researcher at Makerere University, concludes that high taxes threaten to choke growth in Uganda's telecom markets. The study, recently published by the Uganda Communications Commission, finds that recent phenomenal growth in the Ugandan mobile market is slowing. Usage tax on pre-paid mobile services in Uganda is 30% (18% VAT and 12% excise duty), which the report claims is the second-highest level of service taxes on mobile use internationally. Telecoms accounted for nearly 4% of Uganda's total VAT revenues in 2000/01, and 6.5% of VAT revenues in 2005/06.

Although the latest statistics released by the Uganda Communications Commission show that the number of mobile subscribers continues to grow, the report finds that, intriguingly, minutes of use have reduced significantly in both mobile and fixed line use.  More people may be using mobiles, but they are using them less often and for shorter times.

Tax as a proportion of revenues for the telephone sub-sector rose from 5.7% in 2001 to 19.6 or nearly a fifth in 2005. The Report suggests that high taxes may result in a slowdown in growth of the telecommunication industry by reducing investment in the sector. It also suggests that uniform tax rates may mean that poorer households bear a higher burden than higher-income households. The Report concludes that, if market growth is to continue, there may be an "urgent need to rethink the current telecommunications sector tax policy".

the report follows growing interest in the impact of tax on take-up and usage of telecom services (for example, see the GSM Association's Mobile Tax Report 2006). To read the full report on Uganda, please see here.

The Pakistani financial newspaper, the Business Recorder, is reporting that the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) plans to launch an Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) service in October 2007.

Dr. Abdul Jabbar, Director-General of the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) stated that "PTCL has won the first license to launch IPTV service which would be a landmark development in the country's telecom industry". Dr Jabbar added that other companies that meet the set criteria would also be issued such licenses, adding the Authority would monitor the IPTV service on the basis of the parameters being followed regarding electronic channels. The Business Recorder reports that the PTCL project is supported by the Chinese telecom equipment giant, Huawei (which will provide servers and set-top boxes) and Irdeto, a Netherlands-based content security company (which will provide content security solutions).

For more information, please see here.

The Ministry of Information and Communication of the Government of Kenya is considering introducing a cyber law including e-transactions that could serve as a model for other East African Community (EAC) countries - such as Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi (which have yet to enact such kind of legislation).

The Government of Kenya is interested in creating a dynamic environment for business outsourcing and call centers to compete with India, Philippines and China. Creating an enabling legal environment is a vital first step in this direction, with some funding from USAID towards the development of such legislation. The current Kenya Communication Amendment (KCA) Bill 2007 could be adapted to include e-transactions. By including e-Transactions in the converged Bill, the Ministry will also recognise the technological convergence occurring in the digital world.

For more information, please see the article in the East African Standard.

The High Court of Appeal of Botswana has ruled that the Botswana Telecommunications Authority (BTA) should no longer receive tax revenues from mobile phone operators from the sale of scratch cards and free airtime offered by the mobile operators to their customers. Botswana's two private cellular phone operators, Orange and Mascom, have paid 3 per cent of net turnover on a quarterly basis since 2002, when private mobile cellular phone services began in Botswana. However, Orange had appealed the payment of tax on freebies or free airtime the company occasionally extends to its customers, on the basis that this was free airtime, not an amount of money. The High Court of Appeal ruled that "Free airtime given by Orange to its customers is not an amount invoiced nor does it otherwise accrue to Orange for purposes of computation of net turnover".

The BTA may be liable for refunds and stands to lose a considerable amount of future revenue. For the full story, please see Mmegi Online.

Nigeria recently held its annual Finance and Information Technology Summit (FITS) on 26 July in Lagos, as an annual forum where ICT stakeholders and professionals from the banking and financial sector can interface. The theme for this year's seminar and exhibition was "seamless ICT integration in a Post-Consolidation Era".

The Director-General of the Nigeria IT Development Agency (NITDA), Professor Cleopas Angaye, made a presentation to the Summit where he stated that the success of e-payment solutions within Nigeria depends on the provision of adequate infrastructure, reliable helpdesk services and an enlightened population. He noted that, in the absence of trust, it will be difficult to convince potential buyers and sellers to migrate from the traditional platforms to more high-tech e-payment and e-commerce. Mr. Ekeigwe, President of Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA Lagos) argued that "IT governance" has not got the attention it deserves as IT needs more technical insight and has traditionally been viewed as separate from business processes.

For more information, please see here.

The Namibian Government is hosting a two-day event in Windhoek this Thursday and Friday, entitled 'ICTs for Poverty Reduction and Sustainable Development'. The conference is jointly organised by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, the Namibian Communications Commission (NCC) and the ICT Alliance, a body comprising key ICT industry players.

Following a convention on the new Information Communications Bill last week, the conference will allow for a full review of the ICT industry and the legislative environment for ICT in Namibia. The Namibian ICT industry has an annual turnover of about N$1 billion, but according to Namibia's ICT Alliance, only between N$400 million and N$450 million goes directly into the ICT sector, with the remainder going into the banking, retail and financial industries. However, the vice-Chairperson of the Namibian ICT Alliance suggests that "Most of the IT support to these sectors are done by South African companies, and there is little transfer to the local industry, which is currently in turmoil".

For more information, please see here.

The UK regulator OFCOM has just published new research on the market for Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) in the United Kingdom.  OFCOM estimates that VoIP services had been used by 2.4 million UK households by the end of 2006, double the estimated total at the end of 2005. Nearly one quarter of VoIP users (23%) claimed to be with more than one service provider. However, OFCOM found that a large proportion of users were unaware of all the different types of services they had access to and concluded that there seems to be a substantial lack of knowledge among VoIP users about the services they have or can access.

The research report on VoIP has been released to coincide with OFCOM's latest consultation on the regulation of VoIP services. OFCOM has conducted two previous consultations on VoIP in October 2004 and on VoIP regulation in February 2006, followed by a Statement in March 2007. In its latest consultation, OFCOM proposes that any VoIP provider offering VoIP calls to traditional fixed phones or mobile phones ("type 2 VoIP services"), or making calls to and receiving calls from traditional fixed phones or mobile phones ("type 4 VoIP services") should allow users to call 999.  The closing date for responses is by 30 September 2007.

For more information, please see here.

Europe puts in a solid performance in the latest analysis of digital opportunity by the ITU. Although Europe loses out on the first two places in digital opportunity to the broadband kings of Asia (the Rep. of Korea and Japan), five out of the top ten countries are European. Denmark ranks at Number three and, alongside Japan, is a top contender for first place next year, if its current growth rates in broadband subscribers (fixed and mobile) continue.

Denmark, Iceland and the Netherlands lead Europe. Within Europe, a sharp divide in digital opportunity between Eastern and Western Europe is apparent (with Estonia and Lithuania notable exceptions to this rule, with over 90% of their Internet subscriber base using broadband connections). A combination of rising disposable incomes, falling prices for broadband and a thirst for new technologies among the countries of Eastern Europe mean that this gap is closing fast, however. Albania and Moldova are notable for having the lowest digital opportunity in Europe; at 107th and 111th worldwide (out of 181 countries measured by the Digital Opportunity Index), their 'low' rankings within Europe help put the global digital divide into context.

 

For more information, please see the ITU/UNCTAD World Information Society Report 2007.

Asia-Pacific continues to lead the world in digital opportunity, home to five of the top ten countries in digital opportunity.  The Republic of Korea ranks first in digital opportunity with a DOI score of 0.80, but its lead is being fast eroded by Japan's strong gains in mobile broadband subscribership, which boosted its DOI score to 0.77.  If current growth rates continue, Japan could overtake the Republic of Korea as early as next year.

 

The Digital Opportunity Index measures advanced technologies such as broadband Internet and 3G mobile, which means that it is ideally designed to capture the growth in these markets.  In Singapore, the "wired island", fixed broadband Internet subscribers rose as a proportion of the Internet subscriber base from 70% to 83%, which boosted its Utilization Index and catapulted it to fifth place in the world rankings.

Asia-Pacific also encapsulates a regional digital divide, however. It is home to Myanmar, with the third-lowest digital opportunity in the world, at 0.04, as well as Afghanistan, Cambodia, Lao PDR and Korea PDR. These are issues that organisations such as the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) (which has launched an e-ASEAN Framework Agreement) and LirneASIA are fighting to address.

For more information, please see the ITU/UNCTAD World Information Society Report 2007.

The ITU has published its latest evaluation of digital opportunity for the Americas.  In line with the concerns of the US Federal Communications Commission over the United States' lacklustre performance in fixed broadband - in 2006, the US FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps noted that the United States came twenty-first in the ITU's DOI 2005 - Canada continues to lead the Americas in digital opportunity, although its lead over the United States has narrowed considerably from 0.03 in the DOI 2005 to 0.01 in 2006. This is due to strong gains by the United States in mobile penetration (which rose from 61 mobile subscribers per 100 capita to 70 per 100 capita in 2005) and an increase in broadband subscribers over the same period of over 12 million.

Certain Caribbean islands also do very well in the DOI, due to their high dependency on tourism and service industries such as banking, requiring good communication links. In 2006, digital opportunity in both the Bahamas and Barbados exceeded 0.60, while islands such as Antigua & Barbuda, St. Kitts & Nevis, Jamaica, Dominica, Trinidad & Tobago and the Dominican Republic all made strong gains in digital opportunity. The first lady of the Dominican Republic, Dr. Margarita Cedeño de Fernández, was honoured with a World Information Society Award this year by the ITU for her work in establishing 135 Community Technology Centres throughout the Dominican Republic. Not so at the other end of the scale, however, where digital opportunity in Haiti remained static at 0.15.  In Latin America, Chile continues to lead Latin America in digital opportunity, although Argentina's strong gains in Internet usage and fixed broadband subscribers have boosted its digital opportunity.

The designations employed and the presentation of material in this map do not imply any opinion whatsoever
on the part of the ITU concerning the legal or other status of any country, territory or area
or any endorsement or acceptance of any boundary.

More information can be found in the ITU/UNCTAD World Information Society Report 2007.

ITU has published its latest evalution of digital opportunity across the continent of Africa (see graph below). The Digital Opportunity Index assesses countries on eleven different indicators, organised into three clusters of Opportunity, Infrastructure and Utilization. Measurements of digital opportunity for Africa show that, whereas last year, only three countries had a DOI score in excess of 0.40 (Mauritius, Seychelles and Morocco), in 2006, seven countries had DOI scores greater than 0.40 (in addition to these three, Algeria, Egypt, South Africa and Tunisia joined them with a DOI score of above 0.40).

The designations employed and the presentation of material in this map do not imply any opinion whatsoever
on the part of the ITU concerning the legal or other status of any country, territory or area
or any endorsement or acceptance of any boundary.

Analysis of the DOI results shows that, in Africa, digital opportunity is undoubtedly mobile. Mobile phones now outnumber fixed lines by five to one, a ratio that is even higher in sub-Saharan Africa, where nine out of ten subscribers use a mobile.  African mobile penetration doubled from 6.5 per 100 inhabitants in 2003 to 13.1 per 100 inhabitants in 2005. As a region, Africa's mobile market has been the fastest-growing market in the world, averaging 50 per cent growth per year since 2000; enviable growth rates that strategic investors such as Celtel, Orascom, MTN and Vodacom are profiting from.

The results for digital opportunity in Africa are published in the ITU/UNCTAD World Information Society Report 2007.

At least eleven African countries, including Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa, now have Internet Exchange Points (IXPs). These countries can benefit from more efficient peering arrangements and cheaper international connectivity and bandwidth.

The current issue of Balancing Act Africa quotes the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Nigerian Internet Exchange (NIXP) as saying that eleven sub-Saharan African countries now have international Internet Exchange Points (IXPs), following the commissioning of Nigeria's Internet exchange in late 2006, at a cost of about 30 million naira, according to the online magazine Tectonic. Balancing Act Africa quotes Rudman as observing that "hitherto, all ISPs within Nigeria have been connected at foreign countries, which meant that the data of a student within Lagos browsing their university website located within an ISP in Lagos travels first to Europe or the United States, before getting back to the Nigeria. The scenario is just like going to Ibadan from Lagos via the U.K. or U.S.A.... This means that Africa is paying overseas carriers to exchange 'local' [continental] traffic on its behalf. This is costly and inefficient". Rudman estimates that the use of international bandwidth for national data or "unnecessary international transit" costs Nigeria over US$100 million each year. Rudman notes that by peering with other ISPs at the exchange point, it means all local internet traffic can remain local within the seven ISPs connected to NIXP and the first public telecom operator to connect to it last week - Starcomms.

African countries with Internet exchanges include: Angola, Botswana, Congo DR, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

Telkom South Africa has announced tariff reductions for telecom services, which, if they are approved by the Independent Communication Authority of South Africa (ICASA), should come into effect from 1 August 2007. The move follows earlier tariff reductions by its competitor MTN, which ITU reported in February of this year.

Balancing Act Africa notes in its current issue [Balancing Act Africa Issue 363] that Telkom, which until recently had the monopoly in fixed-line telephony, has been criticised for charging high tariffs that make it difficult for underprivileged people to access a wide array of telecoms services. Telkom's move would seem partly to address this criticism, with reductions of as much as 10% to 38% for ADSL broadband (depending on package and speed) and reductions of around ten per cent for long-distance and international calls. Prices for data transmission could be reduced by as much as 11.9%. Telkom notes that it filed an overall price decrease of 1.2% on its regulated basket of products and services with ICASA. Such a move should help make telecom services more affordable for South Africa's substantial rural populations and urban poor.

For more information, please see here.

Antigua may have only a small population of 70,000 people, but it is certainly facing some big issues.  According to an article yesterday in the Antigua Sun newspaper, the use of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) has increased exponentially over the last couple of years, while the telephony voice calls revenue of the Antigua Public Utilities Authority (APUA) revenues have been stagnant, and even declining. VoIP has been illegal in Antigua since the introduction of the Telecommunication Law in 2003, but an article in Telecom Web suggests thatthe Government may now move to enforce this ban, on the basis that they are losing tax revenues from VoIP services.

Telecom Web also suggests that the move may be linked to the massive revenue losses that Antigua is suffering from the U.S. gambling ban (an issue that has been pursued though the WTO). In the long-term, VoIP may be legalized as part of moves towards liberalization and the ending of Cable & Wireless' monopoly. The Antigua Sun quotes Darren Derrick, general manager for Digicel, a competitor in Antigua as saying that negotiations over liberalization have not been going the way he had hoped.

Antigua represents a microcosm of larger issues facing many other countries and small island states heavily dependent on tourist and telecommunication revenues.

The ITU has conducted a survey of the legal and regulatory status of VoIP around the world in 2006. For more information, see here.

The ITU has monitored trends in broadband subscribers and the price of broadband services around the world since 2002.  By early 2007, broadband was commercially available in 170 countries, with the latest country to launch commercial ADSL services being Lesotho in early 2007.

In 2002, broadband services were available in just 81 countries, mostly industrialized OECD countries, transition economies in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and some developing countries in Asia-Pacific.  By 2006, the number of countries with commercial broadband service had more than doubled to reach a total of 166 countries, with a number of operators in African countries launching broadband services, including in Botswana, Ghana, Rwanda and Libya.

Chapter three: The Digital Opportunity Index of the World Information Society Report 2007 tracks growth in the Information Society around the world, particularly in the more advanced broadband technologies of 3G mobile and broadband Internet service.  It examines key trends in telecom markets, such as whether subscribers are 'cutting the cord' and the death of dial-up.  To download the text of the chapter for free, please click here.

Etisalat Egypt claimed to have achieved a customer base of 400,000 subscribers at the end of its first month of operations, after officially launching operations on 30 April 2007.  This is strong subscriber growth in the booming Egyptian mobile market, which Etisalat shares with Vodafone Egypt and MobiNil.

As previously reported by ITP.net, the Egyptian Communications Minister, Dr. Tarek Kamel, recently announced Egypt would offer a licence for a second fixed services operator, ending the monopoly of the incumbent operator, Telecom Egypt. According to a report by news agency MENA, Etisalat Egypt may bid for Egypt's second fixed line network licence.

Meanwhile, a press release by AMEInfo reports that Etisalat UAE and Research in Motion jointly announced 14,000 new subscribers to Etisalat's Blackberry service over the first year of operations, since the service was launched in May 2006.  Etisalat continues to go from strength to strength, in a region where mobile ownership is expected to exceed one in two people by the end of this year.

This year's edition of the World Information Society Report 2007 notes that growth in the global Information Society is not without risks and the Report examines the potential pitfalls of growth in the rise of online fraud, other risks and threats to cybersecurity. The expansion of the Internet is opening up many new opportunities for criminals to exploit online vulnerabilities and commit criminal acts or attack countries' critical infrastructures.

Threats in cyberspace are evolving rapidly and deserve greater attention for several reasons. The evolution of telecommunication networks towards Next-Generation Networks (NGN) with decentralized intelligence at the edges of the network could raise new security issues. The capacity and speed of networks are increasing, accelerating the transmission of malicious software alongside other Internet traffic. Transmission and encryption protocols are also constantly being updated. Meanwhile, convergence offers new opportunities for 'cross-infection', with the problems of one access device feeding into other ICTs.

Viruses, spyware, phishing, identity theft, denial-of-service attacks and zombie botnets are endangering cyberspace and jeopardising the very future of the Internet. According to one source, spam and other exploitation now account for up to 90 per cent of all email traffic over the Internet. Spam has now mutated from a general annoyance to a broader cybersecurity threat, acting as a platform for many other types of scams (see Figure).

Chapter five, "Challenges to building a safe and secure Information Society" of the World Information Society Report 2007 examines these issues.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has just issued its Quarterly Performance Indicators of Telecom Services for the quarter ending 31 March 2007. Total gross telephone subscribers (wireless and wireline) surpassed 200 million subscribers for the first time. Total telephone subscribers grew from 189 million in December 2006 to 205 million in March 2007, an increase of 8% during the quarter. Year-on-year growth is even higher, with total telephone subscribers having grown by 46% since March 2006, mostly due to stunning growth in the mobile market, with over 5 million new mobile subscribers being added each month and 6.6 million mobile subscribers during the month of May 2007 alone. (For a comparison of April 2007/May 2007 results, please see here).

Intriguingly, trends in mobile Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) are mixed. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India reports that the all-India blended ARPU for GSM services fell by 5.7% from Rs 316 in December 2006 to Rs 298 in March 2007, while the all-India blended ARPU for CDMA services grew by 3.1% from Rs 196 to Rs 202 over the same period.

The number of broadband subscribers (with connections at speeds in excess of 256 kbit/s) grew by 13.8% over the first quarter of 2007 to 2.34 million at 31 March 2007.

These performance indicators confirm that the impressive growth in the Indian telecom market is continuing. Such growth is contributing to progress towards the milestone of half the world's population having access to a mobile phone, a milestone that ITU expects will be achieved before the end of this year.

For access to all recent press releases by the TRAI, please see here.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) are jointly holding a meeting of high-level experts to identify key trends and to address the new technological and policy challenges in the digital content delivery environment.

To view the ITU/EBU conference via webcam, click here.

More information about this meeting can be found here.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) will jointly organize a Meeting of High-Level Experts on “Competitive Platforms for the Delivery of Digital Content” to identify global trends and to address the new technological and policy challenges in the digital content delivery environment.

ITU Member States, EBU Membership, meeting participants and other interested parties are encouraged to send in their competitive platforms for digital content related contributions to the meeting at digitalcontent@itu.int

Click here to see the meeting agenda.

Onlline registration is available here.

Information about this meeting can be found here.

 

 

 

 

The European Association for the Co-ordination of Consumer Representation in Standardisation (ANEC) held its General Assembly on 1 June 2007 in Brussels. For the first time, the group considered issues relating to RFID and digital identity, and in particular the impact that these technologies may have on consumer interests. ITU's Lara Srivastava spoke at the assembly, emphasizing the need for a better understanding of the wide-reaching implications of RFID and the development of global solutions to the digital identity problem. Her presentation is available here.

By the start of 2007, some 79 economies around the world had launched commercial services for "mobile broadband", or cellular mobile services offering speeds of 256 kbit/s or more, with 18 of these economies launching during 2006. Popularly referred to as third-generation (3G) mobile, there are now more 100 million users worldwide that are able to use their mobile phones at broadband speeds. Across the world, there are two main technologies in operation: CDMA 1x EV-DO (which is used in 30 economies, mainly in the Americas and Europe) and W-CDMA (which is used in almost 50 economies, and is particularly popular in Europe). Around half of the economies using W-CDMA have now also launched High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) which offers much faster speeds, up to 14.4 Mbit/s.

The new figures were announced by ITU iand UNCTAD n the second edition of the annual "World Information Society Report", which was launched on May 16 2007. The full text of the report is available online at www.itu.int/wisr. The report tracks progress in narrowing the digital divide and implementing the commitments made at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).

Robert Alan Soloway, 27, was indicted this week by a US federal grand jury on 35 counts that include mail fraud, wire fraud, fraud in connection with electronic mail, aggravated identity theft and money laundering. Accused of being one of the Internet's most notorious spammers, he is currently being held without bail.

Soloway is the first spammer in the nation to be charged with aggravated identity theft under the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003.

See the Reuters story here.  

The Internet Society of New Zealand (InternetNZ) has recently released the ISP Spam Code of Practice for public consultation. The Code is posted on the InternetNZ website. Four weeks have been allowed for comment to be received, with a deadline of 18 June 2007.

The Code has been prepared by a working group comprising representatives of the Telecommunications Carriers’ Forum, the Marketing Association, and InternetNZ. According to the website, InternetNZ executive director Keith Davidson says the preparation of the Code is an excellent example of how the industry is working together to fight a common enemy. "Spam is clogging up our inboxes, soaking up our bandwidth, and providing vectors for scams and malware." "The ISP Spam Code of Practice recognises that Service Providers can assist in the minimisation of Spam through their technical approach, by being a first port of call for information and complaints from internet users, and by working with law enforcement agencies."

The ISP Spam Code of Practice is complementary to the New Zealand government’s Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act in that it outlines the responsibilities of ISPs under a self-regulatory model. This was anticipated in the passing of the Act. It is planned that the Code will go live on the same date as the Act of 5 September 2007. It is also complementary to the Marketing Association’s Code of Practice for Direct Marketing, the TCF’s SMS Ant-Spam Code and the TCF’s Customer Complaints Code.

See the Internet Society of New Zealand website for further details.

Under the aegis of the Shaping Tomorrow’s Networks Initiative and in line with the stated objectives of the WSIS Geneva Declaration of Principles (December 2003), which affirms “…the common desire and commitment to build a people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society, where everyone can create, access, utilize and share information and knowledge, enabling individuals, communities and peoples to achieve their full potential in promoting their sustainable development and improving their quality of life…” the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) will jointly organize a Meeting of High-Level Experts on “Competitive Platforms for the Delivery of Digital Content” to identify global trends and to address the new technological and policy challenges in the digital content delivery environment.

ITU Member States, EBU Membership, meeting participants and other interested parties are encouraged to send in their competitive platforms for digital content related contributions to the meeting at digitalcontent@itu.int 

To register for the upcoming ITU/EBU Meeting of High-Level Experts on Competitive Platforms for the Delivery of Digital Content, please click here or contact Ms. Cristina Bueti at digitalcontent@itu.int

More information about this meeting is available here.

ITU and UNCTAD are delighted to announce the publication of the World Information Society Report 2007, published on 16 May 2007. The Report seeks to benchmark progress in meeting the WSIS targets, to be achieved by 2015 at the latest, and evaluates the evolution of the digital divide. It presents 200 pages of analysis of the latest trends in ICTs, exploring whether consumers are 'cutting the cord', the death of dial-up and growth in broadband and 3G. It evaluates the digital divide using a variety of techniques and finds that the strong growth of mobile telephony offers the greatest potential to bridge the digital divide.

Using the methodologies endorsed by the World Summit on the Information Society, it finds strong growth in digital opportunity around the world. Asian and European countries continue to lead in digital opportunity, but there are shining examples of strong progress in the take-up of ICTs in Africa - five of the ten top gainers in digital opportunity are African economies. Last year's World Information Society Report benchmarked the gender divide and regional divides. This year's Report uses the Digital Opportunity Index to benchmark gaps in access and use of ICTs by different age groups in the age divide in Singapore.

Growth of the Information Society is not without risks, however, and online security threats remain a cause for concern, however. Building confidence and security in the use of ICTs was a key aim of WSIS, and the report examines the evolution in cyberthreats, including spam, spyware, botnets, identity theft, breaches of privacy and other risks associated with online transactions.

The Report also examines national strategies that various countries have adopted to promote growth in ICT development, illustrating these with reference to a wealth of country case studies. It presents examples of successful projects promoting WSIS implementation around the world. The Report combines theory with authoritative analysis from the ITU and UNCTAD and country examples from around the world. It is due to be presented to the UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development, holding its Tenth Panel Meeting in Geneva next week to discuss progress in WSIS implementation.

For more information, please see here. Articles will follow all next week, to highlight different aspects of the Report.

A United States House of Representatives subcommittee approved a bill on spyware this week, which recommends up to five years in prison for convicted distributors of malicious spyware.

Past versions of the Internet Spyware Prevention Act have failed to pass a vote in the United States Senate. Observers have pointed out, however, that the increasing militancy among users fed up with unwanted software intrusion may make this latest attempt more successful. And there is a lot at stake. Creating trust in the internet will ensure its future development. More on this story is available here.

The ITU is taking a leading role in cybersecurity initiatives, particularly in light of calls for global action made at the World Summit on the Information Society. More information on ITU's work in this area is available here.

Orange UK has followed other major UK operators in simplifying its data charging tariffs.

Unmetered data access is now available, even to those on pre-paid contracts.

However, the operator has stated that the service constitutes a "browsing service" rather than "internet access", which means that it leaves room for blocking any services it does not like.

Unlike Vodafone, Orange seems to accept the impossibility of enforcing restrictions. Nonetheless, the operator says: "We would discourage any customer from using VoIP through the mobile internet due to the quality of service they may experience. We are looking to launch our own high quality IM service in the next few months which will deliver a far superior customer experience to currently available services. Our terms and conditions will state that the bundle should not be used for these services."

See the full story in The Register here.

See also the ITU New Initiatives Workshop on the Future of Voice (January 2007)

According to a recent Press Realease by The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), Singapore is already looking into a new five-year infocomm security roadmap (2008-2012) as it embarks on the final year of the current three-year Infocomm Security Masterplan (2005-2008). The Infocomm Security Masterplan was launched on 22 February 2005 as a strategic roadmap to chart Singapore's national efforts in developing capabilities to prevent cyber-security incidents and protect the critical infrastructure from cyber-threats. According to Dr. Vivian Balakrishnan, Second Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts, Singapore "cannot afford to be complacent, especially with new and dangerous threats evolving and growing at such an alarming rate. Instead of simply taking one step forward, we need to be many steps ahead in our efforts to combat cyber threats."

Providing a glimpse of the new five-year Masterplan to be launched in 2008, Dr. Balakrishnan shared that the new infocomm security roadmap will build on Singapore's existing efforts to focus on more international collaborations to improve Singapore's ability to combat cyber threats. The collaborations will look into knowledge exchanges and regular communication between governments on cyber threat trends and protection of critical infrastructure. When launched in 2008, the new security roadmap will also secure Singapore's ultra high-speed and pervasive Next Generation National Infocomm Infrastructure (NGNII) to provide a secure and trusted environment for the creation of new value-added services such as location-based marketing, goods tracking and localised information services and the pervasive adoption of online services such as those in the area of banking, healthcare and education.

Under the current Masterplan, the government has developed various security initiatives to equip public officers with more timely information and knowledge to assess and improve on their cyber defence. This allows them to better protect, detect and respond to cyber threats. An example is the Cyber-WatchCentre which monitors cyber threats real-time and round-the-clock. By mid 2008, the centre will ensure end-to-end security for all public officers, allowing government agencies to better anticipate cyber attacks and respond to them speedily.

For more information on these inititiatives, view the IDA Press Release.

Under the aegis of the Shaping Tomorrow’s Networks Initiative and in line with the stated objectives of the WSIS Geneva Declaration of Principles (December 2003), which affirms “…the common desire and commitment to build a people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society, where everyone can create, access, utilize and share information and knowledge, enabling individuals, communities and peoples to achieve their full potential in promoting their sustainable development and improving their quality of life…” the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) will jointly organize a High-Level Experts Meeting on “Competitive Platforms for Digital Content” to identify global trends and to address the new technological and policy challenges in the digital content delivery environment.

ITU Member States, EBU Membership, meeting participants and other interested parties are encouraged to send in their competitive platforms for digital content related contributions to the meeting at digitalcontent@itu.int

More information about the Call for Papers is available here.

More information about the Meeting can be found here or by contacting Cristina Bueti at digitalcontent@itu.int  

An International Telecommunication Union (ITU) delegation headed by ITU Secretary General Hamadoun I. Touré visited European Broadcasting Union (EBU) headquarters in Geneva today. The delegation met with EBU Secretary General Jean Réveillon, Phil Laven, Stefan Kürten and Giacomo Mazzone and visited EBU headquarters and Eurovision.

In the afternoon future common activities were discussed and a letter of intent was signed by the EBU and the ITU confirming both Unions' commitment to work collaboratively on a number of inititatives and activities in relation to the implementation of the plan of Action of the WSIS (World Summit for the Information Society.)

                                   

A high-level experts meeting, jointly organised by the ITU and the EBU and entitled “Competitive Platforms for Digital Content”, will take place at EBU headquarters on 21 and 22 June 2007.

The main aim of this meeting is to identify global trends and to address the new technological and policy challenges in the digital content delivery environment.

Click here for more information on this meeting.

EBU press release is availble here.

 

The second edition of the World Information Society Report: Beyond WSIS is going to be launched on the occasion of the World Information Society Day on 16 May 2007.

Published by ITU and UNCTAD, this report looks beyond the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS, Geneva 2003 - Tunis 2005) to the creation of an inclusive, people-centered and development-oriented Information Society, open to all. Some of the themes covered in the report are: the evolution of the digital divide, trends in the information society, ICT growth strategies, cybersecurity and WSIS implementation. The report tracks progress in digital opportunity for 181 economies over the past few years since the start of the WSIS process and is accompanied by a series of tables providing the latest statistics on the development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) worldwide.

The report has been created by the “Digital Opportunity Platform”, an open multi-stakeholder platform with contributions from governments, private sector, academics and civil society, as well as inter-governmental organizations.

More information on the forthcoming publication will be made available on its website in due course.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) are jointly organizing a high-level experts meeting to identify global trends and to address the new technological and policy challenges in the digital content delivery environment.

This meeting is being held under the "Shaping Tomorrow's Networks Initiative" and in line with the stated objectives of the WSIS Tunis Commitment (November 2005), “…[recognizing] in addition to building ICT infrastructure, there should be adequate emphasis on developing human capacity and creating ICT applications and digital content in local language, where appropriate, so as to ensure a comprehensive approach to building a global Information Society ….”

The ITU/EBU High-Level Experts Meeting on "Competitive Platforms for Digital Content" will be held from 21 to 22 June 2007 at EBU Headquarters, Geneva, Switzerland.

Please note that the meeting will be conducted in English only.

More information about the meeting can be found here or by contacting us at digitalcontent@itu.int

More information about Shaping Tomorrow's Networks Initiative can be found here.

The Commission on 9 March has unveiled an updated text of the modernised "Television without Frontiers" Directive. After a first reading in the European Parliament and the Council, there is now broad agreement with the Commission about the future legal framework for Europe's audiovisual sector.

The new rules, which have been called for especially by the European Parliament, are a response to technological developments and create a new level-playing field in Europe for emerging audiovisual media services (video on demand, mobile TV, audiovisual services on digital TV). European TV- and filmmakers will be given more flexibility to produce digital content which they can then make freely available to consumers thanks to advertising.

The new Directive reaffirms the pillars of Europe's audiovisual model, which are cultural diversity, protection of minors, consumer protection, media pluralism, and the fight against racial and religious hatred. The Commission also proposes to ensure the independence of national media regulators. The modified proposal will be adopted in the third week of March.

More information can be found here.

The Indian Merchants' Chamber held its 5th international conference on communications convergence on 16-17 March 2007 in Mumbai, focusing on the theme: new technologies, new business horizons (webcast).

Speakers included, among others, J. Patil (Minister for Finance and Planning), S. Pitroda, V. Bhatkar (Chairman, ETH Research Lab), R.A. Mashelkar (Former Director-General, CSIR), N. Rupani (Chairman, Enkay Technologies), R. Patel (Chairman, Bombay Stock Exchange Ltd), S. Chowdury (CIO, Reliance Communications Ltd), K. Goyal (Chief General Manager, BSNL) and K. Dasgupta (CEO, Sony Entertainment Television Pvt. Ltd).

ITU's Lara Srivastava delivered a talk in the plenary session entitled "communications convergence and the new global village". Her presentation is available here.

 

 

Kaspersky Lab, a developer of secure content management solutions, recently announced its annual report on malware and spam evolution. The report, authored by Kaspersky Lab analysts, surveys the trends of 2006 and looks at what 2007 may bring.

Malware Evolution: 2006. The report provides an overview of the most important incidents in the malware world, highlights the main trends, and examines how the situation will evolve. Particular stress is laid on the continuing increase in the number of Trojan programs, particularly those designed to steal online gaming account data; the first viruses and worms for MacOS; and Trojans for J2ME, which are designed to steal funds from mobile user accounts. The number of new malicious programs was up 41% on 2005. As for the future evolution of malicious programs, Kaspersky Lab virus analysts believe that virus writers and spammers will work ever more closely together; the number of Trojans will continue to increase; and that virus writers will be on the lookout for exploitable vulnerabilities in Vista.

Spam Evolution: 2006. Data provided by the Kaspersky Spam Lab shows that in 2006, between 70% and 80% of mail traffic on the Russian Internet was spam. The majority of spam sent to Russian users originates in Russia, the U.S.A. and China. Spammers actively used graphics in order to evade spam filters. They are also continued to send spam masquerading as personal correspondence in order to get the recipient to read the whole message and then act as the spammers intended, whether by calling a designated number or clicking on a link. The report on spam evolution also highlights how mass mailings differ from each other according to language: most Russian language spam offers education and training, and a wide range of goods ranging from busts of the Russian president to a device which will 'translate' a dog's bark. English language spam, on the other hand, tends to focus on advertising for stocks and shares, viagra and cheap software. The report also notes that spam became increasingly criminalized in 2006, with spammers actively using SMS to spread spam.

The company's analysts believe that technologies currently in use will continue to evolve in 2007, together with further development of graphical spam, and increased criminalization of mass mailings.

Read the executive summaries here: Malware Evolution: 2006 and Spam Evolution: 2006.
The full annual report can be found here.  

This news item was accessed through Russia Newswire.

ITU-T Study Group 2’s February meeting saw work continue on harmonizing numbering resources for child helplines. Study Group 2 is looking at the issue following a request from Child Helpline International (CHI). CHI is a global network of telephone helplines and outreach services for children and young people.

Specifically Study Group 2 is looking at the logistics of providing a global number. It previously conducted a survey which discovered that a wide range of numbers are in use globally and that there is support in many countries for studying a more harmonized solution. A review process will be an initial assessment of all of the various options for introducing childrens’ helplines. The fundamental question is whether a single number can be deployed worldwide. Other issues include how regulators will handle migration from existing services and who pays for the services.

See the Study Group 2 website and ITU-T Newslog for further information.

On 21 February 2007, MTN South Africa reduced rates on its broadband data contracts and data bundles by as much as 20%. MTN customers can now also pay as little as 20c per MB when buying the 1GB data contract or data bundle. The offer applies to both contract and Pay as you Go customers on extended 24-month contracts.  With this price reduction, MTN "aims to bring mobile data within reach of a larger portion of our population”, according to MTN's marketing manager, Mr. Donovan Smith. MTN has also added a 500 MB bundle to its packages and now offers 10MB, 100MB, 350MB, 500 MB and 1GB bundles.

Broadband service providers in South Africa are innovating with a greater range of packages, pay-as-you-go or contract options, extended contracts and 'shaped' or 'unshaped' offers (by Telkom, offering prioritisation of certain protocols in traffic over others).  It is hoped that this will do more to boost the number of broadband subscribers in South Africa, which was second to Morocco in 2005 and 2006, from near equality in the total number of broadband subscribers at the end of 2004.

For more information, please see here.

The SHA-1 algorithm, which has been widely used in many of today's mainstream security products since 1995, was significantly compromised in February 2005 by a team of researchers led by Xiaoyun Wang based at China’s Shandong University. (This team had already undertaken attacks against the MD5 and SHA: hash functions previously, prior to their attack on SHA-1).

Their success prompted calls for a replacement algorithm. The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology had already announced that they planned to phase out the use of SHA-1 by 2010 in favour of the SHA-2 variants. The need for a replacement algorithm has now led NIST to launch a contest to devise a successor on 27 January 2007. The competition is to begin in the fall of 2008, and continue until 2011, with full completion and approval by 2012. Contests like this one have a promising history in cryptography. Notably, the Advanced Encryption Standard (devised as a more secure replacement to the prior Data Encryption Standard) was devised through an open competition between fifteen teams of cryptographers between 1997-2000.

The 2007 ITU Young Minds in Telecoms Competition has just been launched.

The ITU Young Minds in Telecoms Competition is open to graduate students and recent graduates in economics, political science, law, literature, telecommunications, computer science, information systems and related fields. The objective of the ITU Young Minds Programme is to give young people valuable exposure to the international telecommunication environment and to the work of the ITU. The first Young Minds in Telecoms Competition was launched by the ITU Strategy and Policy Unit (SPU) in 2005. Information on the winners and runner-ups for the 2005 and 2006 competitions are available on the Young Minds in Telecoms website. One of the main criteria for evaluation is the submission of an essay and those essays that were highly-ranked in the evaluation process have been made available on the Young Minds in Telecoms site.

The essay topics for the 2007 ITU Young Minds in Telecoms competition are:

• What do you understand by the concept of technological convergence and what are its key trends?
• In your view, what are (1) the main benefits arising from technological convergence as they relate to the information and communication technologies (ICTs) sector? (e.g. new devices, new applications, new services etc.), and (2) the biggest challenges brought about by technological convergence? (e.g. regulatory challenges, cybersecurity threats, socio-ethical implications etc.).
• How can we ensure that the drawbacks of convergence do not outweigh its benefits?

See details on how to take part in the 2007 Young Minds in Telecoms competition here.

The New York Times has published an article on the early moves by European governments to implement the European Union Data Retention Directive.  The initial programs proposed by the governments of Germany and the Netherlands are more stringent than the directive requires.  The New York Times has noted that some of the people involved in this issue are concerned that these programs may represent a policy shift within Europe, which has traditionally followed a policy of protecting individuals' privacy rights.

More information can be found here.

The New York Times article can be found here.

The European Commission published a Communication entitled "Rapid access to spectrum for wireless electronic communications services through more flexibility".

The Communication builds on the Commission's close cooperation with Member States within the Radio Spectrum Policy Group. It sets out practical steps for a more flexible approach to spectrum management, starting with the identification of several spectrum bands in which current regulatory restrictions need urgent investigation.

More information can be found here.

This summary provides a general discussion of the amended Information Network and Privacy Protection Act (“INPPA”) of Korea. INPPA sets out the minimum procedural requirements for lawful online transmissions in Korea whereby transmissions of advertised materials against recipients’ refusal to accept are strictly prohibited. Although these rules are applicable to unsolicited commercial e-mails via the internet, they were intended to apply to all modes of telecommunication such as cellular phones, facsimiles, etc.

The Korean government has made continuing efforts since 1999 to curb the increase in spam mail and has since been monitoring the effectiveness of the implementation of additional provisions. The new law targets senders of spam mail that are commercial in nature. Consistent with its effort to protect minors from being exposed to obscene and violent materials online, the Korean government has also included a provision in the INPPA that requires senders to label those materials as such.

More information can be found here. 

Telecom Lesotho is seeking to introduce ADSL, on the basis that high-speed access will improve Internet service provision in Lesotho. It has applied to the Lesotho Telecommunications Authority, which has initiated a Public Consultation on its proposed tariffs, closing today. The launch of ADSL in Lesotho would bring the number of African countries with high-speed Internet access (over either DSL or dedicated leased lines) to thirty-five so far this year, up from thirty last year.

For more information, please see here.

An unlicensed model, tradable rights and standards regarding the service and technology neutrality, within a very clear framework, are the key principals for a future European policy on radio spectrum, says the European Parliament in an own-initiative report drafted by Fiona HALL (ALDE, UK) and almost unanimously adopted.

Fiona HALL said: "Creating a more flexible approach to radio spectrum management is essential. European innovation in wireless technology will be held back unless more efficient use is made of spectrum. At the heart of this debate is the Lisbon agenda of growth and jobs. It's important not to get this political commitment mixed up with the technical issue of how such services ought to be delivered. It be a big mistake to ring-fence the frequencies currently used by broadcasting services by insisting on their exclusion from any new approach to spectrum management."

More information can be found here. 

On 3 February 2007, the Afghan Ministry of Communications issued two regional Local Fixed Service Provider (LFSP) licenses, in accordance with the Government's telecommunication and ICT policies. The first license of this kind was issued for seven northern provinces in May 2006 to Wasel Telecom, the Afghani arm of Dubai-based Modern Technologies International. The two further licenses have been issued to Shaheen and Ertebat telecommunication companies. It is hoped that these licenses will stimulate the telecom market, reduce prices and increase subscribers.

For more information, please click here.

High-speed residential Internet access is reaching Africa, with the launch of 2 and 4 Mbps broadband offers in 2006 by the Moroccan ISP Casanet, a 100%-owned subsidiary of Maroc Telecom, through its portal Menara.

Maroc Telecom has just released its annual results for 2006, with around 384,000 ADSL subscribers, the lion's share of Morocco's broadband market. The Moroccan regulator is seeking to partially unbundle the local loop. New entrants such as Meditel and Maroc Connect will be able to use the incumbent's copper cable to offer alternative ADSL services in competition with Maroc Telecom’s offers.

The roll-out of a 4 Mbps offer is just part of the march of higher-speed offers throughout Africa (see graph below).

This analysis is part of the this year's World Information Society Report, to be published on World Information Society Day, 17 May 2007.

The Chairman’s Report from the ITU New Initiatives Programme workshop on "What Rules for IP-enabled NGNs?", held in March 2006 in the ITU Headquarter, is available on the event's web-page.

To download the document, please click here. 

An international conference on the impact of technology on society was held in Geneva, Switzerland, from 7-9 February. LIFT 2007 welcomed more than 40 international speakers, from F. Devouard (Chair, Wikipedia) to Jaewoong Lee (Founder, Daum Communications).

Sessions included, among others: technological overload, digital divide, the social web, post-industrial worlds, from robots to cyborgs, perspectives on ubiquitous computing, technological opportunities for society. In this latter session, ITU's Lara Srivastava gave a presentation on "communication technologies and new forms of social interaction". 

Lara Srivastava also participated as a panelist in the session "Digital Divide: Bringing it Home". Her presentation entitled "digital divide, digital disconnect" is available here.

The conference includes a LIFT + feature, a living and creative platform intended to develop new ideas through the active interaction of participants.

More information about LIFT can be found here.

 

The Chairman’s Report (Version for Comments) from the ITU New Initiatives Programme workshop on The Future of Voice, held January 15-16, 2007 in the ITU Headquarter, has been made available for comments on the event's web-page.

To download the document, please click here. 

All comments and remarks, to be reflected in the final version of the Chairman’s Report should be sent via email to SPUmail@itu.int no later than the 19th February 2007.

 

Under the "Shaping Tomorrow's Networks Project" and in line with the stated objectives of the WSIS Tunis Agenda for the Information Society (November 2005), that “… ITU and other regional organisations should take steps to ensure rational, efficient and economic use of, and equitable access to, the radio-frequency spectrum by all countries ….”, ITU and the Ugo Bordoni Foundation (Italy) jointly organized a workshop to identify global trends and good practice in radio spectrum management.

The Workshop on "Market Mechanisms for Spectrum Management" was held from 22 to 23 January 2007 at ITU Headquarters, Geneva, Switzerland.  

In preparation for the workshop a Background Resources Website on Spectrum Management was created. This website aims to provide a number of background resources on regional and national initiatives as well as some background information on spectrum management policy and regulation in general.

Background papers as well as Contributions to the workshop can be found here.

To download the Speaker's Presentations, please click here.

Link to Workshop Webcast Archives is available here.

More information about the Shaping Tomorrow’s Networks Project can be found here.

More information about the workshop can be found here.

See the full ITU Press Release for the event here.

We would like to inform all workshop participants that the Chairman's Report will be made available at the event website in the next few weeks.

According to a recent article in The Register, two young Dutch hackers who built a large botnet were sentenced to prison earlier this week. The main suspect, now 20, was handed a two-year sentence and a €9,000 f($11,800) fine, while his 28-year-old partner was given 18 months and ordered to pay €4,000 0 ($5,200).

As stated by the article, the men, part of a larger hacking ring, and one other suspect, were arrested in 2005 for extorting a US company, stealing identities to purchase cameras and games consoles, and distribute spyware. The operation netted an estimated €60,000 over a period of six months.

Read the full The Register article here.

Two resolutions relating to cybersecurity and defining ITU's activity in that domain were adopted by ITU Member States at its Plenipotentiary Conference in Antalya, Turkey, held in November 2006. These are:

• RESOLUTION 130 (Rev. Antalya, 2006): Strengthening the role of ITU in building confidence and security in the use of information and communication technologies
  
• RESOLUTION 149 (Antalya, 2006): Study of definitions and terminology relating to building confidence and security in the use of information and communication technologies

14-15 May 2007 The ITU has a new Secretary-General, Dr. Hamadoun Toure, who has indicated in his first public statements and to senior ITU staff that he considers cybersecurity and particularly follow-up to WSIS Action Line C5 to be a key strategic area of focus for future ITU activities.

The next annual facilitation/consultation meeting for WSIS Action Line C5 will be held 14-15 May 2007 at ITU in Geneva in conjunction with a cluster of events to be organized around 17 May (World Telecommunication and Information Society Day).  The meeting is open to all participants with an interest in C5 activities. More details concerning the draft agenda and administrative arrangements for the event will be circulated shortly along with a list of other WSIS-related meetings to be held 14-25 May 2005 in Geneva.

Further information will be posted at the WSIS C5: Partnerships for Global Cybersecurity website. Enquiries can be directed to cybersecurity@itu.int.

The European Parliament held an STOA Workshop on "RFID in the everyday life of Europeans: A citizen's perspective on ambient intelligence" on 24 January 2007. The workshop was organized as part of the project "RFID and identity management: Case Studies from the frontline of the development towards ambient intelligence" commissioned by the Scientific Technology Options Assessment (STOA) Panel of the European Parliament, and carried out by the European Technology Assessment Group.

ITU's Lara Srivastava delivered a presentation on the topic "Is our enviroment getting smarter? Are we". Her presentation is available here. 

The ITU New Initiatives workshop The Future of Voice (15-16 January 2007, Geneva) discussed, inter alia, the regulatory implications of the development of voice communications. A background report Regulatory Trends: New enabling environment framed the debate. Authors of the paper are Andy Banerjee from Analysis Group Inc, Gary Madden and Joachim Tan from CEEM at Curtin University of Technology, Australia.

In a few short decades, radical changes in technology, market institutions, and regulatory and competition policy have transformed telecommunications markets. Telecommunications service traditionally meant voice communication. However, with the deployment of triple play, the phenomenon of convergence has emerged as both the principal offspring and driver of the technology-market-policy triad. Convergence is bringing together previously disparate communication services, content, and consumer market segments. This phenomenon raises questions about the future of communications and, in particular, about that of voice communication.

The authors maintain the hypotheses that: the future of voice communication will be the future of all forms of electronic communication; and the market will most likely be served by a combination of broadband technologies, prominent among them end-to-end fibre (wireline) and 3G (wireless) technologies (and their successors). In this context, the central question is: how must regulatory policy change to facilitate such a future? Specific regulatory or policy reforms in future communications markets marked by convergence and intermodal competition must be guided by the dynamic efficiency principle.

First, when the last mile access bottleneck disappears, regulatory focus should shift from the terms on which service and content providers can gain access to end users towards ensuring interconnection among IP networks, and between IP networks and access networks. Peering or bill and keep arrangements may suffice, in the absence of significant asymmetry in cross-network traffic patterns, for most forms of interconnection.

Second, any blanket network neutrality rule should be resisted. While undue discrimination may still need to be monitored and rooted out, traditional common carrier regulations accompanied by a blanket network neutrality rule can actually prove to be counter-productive.

Third, regulatory authorities must redesign licensing regimes to adapt to new market realities created by convergence and intermodal competition. Such licensing regimes should not favour the emergence of a particular technology or service but rather allow the market to make those decisions.

Finally, regulation for the future voice environment must mean prudent applications of discretionary policies. Those policies may include: providing incentives to develop and deploy small-scale, modular, and scalable broadband technologies; providing opportunities and systems for aggregating demand for broadband services; constraining international mobile roaming charges to encourage roaming and international voice communication demand; rejecting mandatory MVNO access to the networks of incumbent mobile operators unless specific market failure warrants such access; encouraging pricing models that recognise the multi-sided nature of emerging broadband markets; and renewing global efforts to control spam.

Within the framework of the ITU New Initiatives Programme event on The Future of Voice held from 15-16 January 2007 in ITU Headquarter, Geneva, Mr Wolfgang Reichl, ÖFEG, Austria, submitted an interesting discussion material on "Balancing Innovation and Preservation in Telephony"

In paper's abstract Mr Reichl writes: Telephony might become just another application on the Internet. To examine if this is a likely or even desireable future, is the topic of this article. Everyone used to know what telephony is but with the appearance of software applications like Skype it isn't that easy anymore. Telephony in the traditional sense is interactive voice conversation between two people connected to a global network. When we talk about connectivity to a global network today, we envisage the Internet and when we talk about telephony, it is mobile telephony. The technological platform for telecommunications seems to evolve towards a common data network for all applications. The service specific silo-like networks convert towards a layered network architecture. When the underlying technology changes it remains critical to entangle the telephony application from technology. This article tries to find a clear seperation between application and technology and explores innovations of the telephony application in the light of convergence of computers, media and telecommunications. Innovations should be balanced against society's needs to preserve a world wide network for voice communications.

To download the paper, please click here.

After the ITU New Initiatives Programme event on the Future of Voice held on 15-16 January 2007 in ITU Headquarter, David Allen provided his direct comment on few issues discussed during the meeting.

To see video material, please click here.

 

ITU is hosting a Workshop on “Market Mechanisms for Spectrum Management” in collaboration with the Ugo Bordoni Foundation (Italy), 22-23 January 2007.

The dramatic increase in demands for radio spectrum from every industry segment – from broadcasters, wireless carriers or satellite providers to emerging unlicensed services or even the public safety and homeland security community – has highlighted the critical importance of spectrum management and related spectrum issues. This timely conference will present an unusually broad and deep look at the full range of issues affecting today’s “spectrum wars”.

Furthermore, in light of the work being carried out under the Shaping Tomorrow’s Networks Programme this workshop will serve as a basis of discussion for possible future approaches, in line with recent technological developments, attempting to provide realistic forecasts in an increasingly ubiquitous, user centric and converged telecommunication environment.

The Advance Programme for the workshop is now on-line, and will be regularly updated.

More information about the Shaping Tomorrow’s Networks Programme can be found here.

All presentations can be found here.

More information about the international workshop on the topic can be found here.

See the full ITU Press Release for the event here.

The ITU workshop The Future of Voice held on the 15^th and 16^th of January 2007 in Geneva, Switzerland looked, inter alia, at the voice traffic and revenue trends in the last fifteen years.

On the global level, local and national long-distance reported telephone minutes per capita were growing in the 1990s and stably falling since the beginning of the new decade. A notable exception of the general rule is the US experiencing continuous growth in the number of local minutes: in 15 years, the number of local minutes per capita has grown four-fold. The international outgoing traffic grew significantly over the last fifteen years: in the Republic of Korea, in 2005 it was 15 times more intensive than in 1990, in the US – five times. Even though, since the beginning of the new century, the international voice traffic tends to slowly decrease.

If we look at the global telecom revenue, we will see the stable global expansion of the sector over the whole period. Voice revenue as a percentage of the total remains stable, while the traffic generated by users has doubled. In 2004, as in 1991, voice constituted more than 80% of telecom revenue surpassing, by far, income from any other source. In the coming years, voice is expected to stay strong driven by falling prices and increasing volumes of traffic.

What are the drivers behind these trends? Enlarged number of users, competition and market liberalization, enhanced innovation and emerging alternative communication platforms, migration to all-IP environment or all of these and more? The dynamics of development of the telecom sector is driven today by multiple factors in an increasingly complex environment both in developed and developing countries. Pressures are forcing change at different levels – market, regulation, type of technology, framed by the shift towards the emerging global economy.

For more insights of the debate on the future of voice, see the complete presentation of Tim Kelly, Head and Jaroslaw Ponder, Policy Analyst of the Strategy & Policy Unit of ITU.

More presentations and background materials on the subject can be found at the Future of Voice website.

For the purposes of the New Initiative Programme event on The Future of Voice, held on 15-16 January 2007 in ITU Headquarters, five background papers as well as four regional studies have been developed and presented for comments. In order to access documents, please click on the links below.

Background Papers

• "Innovation Dynamics in the IP Environment" by Dr. Knud Erik Skouby and Dr. Reza Tadayoni
• "The Future of Communications in Next Generation Networks" by Dr. James Alleman and Dr. Paul Rappoport
• "Regulatory Trends: New Enabling Environment" by Dr. Aniruddha Banerjee, Dr. Gary Madden, and Joachim Tan
• "The Status of Voice over Internet Protocol Worldwide, 2006" by Phillippa Biggs
• "The Future of Voice: Consumer Issues" by Ewan Sutherland

Regional Case Studies

• "Future of Voice in Africa" by Russell Southwood
• "Communications: Government and Business Practices in the Asia Pacific Region" by Khelia Johnson and Oluwaseun Oyeyipo
• "Regulatory Challenges of Voice over IP Telephony: Analysis for Selected South and Eastern European Countries" by Anna Riedel
• "Ruling Voice over IP: Challenges for Regulators in Latin America"

ITU held a workshop entitled The Future of Voice on the 15^th and 16^th of January 2007 at its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. This workshop organized under the ITU New Initiatives Programme focused on the role of voice communications in the future ubiquitous network environment.

For a long time, voice services have been the principal driver of telecommunication revenue and will probably continue to drive demand for some time. Nevertheless, it is becoming harder to sustain traditional models of per-minute pricing for voice as the service is increasingly carried over data channels that are priced on a flat-rate basis. Some of the key issues discussed during the event include:

• How are voice services evolving and what does this mean for users, providers and the telecommunication industry as a whole?
• How will fixed, mobile and internet-based phone services converge?
• How does messaging, gaming, multimedia fit in?
• Are voice services of the future most likely to be billed by the minute, by volume, or on a flat rate basis?
• What regulatory freedom should be given to operators to bundle voice with other services (e.g., multiple play: voice, video, internet and mobility)?
• What form of licensing, if any, will be necessary for voice service providers?
• What will be the new business models and revenue streams?
• What are the residual universal service obligations (e.g. emergency calls) that should be imposed on voice providers?

All presentations and background papers as well as a web archive of the event (video and audio) are available on the workshop website.

Several Internet-related Decisions and Resolutions were adopted at the ITU 2006 Plenipotentiary Conference. These include:

• DECISION GT-PLEN/A (Antalya, 2006): Fourth World Telecommunication Policy Forum
• RESOLUTION 101 (Rev. Antalya, 2006): Internet Protocol-based networks
• RESOLUTION 102 (Rev. Antalya, 2006): ITU’s role with regard to international public policy issues pertaining to the Internet and the management of Internet resources, including domain names and addresses
• RESOLUTION 130 (Rev. Antalya, 2006): Strengthening the role of ITU in building confidence and security in the use of information and communication technologies
• RESOLUTION 133 (Rev. Antalya, 2006): Role of administrations of Member States in the management of internationalized (multilingual) domain names
• RESOLUTION GT-PLEN/7 (Antalya, 2006): Study on the participation of all relevant stakeholders in the activities of the Union related to the World Summit on the Information Society

The text of these resolutions and decisions can be found here.

A presentation entitled Update on ITU Cybersecurity and Countering Spam Activities (PDF), was made by Robert Shaw, Deputy Head, ITU Strategy and Policy Unit, at the 2nd Joint London Action Plan (LAP) - EU Contact Network of Spam Authorities (CNSA) meeting on 13-14 December in Brussels.

At the same event, Mark Sunner of MessageLabs gave a presentation entitled Security Landscape Update describing the latest kinds of security threats, including the emergence of a new peer-to-peer 'SpamThru' zombie botnet (Slide 7).

The 8^th edition of the ITU Internet Reports, entitled "digital.life" was prepared especially for ITU TELECOM World 2006 (December 4-8 2006, Hong Kong). The report examines how innovation in digital technology is radically changing individual and societal lifestyles.

Chapter five, Living the digital world, concludes the report by examining the social impacts of digital technologies and imagining how lifestyles might further evolve in the digital age.

The telecommunications industry began as a digital-only world. Between the invention of the telephone, in 1876, and the development of the first digital switch, exactly 100 years later, the telecommunications industry took an analogue detour. But rapid innovation over the last few decades indicates that the digital world is firmly back on track. And although the transition from the analogue to the digital world is not yet complete, the direction of change is clear and irreversible.

What are the challenges to the digital world? The first, and most obvious challenge, is to complete the process of network digitisation.

•  The process of digitisation in the fixed-line telecommunications industry, which began in 1976, is now more or less complete, at least in the inter-urban and international network, as the last analogue exchanges are phased out.

•  In the mobile communications industry, digital systems have slowly taken over, starting with the first GSM network in Finland in 1991. Many analogue networks have now been closed down altogether.

•  The internet has always been, in essence, a digital network but the use of dial-up modems in the access network is still based on analogue technology. Internet subscribers are slowly migrating from narrowband to broadband on both fixed and mobile networks.

All chapters of the digital.life report are available online free of cost.

In conjunction with the Forum at ITU TELECOM WORLD 2006, 4-8 December in Hong Kong, China, ITU is organizing a one day event on 8 December entitled "Countering Spam Cooperation Agenda". Key international and regional organizations involved in the fight against spam will gather to discuss greater collaborative efforts to combat spam and related threats. The event is open to all ITU TELECOM WORLD 2006 participants.

See the full ITU Press Release for the event here.

The UK Office of Communications (Ofcom) has launched its new book "Communications - The Next Decade". It consists of a series of essays by academics, politicians and regulators that examine the effect of convergence on the communications sector and the authors come to some provocative conclusions.

The book is available for download as a pdf either in sections or in its entirety from the Ofcom website.

OFCOM has just released its first research publication, The International Communications Market 2006. Report focuses specifically on the international communications market, reflecting the increasing impact of global issues on the UK commercial and regulatory communications agenda. 

To read executive summary, please click here.

To download the document, please click here.

OFCOM has just released a new public discussion document on Regulatory Challenges Posed by Next Generation Access Networks. 

To read executive summary, please click here.

To download the document, please click here.

A major new study prepared for the UMTS Forum by Booz Allen Hamilton quantifies the economic benefits of maintaining a harmonised approach to spectrum management across EU Member States.

To download the study click here.

On 16 November 2006, during the ECTA Conference 2006, Ms Viviane Reding, Member of the European Commission responsible for Information Society and Media spoke on From Service Competition to Infrastructure Competition: the Policy Options Now on the Table.

In her speach Ms Reding focused on recent trends in the European ICT sector. She discussed issues related to the efficient regulation, liberalization process, spectrum, investment, competition as well as "separation" stating:  

"...we have to be clear as to what is meant by terms like “structural separation” and "functional separation". The term "structural separation" has been used to mean several things: full divestiture of companies; legal separation with separate management structures; functional separation of organisational and management structures within vertically integrated undertakings; and simple accounting separation of specified activities within vertically integrated undertakings. I have expressed myself already in June in favour of finding a European way on the separation issue.

I believe that functional separation, which is a specific form of separation in the large sense as just described, could indeed serve to make competition more effective in a service-based competition environment where infrastructure-based competition is not expected to develop in a reasonable period. It may be a useful remedy in specific cases. It is certainly not a panacea. A cost benefit analysis therefore has to be made on a case by case basis, before such a remedy is imposed. And the effects of imposing such a remedy in Europe’s internal market have to be carefully analysed in each individual case. Functional separation is certainly a field where one will not be able to do without the “two pair of eyes” principle. "

For full version of the speach, please see here.

Ofcom published its second annual Technology Research and Development Report which provides an overview of emerging technologies that have the potential to make more efficient use of the radio spectrum.

More information can be found here.

A comprehensive and interactive Body of Knowledge (BoK) on infrastructure regulation is now available online. Funded by the Public Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (PPIAF) and the World Bank, this website includes literature surveys, self-paced quizzes, a hyper-linked 90 page glossary, and 300 studies (in PDF). It should be useful for practitioners, researchers, students, and anyone interested in learning about utilities regulation. The material provides a set of regulatory concepts and readings which regulators and academics should find useful. The site was developed by the Public Utility Research Center (PURC) at the University of Florida, in collaboration with the University of Toulouse, the Pontificia Universidad Catolica (Lima), the World Bank and a panel of international experts. The BoK references publications and decisions by regulatory agencies and other governmental bodies; policy advisories by think tanks, consultants, donor agencies, and others; and research by academics, and other experts. The BoK is broad in scope, covering essential learning in the areas of policy reforms, market structure in network industries, finance, incentive regulation, service to the poor, pricing, service quality, cost analysis, regulatory institutions and instruments, legal frameworks, stakeholder involvement, negotiations, management and leadership, and public relations.

Suggestions for additional readings and topics can be made at the website. http://www.regulationbodyofknowledge.org

 

A presentation entitled "Evolution of Digital Media in a Convergent Era" (PDF), was made by Cristina Bueti, Project Officer, ITU Strategy and Policy Unit,at the Festival International du Film et de la Télévision on 4 November in Geneva, Switzerland.

As part of the Shaping Tomorrow’s Networks Programme and in line with the stated objectives of the WSIS Tunis Agenda for the Information Society (November 2005), that “… ITU and other regional organisations should take steps to ensure rational, efficient and economic use of, and equitable access to, the radio-frequency spectrum by all countries ….”, ITU (Strategy and Policy Unit and Radiocommunication Sector) and and the Ugo Bordoni Foundation will jointly host a workshop to identify global trends and good practice in radio spectrum management.

The Workshop on "Market Mechanisms for Spectrum Management" will be held from 22 to 23 January 2007 in Room C at ITU Headquarters, Geneva, Switzerland.

It will examine, inter alia, the use of market mechanisms for both primary allocation of spectrum (e.g., auctions) and for secondary trading. It will look at recent trends in ITU Member States, the increasing demand for spectrum and will examine future challenges in developing policies for access to radio spectrum.

ITU Member States, meeting participants and other interested parties are encouraged to send in their spectrum related contributions to the meeting. All contributions will be posted on the meeting website. Please send your contributions to spectrum@itu.int

More information can be found here.

"In a sweeping set of measures, the German Federal Network Agency has ordered more than 80 network operators and service providers not to bill or collect for any phone numbers used illegally. A large number of consumers had complained to the German Federal Network Agency about so-called ping calls and other forms of telephone spamming."

"A ping call is where a call is made to a telephone number and broken off after just one ring. The subscriber’s display shows a “missed call” with an expensive premium-rate number or an 0137 number. In addition to these ping calls, another form of telephone spamming promises prizes where the person called hears a prerecorded message saying that they have won a large amount of money that can be collected by calling an expensive premium-rate number."

"The Federal Network Agency’s stringent measures are a continuation of the intense battle against telephone spam. Since May 2006 alone, the Federal Network Agency has disconnected 237 call numbers on account of ping calls and prize promises. In addition, a ban has been imposed on billing and collecting for 78 call numbers. These bans protect consumers that have called a spam number back, and prevents them from having to pay any charges. The spammer does not receive any payment for the calls initiated."

See the Federal Network Agency's press release here.

In his remarks at the First Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum in Athens, Greece, 30 October 2006, ITU Secretary-General Yoshio Utsumi, encouraged meeting participants to "welcome open debate in the great spirit of Athenian democracy".

See the transcript of Secretary-General Utsumi's speech here.

The Telecom Evolution Business Forum 2006 was held in Moscow, Russia, from 23-26 October 2006 to evaluate current trends in telecommunication markets and the strategy options open to operators in response to an evolving market. The TeleEvo 2006 conference was hosted by Ernst & Young Russia and included two days' of hands-on training, followed by a further two days of presentations, panel discussions and Question & Answer sessions by experts, consultants, regulators and key stakeholders from the telecom industry, government and civil society. The conference combined a broad overview perspective of the evolution of worldwide telecom markets with more specific presentations by operators focused on markets in the Russian and Commonwealth of Independent States. 

ITU's Phillippa Biggs spoke at the conference on VoIP: Current Trends and Future Evolution.  Her presentation examined the key forces driving the rapid growth in VoIP (such as growth in broadband), VoIP's current and projected market size, as well as regulatory responses to VoIP based on ITU's ongoing work surveying VoIP regulation.

Recent presentations by the ITU's Strategy and Policy Unit can be found here.

"Authentication processes can contribute to the protection of privacy by reducing the risk of unauthorized disclosures, but only if they are appropriately designed given the sensitivity of the information and the risks associated with the information. Overly rigorous authentication process, or requiring individuals to authenticate themselves unnecessarily, can be privacy intrusive."

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada's recently released new Guidelines for Identification and Authentication. The Guidelines are intended to help organizations develop appropriate identification and authentication processes in ways that respect the fair information practices in the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and ensure compliance with its security provisions by providing the strongest protection for customers’ personal information. The scope of the document is limited to identification and authentication techniques between organizations and individuals.

These guidelines were released by the Canadian Privacy Comissioner, is a good document discussing both privacy risks and security threats:

See also a more detailed document published by Industry Canada in 2004 named "Principles for Electronic Authentication".

This article was accessed through Schneier's blog: Schneier on Security.

United Kingdom's telecommunications regulator Ofcom criticized a proposed European Union law regulating the internet, warning that "it could devastate the continent's internet-TV, mobile-multimedia and online-games industries". Under the EU proposal, many internet broadcasts would face the same requirements on advertising content and production quotas as traditional television.

The U.K. regulator hired Rand Corp. to conduct an impact-assessment study, which outlined the possible negative effects. There are major uncertainties about the future "trajectory" of Internet TV, the regulator said in a note accompanying the study. "Creators will simply distribute their own material via the open Internet, bypassing the need for any form of commercial relationship with other distributors," the regulator said, adding that internet broadcasters would move offshore to escape the regulation. The U.K. position is crucial.

When the EU proposal was first floated last year, London opposed all extension of broadcasting rules to new media. Ofcom spokesman Simon Bates said the U.K. has realized that some new services will fall under the regulation. The key is to gain exemptions for particularly vulnerable services. "We understand that some TV-like services that look like TV and feel like TV warrant some protection," he said, adding that fledgling services should remain exempt. "Our worst fear would be if blogs are required to be regulated like mass-media television services, with rules for example about offensive content." If infant industries are regulated, Ofcom says they risk being pushed offshore. Even though mobile-phone operators could restrict their services available on the open Internet, the EU regulation would give them "incentives to artificially structure businesses so that the regulatable activity of making and creating content takes place outside the EU." The regulation could devastate Europe's online-games industry, the report added. "Rand Europe finds that this industry is global, and that the added value activity of creating and developing games is highly 'portable,'" the regulator writes. "This industry is therefore highly susceptible to increases in regulation in one territory, however small, especially when that regulation does not have parallels in other territories." The regulator recommends "excluding online games altogether from the scope" of the EU regulation.

The European Parliament is scheduled to vote on the proposal by year end. EU governments meeting in the Brussels-based Council of Ministers also must approve it. Intellect, a U.K. trade association, recently said the regulation threatens to stifle services such as on-demand and interactive-video content.

Please see William Echikson's article in Wall Street Journal Europe for more details.

With the second meeting of the Focus Group on IPTV seeing a record number of participants and contributions, experts have declared satisfaction that work towards a set of standards for IPTV is well on track.

A recent report from industry analyst Gartner says that the number of households around the world subscribing to IPTV services offered by telecom carriers will reach 48.8 million in 2010. Buoyed by new service launches, IPTV subscribers will more than double in 2007 from an expected 6.4 million in 2006 to 13.3 million according to Gartner. Experts agree that it is imperative that standards needs are met if these impressive figures are to be achieved.

A key achievement at the FG IPTV meeting in Korea was progress towards a standardized IPTV architecture: The group agreed that IPTV architecture shall allow for both NGN and non-NGN approaches to IPTV, and within the NGN-approach, include both IMS and non-IMS based approaches.

Ghassem Koleyni, chair of the group stated that: "I am particularly happy that we have achieved so much progress in ITU-T Working Group 1 (service requirements and architecture). The level of participation in this group is growing and progress is overall good. But requirements and architecture are of such fundamental importance that getting a fix on these points, at this stage, is very satisfying. In order to gain momentum here we will convene an electronic meeting looking specifically at requirements and architecture, 18-21 December."

The Korea meeting agreed on the following definition of IPTV: "IPTV is defined as multimedia services such as television/video/ audio/text/graphics/data delivered over IP based networks managed to provide the required level of QoS/QoE, security, interactivity and reliability."

The FG IPTV meeting was preceded by an ITU-T workshop. The event attended by over 400 and held in Seoul provided a view and examination of IPTV standardization, political and regulatory aspects, business models and various case studies as well as technical developments and service provider’s operational aspects. A roundtable discussion at the event concluded that global standardisation and interoperability are key for further development of IPTV worldwide. Other issues that might be further discussed at an international level, according to the roundtable’s twenty participants, include digital rights management (DRM).

The next face-to-face meeting of the FG IPTV is scheduled for 22-26 January 2007 at the Microsoft facilities, Mountain View, California, USA at the invitation of Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS).

For more information see the ITU-T IPTV Focus Group website.

On 16 October 2006, Mauritius officially launched their Anti-Spam Awareness Campaign. On this occasion the Minister of IT and Telecommunications also presented a dedicated Anti-Spam Website with resource aimed at raising awareness and sharing information on spam, malwares, etc.

In Mauritius, the spamming problem is gaining in magnitude and there is a need to have a concerted approach to address this issue. Without remedial action to address the problem of spam in Mauritius, the country runs the risk of being seen as a safe haven for spammers and there is the risk that legitimate email traffic from Mauritius to other countries which have anti-spam legislation, could be blocked. In this context, the National Computer Board has set up a National Anti Spam Committee to co-ordinate activities at the national level with regards to combating spam.

The Anti-Spam Co-ordination Committee consists of representatives from the following national organisations: National Computer Board; IT Security Unit, Ministry of IT and Telecommunications; Ministry of Education and Human Resources; Ministry of Industry, Commerce, Small and Medium Enterprises and Cooperatives; Ministry of Foreign Affairs, International Trade and Cooperation Joint Economic Council; Mauritius Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MCCI); State Law Office; ICT Authority; Mauritius IT Industry Association; Internet Society; University of Mauritius (UOM); University of Technology; Telecom Plus/Mauritius Telecom ACT.

For further information see the newly launched Anti-Spam Website and Mauritius' Anti-Spam Action Plan.

The Journal du Net states in a recent article that organized cybercrimes represent a growing risk for internet users. Hackers use new techniques to hide and make their attacks more efficient. Their main goal is not to destroy computers. With the rapid development of e-commerce, hackers want to take over personal data and make as much profit as they can with it.

To achieve this, they use different forms of worms or trojans send from servers hosted in countries where the legislation is less strict. To protect their economic interests, businesses need to include employees in their security policies so they do not become the weak link in the security chain.

See Journal du Net for the full article in French.

The 13th European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations' (CEPT) Conference, took place in Berlin 11-12 October 2006. The title of the conference was "Regulations under Challenge".

The conference looked at the electronic communications policy and regulatory matters with the aim of facilitating a fruitful dialogue between regulators working at different levels of international and national institutions, industry and users on topics including: forward-looking regulatory and policy developments in a rapidly changing environment; technological, market and other developments with potential impact on regulations; and the impact of regulations on technology developments and telecom markets.

The first day, "Policy challenges", featured visionary keynote speeches by top level speakers, followed by plenary sessions presenting views from industry, the European Commission, regulators and others. Speakers included: Yoshio Utsumi (ITU), Guido Landheer (CEPT), Fabio Colasanti (EC), Michael Bartholomew (ETNO), Kevin Power (ECTA), Tom Lindström (EICTA), Sergio Antocicco (INTUG), Peter Scott (EC), Kip Meek (ERG and OFCOM), Mathias Kurth (RSPG), Rainer Münch (ETSI TISPAN), Kenneth Neil Cukier (The Economist) and Chris Marsden (RAND).

The second day, "Regulatory practices under challenge", addressed more specific topics in two parallel tracks. An overview of the state of the art in VoIP from a regulator's and incumbent's viewpoint was given in sessions on Digital Dividend, Spectrum Management Reform, New Technologies and Suitable Regulation, Building Blocks of NGN, NGN Challenges, and the Future of Telecommunications.

The meeting programme and the presentations can be found here.

This information was accessed through Richard's Blog for VoIP and ENUM

The first meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) will be held in Athens, Greece from 30 October - 2 November 2006.

The current programme is available here.

A couple of related websites have been unveiled:

• Australian academic Jeremy Malcolm has established IGFWatch at igfwatch.org.
  
• Jeremy Malcolm and also joined with UK journalist Kieren McCarthy to establish the IGF Community Site at www.igf2006.info for interaction before, during and after the event.

CircleID has a related article asking What Will Be the Outcome of the Internet Governance Forum Meeting in Athens?

Business Week Online shows in a recent article entitled "Needed: A National Cyber Security Law'" that more and more people have their personal information lost, stolen or compromised. Security breaches are eroding their trust in the capability of the Internet to deal with their private personal information. This growing confidence-deficit represents a serious threat to the economic growth of each country, according to the article. Therefore, it is time for officials to act by passing strong data-security laws. These national laws must aim to both prevent further data breaches and address leaks once they occur.

"To accomplish these goals, lawmakers should establish reasonable security measures, create a consistent and recognizable notification standard, encourage best practices such as encryption, and include effective enforcement capabilities".

See Business Week Online for the full article.

Computer World released an article entitled “Ten security trends worth watching”, based on Bruce Schneier’s speech at last month’s Hack in the Box Security Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Mr. Schneier identified 10 trends affecting information security today:

1. Information is more valuable than ever.
2. Networks are critical infrastructure. "If the Net goes down, or part of the Net goes down, it really affects the economy".
3. Users do not necessarily control information about themselves. For example, Internet service providers have control over records the Web sites that users visit and email messages they send and receive.
4. Hacking is increasingly a criminal profession. More and more, attacks are organized and led by criminals who are driven by a profit motive.
5. Complexity is your enemy. "As systems get more complex they get less secure". Mr. Schneier mentioned that the Internet is "the most complex machine ever built".
6. Attacks are faster than patches. New vulnerabilities and exploits are being discovered faster than vendors can patch them.
7. Worms are more sophisticated than ever. 
8. The endpoint is the weakest link. "It doesn't matter how good your authentication schemes are if the remote computer isn't trustworthy".
9. End users are seen as threats.
10. Regulations will drive security audits.

See Computer World for the full article.

"The existing identity infrastructure of the Internet is no longer sustainable. The level of fraudulent activity online has grown exponentially over the years and is now threatening to cripple e-commerce. Something must be done now before consumer confidence and trust in online activities are so diminished as to lead to its demise." A recently released paper by the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, Canada, Ann Cavoukian, tries to address this: 7 Laws of Identity: The Case for Privacy-Embedded Laws of Identity in the Digital Age. 

See more information on the 7 Laws in the related news release and brochure.

The gender divide is a key facet of the digital divide that merits the attention of policy-makers and ICT stakeholders, based on a substantial body of evidence from different countries and cultures that children's welfare can be enhanced through improved maternal education and hygiene.

Despite this, in many countries around the world, women are limited in their abilities to access ICTs and reap their benefits - in better communications, a wider education and better livelihood. This may be partly through external factors (e.g. women may be restricted in their access to a mobile/computer or prevented from frequenting Internet cafés) or through personal choice (e.g. ICTs are not perceived as a priority, and women may prefer to spend any income they may have on food and clothing).

Many development projects seek to address these issues - through community centres, programmes of free or subsidised access to ICTs for women, publicity/awareness campaigns and specific projects aiming to get women using ICTs - for education, information on healthcare and hygiene and e.g. contacts and networking, to sell trade and handicraft products to more markets at better prices. Examples of all these projects and many more can be found on the ITU Success Stories website.

However, impact analysis to monitor the evolution of the gender divide and the impact of projects such as these is difficult, as ICT indicators disaggregated by gender are extremely scarce. Detailed information on gender access to ICTs exists only for a tiny number of countries. In this year's World Information Society Report, Digital Opportunity (DOI) was assesssed for the Czech Republic, on the basis of information prepared for last year's World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). In the Czech Republic, women can readily become engineers, factory managers, lawyers and accountants on the basis of hard work and a relatively meritocratic education system. Men and women face the same prices for access to ICTs, but a slight difference in income and purchasing power. However, 8% fewer women have mobile phones, whereas the number of women with advanced, mobile broadband phones is only half that of men (see figure below). All in all, the evidence shows that the ICT gender divide in the Czech Republic is negligible, at around 5% less digital opportunity for women than for men.

This methodology is very flexible and can be applied to other countries and cultures where evidence suggests that the gender divide may be greater. ITU will continue to monitor efforts to extend the benefits of ICTs to women, as well as the progress made by countries in addressing this issue. The Digital Opportunity Index offers an accurate and informed analysis of the evolution of the gender divide in countries around the world.

The gender divide in the Czech Republic

Source: ITU, abridged from information provided by the Czech Statistical Office and the Ministry of Informatics of the Czech Republic.

For more information about the World Information Society report, please click here.  For information on the applications of the Digital Opportunity Index, please click here.

The European Commission held its final conference on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) on 16 October 2006 in Brussels, to close the series of consultations initiatives announced by Commissioner Viviane Reding at CeBit in March 2006. The conference (RFID: Heading for the Future) was opened by the Commissioner and featured Commission officials, members of the European Parliament, and relevant stakeholders from industry, government and civil society who have been involved in the ongoing European debate about RFID. ITU's Lara Srivastava spoke at the conference on the topic "RFID: from identification to identity" and her presentation is available here.

More information about the EU's RFID consultation is available here.

 

 

The Digital Opportunity Index (DOI) is a composite index that has been developed by the ITU/Digital Opportunity Platform to measure countries' progress in ICTs and digital opportunity, as part of the endorsed methodology for WSIS evaluation and follow-up. It is a flexible methodology that has been used in many different ways. Every day this week, SPU will demonstrate a different application of the DOI, to show its flexible and versatile applications for policy analysis.

The urban/rural digital divide is one of the most obvious divisions in many countries (depending on their geography, degree of urbanisation and industrial development, among other factors). ITU has traditionally sought to monitor the urban/rural divide in telecoms using the indicators of % of main lines in urban areas and mainlines in the largest city. For example, in China, as recently as 2004, just over two-thirds of all mainlines were to be found in urban areas (World Telecommunication Indicators).

However, the urban/rural divide extends far beyond connectivity. Differences in digital opportunity between urban and rural areas are also evident in the price of access to ICTs (often more expensive in rural areas), speed and quality of access (what the Nigerian blogger Oro calls "plug and pray") and technology in e.g., coverage of population with a mobile signal. The Digital Opportunity Index measures all these different aspects to access to ICTs.

For most countries, detailed data on urban/rural differences for all these aspects are difficult to come by. However, at the recent Digital Opportunity Forum held in Korea, the Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology presented its expert analysis of the urban/rural divide in Egypt (see figure below). Taking into account differences in price, coverage, Internet availability and usage, the Ministry calculated that the rural population in Egypt has one quarter less opportunity to access and use ICTs as in urban areas. This points to a measurable and significant urban/rural divide in connectivity in a country where the vast majority of the population (95%) live in the fertile Nile valley. The DOI provides a means not only of quantifying the extent of this urban/rural divide, but also of monitoring its future evolution.

The urban/rural divide in Egypt

Source: Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, presented to the Digital Opportunity Forum, 1 September 2006.

For more information about the Digital Opportunity Index, click here.

The ITU’s Strategy and Policy Unit (SPU) is delighted to announce over 70,000 downloads of its major new report, the World Information Society Report (WISR) since July.

The World Information Society Report charts progress in building the Information Society and track the dynamics driving digital opportunity worldwide using a new tool—the Digital Opportunity Index (DOI). The Digital Opportunity Index can strengthen policy-making by monitoring the critical areas of the digital divide, universal access, gender and the promotion of broadband and universal service policies. The DOI has been cited by the US Federal Communications Commission to measure the state of broadband in the United States, monitored in Ireland to track the price of broadband and used by the Egyptian Government to measure the urban-rural divide in Egypt.

Every day this week, SPU will profile a different practical application of the Digital Opportunity Index, to demonstrate its genuine use for policy purposes and to show how it can monitor WSIS follow-up. The Digital Opportunity Index is relevant for policy-makers, regulators, academics, public and other stakeholders with an interest in telecommunications and development.

To find out more, please click here.

As a result of a British documentary, India is now under pressure to strengthen its laws combating data theft and other electronic crimes in the country. Amendments to India’s IT Act of 2000 have been proposed and should be enacted by the national parliament in its upcoming winter.

Read the full Information Week article here.

See also Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communication and Information Technologies for more information.

An Open Event on "Security and Identity Management in a Federated World" was held on 2 October 2006, hosted by the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in collaboration with Sun Microsystems. Speakers included Sun Microsystems' John Gage and Liberty Alliance's Hellmuth Broda. ITU's Lara Srivastava participated in the event and spoke on "the problem of identity in networked spaces". Her presentation is available here.

The subject of digital identity will be examined more closely in the forthcoming 2006 ITU Internet Report entitled "digital.life", to be released at ITU Telecom World 2006, 4-8 December 2006 (Hong Kong, China).

 

Three of the world's leading Internet Exchange Points (IXPs), AMS-IX, DE-CIX and LINX are hosting the first European Peering Forum on 29-30 November 2006 in Frankfurt, Germany.

Sponsored by Foundry Networks and IXEurope, the event is designed to bring together representatives from the respective IXP member organisations to discuss all aspects of peering from negotiating to operations. (Peering is a cost neutral arrangement between two Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to exchange Internet traffic. It is undertaken to reduce costs and provide more direct routing of that traffic.)

For more information on the event see the European Peering Forum website.

This story was accessed through Total Telecom.

The OECD's Information, Computer and Communications Policy Committee (ICCP) organised a one-day international Forum on "Next Generation Networks: Evolution and Policy Considerations", which was held on Tuesday, 3 October 2006 in Budapest, Hungary.

For more information about the event see the OECD website.

Wired News in an article brings attention to the insecurity of some of the new technologies online. “VOIP and Ajax -- are dangerously insecure, and likely to only get worse as they become more prevalent, according to security researchers presenting their findings at the ToorCon security conference.”

"Voice over internet protocol is going mainstream, available to consumers and increasingly replacing the private phone systems in businesses of all sizes. Like the traditional phone, a VOIP call is broken into two parts, or channels. The first is signaling, which negotiates things like when to start and stop a call, what to do if another call comes in, and what to do if something about the call changes. The second part is media, the bit where we talk. In most VOIP systems neither of these channels is actually encrypted."

"According to Dustin Trammell, VOIP security researcher at Tipping Point, this leaves most VOIP calls vulnerable. Calls can be hijacked without either party's knowledge anywhere along the route over the net that connects the call, and nearly all VOIP systems can fall victim to signal-channel attacks that can fake caller ID, degrade call quality, end calls suddenly, and crash the end device -- either your VOIP phone or computer. Internet telephony can even fall victim to denial-of-service attacks that flood a phone with fake requests to start a call, rendering it useless."

Read the full Wired News article on VOIP and AJAX security issues.

The Finnish Regulatory Communications Authority Ficora launched .8.5.3.e164.arpa user ENUM into public commercial operation after a successful pilot phase that started in 2003. The database was cleared between the pilot phase and commercial operation and thus there are no delegations at the moment. A Ficora representative says: "Our next aim is to get as much support from telcos and registrars for ENUM as possible. Currently I'm optimistic for their support since we are having good discussions with all major Finnish telcos."

User ENUM is currently in commercial operation in Austria, Poland, Romania, Germany, Netherlands, and Finland. Ireland is still in negotiations.

This article was accessed through Richard's Blog on VOIP and ENUM.

What is ENUM?
ENUM is a protocol that is the result of work of the Internet Engineering Task Force's (IETF's) Telephone Number Mapping Working Group. The charter of this working group was to define a Domain Name System (DNS)-based architecture and protocols for mapping a telephone number to a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) which can be used to contact a resource associated with that number. The protocol itself is defined in RFC 3761: The E.164 to URI DDDS Application (ENUM), which obsoletes RFC 2916. The protocol provides facilities to resolve E.164 telephone numbers into other resources or services on the internet. ITU-T Recommendation E.164 is the international public telecommunication telephone numbering plan and current ENUM delegations can be found here. More information on ENUM can be found here.

"The ICT industry is expected to grow by 6% in 2006 and, looking ahead, highest growth will be driven by Internet-related investments, Linux servers, digital storage, personal digital assistants and new portable consumer products." But any return to the heady days of 20% and 30% growth in many products and market segments in the 1990s are unlikely, according to the 2006 edition of the OECD’s Information Technology Outlook 2006.

For more information, see the OECD Information and Communications Policy website.

The European Commission has signed a contract with the consortium Equant/Hewlett Packard for the provision of the infrastructure replacing several data communication infrastructures at EU level. sTESTA (Trans European Services for Telematics between Administrations), is the European Union's classified telecommunication network and responds to the growing need for secure information exchange between European and National administrations.

In order to respond to the need for a telecommunication network serving multiple stakeholders in multiple policy areas, the European Commission, the European Council, Europol and the European Railway Agency have joined forces. The sTESTA framework contract was awarded following a jointly launched tendering procedure. This contract will allow European and National Administrations to exchange data within several policy areas in a secured and reliable way. Commission Vice President Günter Verheugen, responsible for enterprise and industry policy, said: "This initiative will make the EU’s electronic communication infrastructure considerably more efficient. It will enable us to better respond to the many challenges in the field of eGovernment, making our society more modern and safer."

Read more in the EC Press Release.

The ITU and the EU's Daidalos Project plan a workshop on "Digital Identity for NGN" Dec. 5 in Geneva, officials said Mon. The Daidalos Project and VeriSign are advancing global standardization of digital identity management at the ITU, officials said. Proposals have been floated at ITU on handling the issue, but consensus is still forming. The aim of the workshop is to understand better providers' need to offer digital identity across layers of communication systems, administrative domains and other boundaries, documents said. Key challenges for developing a more consistent approach are to tackle the conflicting requirements of privacy, identification and security, documents said. The NGN-GSI Event will focus on identity management as a key theme during its meeting Oct. 23-Nov. 3, said an official involved in the work. The past year or 2, several research institutes in Japan, S. Korea and Switzerland have been interested in sensor network identifiers, he added. There's supposed to be an identity management piece in the October 23-24 Grid Workshop as well, the official said: "There's a whole burgeoning world of communicating sensor devices, and [they] will need some kind of identity to communicate whatever kind of sensing information they have."

Source: Warren's Washington Internet Daily

The International Telecommunication Union along with the Commonwealth Telecommunication Organization (CTO) organized a three-day Forum 26-28 September on Using ICT for Effective Disaster Management. The meeting at Ochos Rios, Jamaica adopted a road map for better coordination in the use of state-of-the-art information and communication technologies (ICT) aimed at improved disaster preparedness and mitigation.

The roadmap includes: formulation of appropriate policies deployment of appropriate technologies ratification and implementation of the Tampere Convention for free movement of technical equipment in case of disaster capacity building for users of ICT services and applications establishment of national platforms that help countries to be ready to use ICT when disasters strike development of common regional strategies on integrating ICT in all phases of disaster mitigation: early warning, preparedness, response and relief

At the Ochos Rios meeting, comments from Jamaican government officials and several regional Caribbean representatives focused on the ability, or lack of ability, of governments, telecom carriers, IT backup service providers, businesses enterprise customers and other private-sector organizations to cope with their most comment peril: tropical hurricanes. The intense 2005 hurricane season brought a record 27 storms (including Emily, Katrina and Wilma) into the region. "Following the 2004 Ivan hurricane disaster and Emily in 2005, it became evident that the lack of communications was one of the significant weaknesses of the regional disaster management framework," says Philip Paulwell, Jamaica's Minister of Industry, Technology, Energy Commerce. "Intra-agency communications as well as public information have been identified as requiring improvement." "There's an urgent need to establish effective and comprehensive communication links between the affected areas, national disaster response facilities and with the larger international community.

For further details, see the ITU press release on this topic.

The United States National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA), a consortium of government agencies and private industry sponsors, aims to educate the public about core security protections this October, during the national cyber security awareness month, with its campaign on 'Cyber Security: Make It A Habit'.

U.S. National Cyber Security Awareness Month is a national campaign designed to increase the public’s awareness of cyber security and crimes issues, so that users can take precautions to avoid these threats on the Internet. The month will feature public relations activities, educational programs, events and initiatives throughout October that targets Home Users, Small Businesses, Education audiences (K-12 and higher education), and Child Safety online.

See the U.S. National Cyber Security Awareness Month 2006 website for further information on this collective effort aimed at protecting the public from internet threats.

PhishTank is a collaborative clearing house for data and information about phishing on the Internet. PhishTank was launched by the people behind OpenDNS and will be used to dynamically block access to phishing sites. For more information, see their FAQ.

"Yahoo has announced it will give away the browser-based authentication used in its email service, considered to be the company's 'crown jewel', in a bid to encourage software developers to build new applications based on e-mail". 

"Yahoo is a very large company but we can't build every applications that a user might want," a Yahoo representative said in an interview. "You can imagine tens of thousands of niche applications (springing) from Yahoo Mail." "Software developers have traditionally kept careful control of the underlying programming code of their products and allowed outsiders to make only incremental improvements. In recent years, Web developers have opened up that process to encourage outsiders far deeper access to the underlying code. Open applications like Google Maps and Yahoo's own Flickr have inspired a new wave of programming in which developers can combine software features from different companies to create what are known as 'mashups' -- hybrid Web products"

"Yahoo made the announcement ahead of a 24-hour Yahoo Hack Day, where it had invited more than 500 mostly youthful outside programmers to build new applications using Yahoo services. Considering the different needs of its huge user base (257 million people use Yahoo Mail), Yahoo has decided it can't build or buy enough innovation, so they are enlisting the worldwide developer community. The code will be released late in 2006. Yahoo notes that there are 'no security risks' since they keep absolute control of usernames and passwords."

Read the full article in Yahoo News.
This story was accessed through Slashdot.

A Strategic and Coordinated Approach Needed for Cybersecurity In a recent GovTech article, the Cyber Security Industry Alliance (CSIA) calls for a more strategic and coordinated approach from the U.S. government to ensure the nation's cybersecurity.

CSIA’s Executive Director Paul Kurtz emphasized that "the level of attention given to securing our information infrastructure is inadequate considering the reliance of Americans on the nation’s cyber systems." "In testimony before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce's Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, Kurtz highlighted the importance of the nation's cyber systems, calling them the newest and most pervasive portion of our critical infrastructure, and discussed the federal government's role in its protection. At the core of CSIA's recommendations is the need for a Strategic National Information Assurance Policy that would outline the key roles that relevant government agencies should play in the protection of our cyber infrastructure."

"No single entity owns our information infrastructure and no single government agency is solely responsible for its protection." "While the Department of Homeland Security clearly plays a critical role, many other agencies share responsibility for the overall well being of our cyber systems," said Kurtz. "Yet the government has shown little strategic direction or leadership when it comes to ensuring the resiliency and integrity of our information infrastructure and the protection of the privacy of our citizens. This is baffling when one considers that nearly every service we use, from our communications and utility networks to our financial and medical systems, is in some way reliant upon our nation's digital networks." Kurtz called out the need for a cyber early warning system that provides the nation with situational awareness of attacks.

Read the full story here.

The ITU has unveiled a new website Partnerships for Global Cybersecurity dedicated to moderation/facilitation activities related to implementation of WSIS Action Line C5: Building Confidence and Security in the Use of ICTs.

Background

The outcome documents from the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) emphasize that building confidence and security in the use of ICTs is a necessary pillar for building a global information society (see extracts). The Tunis Agenda describes the establishment of a mechanism for implementation and follow-up to WSIS and requests ITU to play a facilitator/moderator role for WSIS Action Line C5: Building Confidence and Security in the Use of ICTs. In order to stress the importance of the multi-stakeholder implementation of related work programmes, ITU has named this the Partnerships for Global Cybersecurity initiative.

Here's how to participate and how to contact us if you would like to contribute to the work programmes.

Work Programmes

Based on the first facilitation meeting held in May 2006 and the related Chairman's Report, work programmes in three focus areas have been initiated:

• Focus Area 1 (National Strategies): The development of a generic model framework or toolkit that national policy-makers could use to develop and implement a national cybersecurity or CIIP (Critical Information Infrastructure Protection) programme. More information on activities, mailing lists and events.
  
• Focus Area 2 (Legal Frameworks): Capacity-building on the harmonization of cybercrime legislation, the Council of Europe's Convention on Cybercrime, and enforcement. More information on activities, mailing lists and events.
  
• Focus Area 3 (Watch, Warning and Incident Response): Information-sharing of best practices on developing watch, warning and incident response capabilities. More information on activities, mailing lists and events.

For general information on WSIS implementation as a whole, including other action lines and themes, see here.

 

Dear Subscribers,

We regret to inform you that as a result of scheduling complications it has been necessary to postpone the Market Mechanisms for Spectrum Management Workshop from the 2nd and 3rd of November 2006 to the 22nd and 23rd of January 2007.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Those directly affected will be contacted by us individually.

More information about the workshop and related activities can be found here.

"Chapter Four: From Measurement to Policy-Making" considers the changing telecommunications policy landscape, in areas of universal access/service, affordability, digital inclusion, broadband and wireless, amongst others. It shows how policy-makers can use the Digital Opportunity Index (DOI) to inform policy-making and policy design to achieve the WSIS goals. The DOI is not an abstract mathematical construction, but has real ‘hands-on’ applications for policy-makers, particularly in the context of the commitments made by governments at the World Summit on the Information Society.

Chapter Four uses the DOI for analysing digital gaps between regions at the national and international levels, for assessing gender gaps and for monitoring digital inclusion. The DOI is a useful policy tool that can be adapted to assess all of these data requirements. Chapter four of the World Information Society Report uses the DOI to analyse digital opportunity throughout the continent of Africa; perform a benchmark comparison of India’s performance relative to its neighbouring countries (see Figure below); examine regional disparities in digital opportunity in Brazil; and examine the gender gap in the Czech Republic. The chapter also outlines the next steps in ICT measurement for policy-making that the Digital Opportunity Platform plans to undertake.

Using the DOI for Policy Purposes

To find out more about the World Information Society Report, please click here.

"Chapter Three: Information Society Trends" tracks the shifting dynamics of the Information Society worldwide. It monitors the changes in digital opportunity across different countries and regions, and investigates those that have made the strongest gains in digital opportunity.

The Asian economies of the Republic of Korea and Japan continue to lead in digital opportunity, mainly due to their pioneering take-up of broadband and 3G mobile services. Nearly all Internet subscribers in the Republic of Korea are broadband subscribers, whilst Japan is the only market where Internet subscribers are most likely to access Internet over their mobile. Dramatic progress has been achieved by developing countries, however, which made the greatest progress in digital opportunity - notably India, where digital opportunity nearly doubled between 2001 and 2005, and China, which experienced remarkably strong gains in infrastructure. Some countries are leveraging their investments in infrastructure more successfully than others, however.

Major Gainers in digital opportunity (2001-2005)

Note: Component indices of the DOI are represented by O = Opportunity; I = Infrastructure; U = Utilization.

Chapter three analyses trends in digital opportunity, broadband speed and price, as well as the price of other telecommunication services. Find out more about the WISR here.

"Chapter Two: Measuring the Information Society" introduces the structure and methodology of the Digital Opportunity Index (DOI). It explains why the component indicators were chosen and how they measure different aspects of digital opportunity, in: opportunity to access telecommunications (including basic access to telecommunications and affordability, with detailed price information); the basic infrastructure available in a country; and actual utilization of ICTs, in the use of the Internet and broadband technologies (fixed and mobile).

This chapter reviews trends in the individual indicators making up the DOI, including: the growth of mobile coverage (both 2G and 3G); a comparison of Internet and mobile prices; household penetration of ICTs and broadband and mobile Internet. It illustrates these trends with a wealth of country information and regional comparisons, to show how the DOI captures the growth in digital opportunity around the world.

The DOI is a flexible and forward-looking index, which includes measurement of the promising technologies of tomorrow in broadband and mobile Internet subscribers (as a proportion of total Internet subscribers and total mobile subscribers). It is the major index to date that includes up-to-date and current price information for both mobile and Internet access. Find out more and download the DOI as part of the World Information Society Report here.

Structure of the DOI:

The DOI is currently being updated for 2006 information, as part of the ongoing work programme of the Digital Opportunity Platform.

 

"Chapter One: A Summit for Building the Information Society" outlines the background to the World Information Society Report (WISR). It sets out the background to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in the origins, aims and achievements of the Summit. In particular, it considers the call by member governments for an effective means and methodology for follow-up to monitor progress in building the Information Society through implementation of the Summit's recommendations.

The Geneva Plan of Action calls for a composite ICT Development (Digital Opportunity) Index to be published annually, or every two years, in a report on ICT development to clarify the magnitude of the digital divide in both its domestic and international dimensions.

Chapter One of the WISR reviews WSIS implementation since the Summit concluded in Tunis in November 2005, and explains why composite indices give a more complete picture of the development of the Information Society in any given economy than a single indicator. It gives an overview of the main composite Indices for measuring Digital Opportunity, and how they differ. It concludes by explaining the main virtues of the Digital Opportunity Index, especially for developing countries: it evaluates digital opportunity in 180 countries, the most of any index published to date; it is based on standard indicators (as defined by the Partnership for Measuring ICT for Development); it uses objective data rather than survey data; it can be split into its fixed and mobile components, so developing countries can be measured on the basis of their strengths; it uses household penetration data (which favour developing countries, on the basis of their large average household size); and it is simple and easy-to-use.

"Chapter One: A Summit for Building the Information Society" of the World Information Society Report can be downloaded for free here.

Business Communications Review has an article entitled The Botnet Threat reviewing a recent report put out by Arbor Networks, which surveyed ISPs about their biggest security concerns.

"When they surveyed 55 ISPs, McPherson and Labovitz discovered that distributed denial of service attacks, and the related threat of botnets, remain the biggest security problem that ISPs face. Together, these two elements were named as the top threat by 77 percent of respondents. "Brute-force attacks remain the most predominant attack type on the Internet today," the authors write.

The largest sustained attack reported by the survey respondents was a whopping 17 Gbps; a UDP flood of 22 million packets per second (pps) and a SYN flood of 14 million pps have also been reported. "The magnitude of these attacks is incredible when you consider that a 14 Mpps SYN flood can nearly fill an entire OC-192 (10 Gbps) circuit with a minimum packet size," McPherson and Labovitz write. "Any one of these attacks, or even a fraction thereof, can create significant pain for even the largest ISP networks in the world today."

The report also cites what the authors call "a new and disturbing observation" made by one respondent: Not only are botnets highly organized and "uniformly gargantuan," but there's an increasing amount of marketing of these botnets. ("Blast your affiliate numbers overnight!" is a typical pitch they report seeing.)"

The ITU’s Strategy and Policy Unit (SPU) is delighted to announce over 17,000 downloads of its major new report, the World Information Society Report (WISR), over the two months since its publication.

As part of the ITU’s follow-up to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), the Report charts progress in building the Information Society and track the dynamics driving digital opportunity worldwide using a new tool—the Digital Opportunity Index (DOI). The DOI is part of the agreed evaluation methodology endorsed during the WSIS and will be published annually in the World Information Society Report to track progress in reaching the WSIS targets and building a diverse and inclusive Information Society by 2015.

The WISR shows how the Digital Opportunity Index can be used to strengthen policy-making by monitoring the critical areas of the digital divide, universal access, gender and the promotion of broadband and universal service policies. The Report is addressed to policy-makers, regulators, academics, public and other stakeholders with an interest in telecommunications and development.

Starting next week, SPU will profile a different chapter of the World Information Society Report each day, to show how the Information Society is evolving and how you can contribute to WSIS follow-up. 

For more information, please see the WISR website. 

InfoWorld reports that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has released the findings of Operation Cyber Storm, a large-scale simulation of combined cyber-physical attacks on U.S. critical infrastructure.

"The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released its public findings from Operation Cyber Storm, a large-scale tabletop simulation of a coordinated cyber attack on the government and critical infrastructure that was held in February, 2006. The exercise involved US-CERT, the Homeland Security Operation center as well as the National Cyber Response Coordination Group (NCRCG) and the Intragency Incident Management Group (IIMG), various ISACs from the transportation, energy, IT and telecommunications sectors, and 100 private sector companies." "The exercise simulated a large-scale cyber campaign that disrupts multiple critical infrastructure, as well as simulated "physical demonstrations and distrubances" to test the ability of government to respond to multiple incidents simultaneously, even when its not clear that the events are related (read: 9/11)."

From the article: According to DHS, "observers noted that players had difficulty ascertaining what organizations and whom within those organizations to contact when there was no previously established relationship or pre-determined plans for response coordination and risk assessments/mitigation. There was a general recognition of the difficulties organizations faced when attempting to establish trust with unfamiliar organizations during time of crisis."

Read the InfoWorld article here.
See the DHS press release on Operation Cyber Storm. 

This article was accessed via Slashdot.

Within the framework of the 17th European Regional ITS Conference, session on the Next Generation Infrastructure (see programme)C.B. Blankart, G. Knieps, and P. Zenhäusern presented their new paper on "Regulation of New Markets in Telecommunications? Market Dynamics and Shrinking Monopolistic Bottlenecks".

In the paper the Authors focuse on the debate on the EU telecommunications regulatory framework and analyse whether new markets create new monopolistic bottlenecks or extend the borderlines of existing bottlenecks. Three kinds of transmission qualities on service markets can be dif-ferentiated according to the products provided: narrowband services like PSTN/ISDN or GSM, semi high-speed broadband services like broadband inter-net access up to 6 Mbps download and VDSL services up to 50 Mbps. As long as, due to the absence of alternative network infrastructures, a monopolistic bot-tleneck in local infrastructure networks exists the question arises what the re-maining bottleneck components are for these different markets. In this paper we will demonstrate the shrinking-bottleneck hypothesis.

Download the full version of the paper.

European Commission published three studies by external consultants on the review of the EU 2003 regulatory framework.The three studies are the following:

• An assessment of the regulatory framework for electronic communications: growth and investment in the EU e-Communications sector, by London Economics, in association with PricewaterhouseCoopers.
• Preparing the next steps in regulation of electronic communications, by Hogan & Hartson and Analysys.
• Experts’ report in relation with the Review of the Recommendation on markets subject to ex ante regulation, by Dr Ulrich Stumpf, Professor Martin Cave and Professor Tommaso Valletti.

A recent APDIP e-Note goes into the discussion of Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) and Internet Governance.

As the number of non-English speakers on the Internet grows exponentially, the limitations of the Domain Name System have become evident to many.

The APDIP e-Note examines "how IDNs relate to cultural diversity and the basic human right to communicate in one's own language on the Internet. While the bulk of the content on the Internet has been in English, this is rapidly changing. In China, for example, over 60 million of the nation's 100 million-plus users browse the web only in Chinese, yet top-level domain names remain in Roman script for all users. The APDIP e-Note further discusses the ongoing debate on how best to allow users to navigate the Internet in their own language. Different systems available for multilingual domain names and future scenarios are also explored.

Download the full APDIP e-Note.
View other APDIP e-Resources here.

The Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme (APDIP) is an initiative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) that aims to promote the development and application of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) for sustainable human development in the Asia-Pacific region.

A select committee has recommended a major change to New Zealand's anti-spam bill, suggesting anyone should be able to send unsolicited emails that are of an entirely non-commercial nature and need not desist even if asked to do so by the recipient. The original anti-spam bill said that organisations that sent unsolicited emails to promote their aims or ideals - such as school newsletters and messages from political lobbyists - would fall foul of the spam bill. This is if they did not stop sending messages when asked to do so, by letting recipients "opt-out". The select committee dropped this requirement in amendments it proposed early September 2006.

The proposed amendments also drop the legal requirement that spam be reported to a customer's internet service provider before Internal Affairs could take action. Other proposed amendments eliminate the distinction between emails whose prime purpose is commercial and ones that are primarily promotional, but which contain a commercial element, and lift a ban on possessing or supplying email harvesting software, but bans New Zealanders from using such software to send spam.

This news item was retrieved through the APCAUCE Newslog.
The full article is available at stuff.co.nz.

In a recent press release, Gartner, Inc. says that the number of households around the world subscribing to Internet Protocol television (IPTV) services offered by telecom carriers will reach 48.8 million in 2010. Buoyed by new service launches, IPTV subscribers will more than double in 2007 from an expected 6.4 million in 2006 to 13.3 million according to Gartner.

Despite the eight-fold increase in users between 2006 and 2010, Gartner says that carriers will struggle to turn IPTV into a mainstream Pay TV distribution platform on par with established cable or satellite services. "The difficulty in carving out a distinctive proposition that will clearly differentiate early IPTV services from other established TV options will lead many service providers around the world to drive adoption by competing on price in the next few years", said Elroy Jopling, research director at Gartner. "As a result, the global picture for IPTV revenue is much less impressive than for subscriber numbers."

"Global IPTV revenue during the period will grow from $872 million in 2006 to a still relatively modest $13.2 billion by 2010. IPTV will not be a panacea to replace diminishing voice revenue for carriers, but in the medium term it can be a powerful tool for carriers in helping retain customers on their existing voice and broadband services."

Gartner defines IPTV as the delivery of video programming (either broadcast or on-demand) over a carrier’s managed broadband network to a customer’s TV set. It does not include streaming media over the Internet to a PC.

See the full press release on the Garner website.

A presentation entitled "Booming Broadband for a Wireless World" was given by Lara Srivastava of ITU on 22 August 2006 at BroadbandAsia 2006 in Shanghai, China. Other speakers included, inter alia, L. Ladid (President, IPv6 Forum), T. Poulos (Asia-Pacific Head, Global Billing Association), A. Hassan (Executive Director, Wi-Fi Alliance), J. Wang (Secretary-General, TD-SCDMA Forum), S. Ramaswamy (Senior Vice President, Bharti AirTel).

On the 5th of May 2006, France and Japan signed a joint statement within the framework of a coordinated international action in order to fight spam. Both countries especially consider to exchange informations and good practices regarding the field of anti-spam policies and strategies.

The French Direction du Developpement des Medias (DDM) has more information on their website.

See other spam-related articles on the OECD Task Force on Spam website

The Vietnamese Ministry of Trade is drafting a circular governing advertising activities by electronic means, including emails, pop-ups and mobile phone messages.

"Local Internet users have been bombarded with spam mails but most of them are from overseas. Now such a circular is necessary as local spamming activities are on the rise.

The circular has basic requirements for users to fight spams such as opt-out options, genuine sender addresses, sender telephone numbers and obvious headings. But it seems that the draft circular is too lenient towards spammers when it provides them five working days before they have to stop their spams in case recipients choose to opt out. It also allows for the collection of personal data including email addresses and telephone numbers. Even though the circular requires collecting parties to ask for permission first and to keep those data confidential, this provision can be abused and can cause disputes later on.

This is all the more possible because the circular provides two scenarios: A complete ban of sales of email addresses and telephone numbers to advertisers; or allowing such an activity. Unsolicited short mobile messages are now possible because some carriers are selling subscribers’ numbers to various advertising companies. Users are especially frustrated when senders use some automatic message generation device so that they might receive an advertising message in the middle of the night.

The fines provided in the draft circular are from VND5 million to VND20 million, which many say are not heavy enough to prevent harmful violations of personal information."

[via APCAUCE and Viet Nam News]

An article entitled New regulation to monitor online video spoof craze in Xinhua Online says that new regulations are in the pipeline to regulate video content on the internet in the wake of a surge in short satirical films online, according to the Chinese State Administration of Radio, Film and Television.

"Video spoofs have become so popular that netizens have even coined a slang term, "egao," to describe the act of using real film clips to create mocking send-ups.

From late August or September, only authorized websites such as sina.com, sohu.com and netease.com, will be allowed to show short films under the new regulations, Xinhua News Agency reported, citing an announcement by the administration."

[via Smart Mobs]

At the invitation of the Government of Cameroon and Cameroon's Telecommunications Regulatory Board (ART), FTRA-2006, on the theme "IP networks and related services: Challenges for African regulators", was held in Yaoundé, Cameroon, on 7 and 8 June 2006. Eighty-three participants from 23 countries and 11 organizations attended the forum.

Participants emphasized the need to review the telecommunications-ICT political, legal, administrative and regulatory issues with a view to their inclusion of aspects relating to the Internet and related services, and the need for human capacity building for regulators in a rapidly changing telecommunications environment. After the successful establishment of sub-regional African Telecommunication Regulatory Associations, the Forum discussed the creation of a PAN African Regulatory Association building on the achievement of the African Telecommunication Regulators Network (ATRN) with the aim of putting in place an efficient mechanism capable of decision-making at the continental level. They finally agreed in principle on the establishment of such an association and its integration in the African Telecommunications Union (ATU). The recommendations agreed on may be found in the final communiqué.

FTRA-2007 will be held in Nairobi, Kenya with the exact dates announced at a later date.

[via the ITU-D Newslog]

The International Herald Tribune has an article about the growing problem of "cyberviolence" in South Korea, which has one of the world's most developed Internet communities:

'Complaints filed with the government's Korea Internet Safety Commission more than doubled to 42,643 last year from 18,031 in 2003. Women have reported sexual harassment. A 16-year- old schoolgirl accused of informing on an abusive teacher ran away after her photos and insults were splashed on her school Web site. A singer struggled with rumors that she was a man. Twist Kim, a singer and comedian, had a nervous breakdown after pornographic Web sites proliferated under his name, as if he had created them, causing television stations to spurn him.

In most countries, Internet users oppose government attempts to censor the Internet. In South Korea, however, in both government-funded and private surveys, a majority of people support official intervention to check unbridled freedom of speech on the Internet.

A poll taken in November showed that nearly one of 10 South Koreans from 13 to 65 said they had experienced cyberviolence.

The problem in South Korea may presage what will happen in other countries, according to the authorities, who have begun cracking down on the problem.

"In the past few years, the Internet has grown in South Korea explosively," said Kim Sung Ho, secretary general at Kinternet, a lobby of domestic portals. "The Internet community has developed faster and stronger in South Korea than elsewhere. So we are struggling with its side effects earlier than other nations."

Since last year, dozens of people have been indicted on charges of criminal contempt or slander for writing or spreading malicious online insults about victims like Kim Myong Jae. They face fines of as much as 2 million won, or $2,067.

This month, the National Assembly will debate a bill that would require the nation's 30 major Internet portals and newspaper Web sites to confirm the identities of visitors before allowing them to use bulletin boards, the main channel of cyberviolence.

"The idea is to make people feel more responsible for what they are posting on the Net," said Oh Sang Kyoon, a director at the Ministry of Information and Communications. "Victims cannot live a normal life. They quit jobs and run away from society. They even flee the country. It's like lynching victims in a 'people's court on the Web.'"

Some critics question whether such a law would solve the problem. Cyberviolence, they say, has been increasing even though most of the country's major Web sites are already applying the policy.

"This is violating privacy in the name of protecting it," said Oh Byoung Il, director general at jinbo.net, a civic group. "It discourages anonymous whistle- blowers. It impedes the free flow of communication, the soul of the Internet."

Official interference will also discriminate in favor of foreign portals like Google, said Kim of Kinternet. For instance, when users search for "sex" in a South Korean portal, they must first prove they are adults by supplying personal data - a requirement that does not apply to the Korean-language Google, which operates with an overseas server.

But Kim Myong Jae condemned the portals as willing accomplices in online mob attacks. While painfully slow to respond to victims' complaints, Kim said, the portals - the largest of which, naver.com, attracts 15 million users a day - highlight real-time lists of the most- clicked-on news, thus helping spread sensational, and often libelous, items.

Kim said he had filed suit against the nation's top four portals: Naver, Daum, Yahoo! Korea and Nate.

And portals say they are now screening their contents more vigorously. "Rather than being an arena for sound debate, the Web bulletin boards have to some extent become a place for verbal defecation," said Choi Soo Yeon, a naver.com spokeswoman. "We have 300 monitors who work round the clock to delete abusive and defamatory language." But ultimately, the portals say, the users who post on the Web should be responsible for content.

South Korea saw an explosion of Internet users as the country emerged from decades of military rule, and citizens jumped on the new technology as a way of expressing long-suppressed views. About 33 million South Koreans - out of a population of 48 million - use the Internet, most of them with broadband connections. And many of them are not shy about their feelings.

News articles on portals or newspaper Web sites often are accompanied by feedback sections, where readers comments. Some news articles attract thousands of entries, ranging from thoughtful comments to raving obscenities. When suspicions first emerged last year that the cloning expert Hwang Woo Suk had faked his groundbreaking work, few dared to speak in public against the man lionized as a hero. Scientists, who unveiled evidence of fabrication through anonymous postings, brought about Hwang's downfall.

One of the most famous victims of online mob rule was the so-called "dog-poop girl." A cellphone photograph of a girl who failed to clean up after her dog in a subway car was posted on the Internet. For weeks, people pursued her relentlessly; the girl reportedly dropped out of school as a result.

To Kim Myong Jae, it was familiar. "Two months after I became the target, I visited a plaza near my old company. I dressed differently. Still a person reported my appearance on the Web, how I looked and how that person felt sick to see me," Kim said. "It's a handicap I may have to carry for a long time."'

An article in Computer World describes how a researcher has announced at the Black Hat USA security conference that he will release a tool to test for "network neutrality".

The researcher, Dan Kaminsky, calls his technique "TCP-based active probing for faults." He plans to post information on TCP-based active probing for faults at www.doxpara.com.

A forthcoming ITU-T IPTV Global Technical Workshop will review and examine IPTV standardization, political and regulatory aspects, business models and various case studies as well as technical developments and service provider’s operational aspects.

IPTV represents a convergence between the traditional telecommunication and broadcast industries. And, as with any convergence a lot of work is needed to ensure interoperability. Globally accepted standards are clearly a key enabler for this. With many of the conditions necessary for IPTV rollout in place - global IP connectivity over managed broadband infrastructure with such guarantees as QoS and security, and broadband connectivity with enhanced network capabilities - there is a strong demand for standards to ensure smooth service rollout and interoperability.

The workshop will provide a review of the current status of IPTV work as well as an examination of where to go next.

See the meeting website for further information.

[ITU-T Newslog]

The top three antivirus programs -- from Symantec, McAfee, and Trend Micro -- are less likely to detect new viruses and worms than less popular programs, because virus writers specifically test their work against those programs:

"On Wednesday, the general manager of Australia's Computer Emergency Response Team (AusCERT), Graham Ingram, described how the threat landscape has changed -- along with the skill of malware authors.

"We are getting code of a quality that is probably worthy of software engineers. Not application developers but software engineers," said Ingram.

However, the actual reason why the top selling antivirus applications don't work is because malware authors are specifically testing their Trojans and viruses to make sure they can bypass these applications before releasing them in the wild.

It's interesting to watch the landscape change, as malware becomes less the province of hackers and more the province of criminals. This is one move in a continuous arms race between attacker and defender."

[via Schneier on Security]

In separate reporting on the Black Hat USA conference, experts say that the spyware problem has "gotten so bad that it is unlikely it can ever be solved on a technical level. Instead, the solution will have to come from regulators and law enforcement agencies" .

"It's not technically feasible to stop spyware. You will not be able to stop this technically "This problem lives at the legal-technical boundary. We can't go around arresting people," said Dan Kaminsky, senior security researcher and founder of Seattle-based Doxpara Research, speaking on a spyware panel at the recent Black Hat USA 2006 event. "We need to create standards that clearly delineate legitimate code from illegitimate code where you throw people in jail."

Analysis and Recommendations on the Exhaustion of IPv4 Address Space from the Japan Network Information Center (JPNIC), March 24, 2006, (from the original report in Japanese).

Study Group 17 (Security, languages and telecommunication software) has been instructed by Resolution 48 of the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (Florianópolis, 2004) to study Internationalized Domain Names (IDN). It is considered that implementation of IDN will contribute to easier and greater use of the Internet in those countries where the native or official languages are not represented in IRA (International Reference Alphabet) characters.

To meet this obligation, Study Group 17 developed new Question 16, Internationalized Domain Names tasked in particular to investigate all relevant issues in the field of IDN. The mandate for Question 16 is available on the Study Group 17 website.

Question 16 was approved at the April 2006 Study Group 17 meeting in Jeju, Korea. At this meeting Question 16 drafted a questionnaire for a Circular to Member States, requesting information on their experiences in the use of IDN. TSB Circular 96 was issued on 31 May 2006.

The ITU-T has unveiled an IDN resource site to share information on work progress, achievements and acquired knowledge in the field of IDN. It includes an introduction to IDN, information about related events, standards materials, news, information on national and other IDN developments and a FAQ.

[via the ITU-T Newslog]

Colombian Comission for Telecommunication Regulation has just released new report on "Developments in the Telecommunication Sector".

This report has been prepared as a contribution to the New Initiatives Programme project on the Future of Voice. Further information on the project can be found here. The analysis is available here or on the website with background materials of the project the Future of Voice.

"To protect Internet users from online fraudsters and defend the Internet against scammers commandeering network resources, the two most influential global trade associations combating Internet crime have jointly released an explicit new set of Best Practices to combat “phishing,” a major cause of online identify theft and fraud. The recommendations will help Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and mailbox providers better police their own infrastructures and filter traffic traversing their networks."

The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) and the Messaging Anti-Abuse Group (MAAWG) jointly developed the recommendations outlined in "Anti-Phishing Best Practices for ISPs and Mailbox Providers." The paper provides technical and business practices to help ISPs and mailbox providers thwart phishing attacks and other malevolent network abuses and also includes practices to respond constructively when these attacks occur. “Phishing” employs deceptive technology such as spoofing and social engineering to steal consumers' personal identity and financial account data, and has become a major concern."

To download the full recommendations, click here.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations has announced the convening of the Internet Governance Forum, to be held in Athens on 30 October - 2 November 2006.

The Secretary-General's message is available in all UN languages: [English] [Français] [中文] [عربي] [Русский] [Español]. The message in English reads:

"The second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), held in Tunis on 13-15 November 2005, invited me to convene a new forum for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue -- called the Internet Governance Forum (IGF). The Summit asked me to convene the Forum by the second quarter of 2006 and to implement this mandate in an open and inclusive process.

The Government of Greece made the generous offer to host the first meeting of the IGF and proposed that it take place in Athens on 30 October - 2 November 2006.

I have asked my Special Adviser for Internet Governance, Mr. Nitin Desai, to assist me in the task of convening the IGF and I have also set up a small secretariat in Geneva to support this process. Two rounds of consultations open to all stakeholders held in Geneva on 16-17 February and 19 May have contributed towards a common understanding with regard to the format and content of the first IGF meeting. I have also appointed an Advisory Group with the task of assisting me in preparing the IGF meeting.

The Advisory Group held a meeting in Geneva on 22 and 23 May 2006 and made recommendations for the agenda and the programme, as well as the structure and format of the first meeting of the IGF in Athens.

As the IGF is about the Internet, it is appropriate to make use of electronic means of communication to convene its inaugural meeting. The document adopted by WSIS -- the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society -- calls on me "to extend invitations to all stakeholders and relevant parties to participate at the inaugural meeting of the IGF". Therefore, it is my pleasure to make use of the World Wide Web to invite all stakeholders -- governments, the private sector and civil society, including the academic and technical communities, to attend the first meeting of the IGF in Athens. The overall theme of the meeting will be "Internet Governance for Development". The agenda will be structured along the following broad themes.

• Openness - Freedom of expression, free flow of information, ideas and knowledge
• Security - Creating trust and confidence through collaboration
• Diversity - Promoting multilingualism and local content
• Access - Internet Connectivity: Policy and Cost

Capacity-building will be a cross-cutting priority.

The meeting will be open for all WSIS accredited entities. Other institutions and persons with proven expertise and experience in matters related to Internet governance may also apply to attend.

In its short life, the Internet has become an agent of dramatic, even revolutionary change and maybe one of today's greatest instruments of progress. It is a marvelous tool to promote and defend freedom and to give access to information and knowledge. WSIS saw the beginning of a dialogue between two different cultures: the non-governmental Internet community, with its traditions of informal, bottom-up decision-making; and the more formal, structured world of governments and intergovernmental organizations. It is my hope that the IGF will deepen this dialogue and contribute to a better understanding of how we can make full use of the potential the Internet has to offer for all people in the world.

(Signed) Kofi A. Annan" 

[via the Internet Governance Forum]

The European Commission recently published the draft of the new roaming regulation to bring down the high roaming charges within Europe.

What will the regulation mean for consumers?

• "Prices paid for international roaming when travelling within the European Union will not be unjustifiably higher than the charges for calls paid within the user’s country.
  
• Consumers will benefit from lower prices for making calls in the visited country, back home or to any other EU Member State.
  
• Consumers will make considerable savings when receiving calls.
  
• Prices operators charge each other (wholesale charges) will be considerably lower than what they are today. This ensures all operators will be in a position to offer lower retail tariffs.
  
• Transparency of roaming charges for consumers will be enhanced. Mobile operators will be required to provide customers with full information on applicable roaming charges when subscriptions are taken out and to update consumers regularly about these charges. Consumers can ask for information on roaming charges free of charge either via SMS or voice call.
  
• National regulators will also be tasked to monitor closely the development of roaming charges for SMS and multi-media message services (MMS)."
  
• Etc.

Read more about the roaming regulation on the EC website.

This article was accessed through Richard's Blog for VoIP and ENUM.

A presentation entitled Networks in Transition: Emerging Policy and Regulatory Challenges of Next Generation Networks (PDF) was made by Robert Shaw, Deputy Head, ITU Strategy and Policy Unit, at the Masters of Communication Management (MCM) Annual Conference, Goodenough College on 6 July 2006 in London, England.

Cullen International has just released new Cross-Country Analysis on IPTV Commercial Offers.

Apart from the overview of the commercial offerings available in selected EU countries the material provides comprehensive comparison of the national regulatory frameworks for the IPTV.

The analysis is available here or on the website with background materials for the New Initiatives Programme project on the Future of Voice. Further information on the project can be found here.

On 20 June 2006 Singapore launched a new ten-year infocomm masterplan that will propel the nation into 2015 and beyond, with a line-up of activities and goals that spell benefits for the people, businesses and the global community. The vision is to turn the country into an Intelligent Nation and Global City, Powered by infocomm. The masterplan recommends the way forward for Singapore, into a future where infocomm will bring a sea change and become intrinsic in the way people live, learn, work and play.

The masterplan sets bold targets for 2015:

• Singapore to be No. 1 in the world in harnessing infocomm to add value to the economy and society
• Achieve a two-fold increase in value-added¹ of the infocomm industry to S$26 billion
• See a three-fold increase in infocomm export revenue to S$60 billion
• Create 80,000 additional jobs²
• Have at least 90 per cent of homes using broadband
• Ensure 100 per cent computer ownership for all homes with school-going children

Further information on the masterplan is available here.

A presentation entitled What Rules for IP-enabled NGNs? (PDF) was made by Robert Shaw, Deputy Head, ITU Strategy and Policy Unit at a London Business School Global Communications Consortium event entitled "Next Generation Networks - Investment & Regulation" on 29 June 2006 in London, England.

A presentation entitled Cybersecurity & Spam after WSIS: How MAAWG Can Help (PDF) was made by Robert Shaw, Deputy Head, ITU Strategy and Policy Unit at the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group meeting held 27-29 June 2006 in Brussels, Belgium.

The European Commission published the Communication on the Review of the EU Regulatory Framework for electronic communications networks and services and launched public consultation.

Further information is availabel at the EC's website.

Indicative Timetable with Roadmap for the 2006 Review
Call for Input	25 Nov 05 - 31 Jan 06
European Commission published Communication on Market Reviews under the EU Regulatory Framework	8 February 2006
11th Implementation Report published	20 February 2006
Publication of contributions for Call of Input	March 2006
Communication on the Review of the EU Regulatory Framework for electronic communications networks and services and launch of public consultation	29 June 2006
Recommendation on relevant markets and launch of public consultation	29 June 2006
Public Consultation	29 June - 27 Oct 2006
Public workshop: Public Consultation on the Communication on the Review of the regulatory framework for electronic communications networks and services	20 September 2006 (provisional)
Publication of contributions to Public Consultation	4th Quarter 2006
Communication reporting on the public consultation on the functioning of the regulatory framework for electronic communications networks and services	4th Quarter 2006
Proposals for European Parliament and Council Directives modifying the regulatory framework for electronic communications and services	4th Quarter 2006

Source: European Commission  

Anti–spam legislation for the Cayman Islands is being considered by the Information and Communications Technology Authority.

The ITCA is now seeking input through a public consultation campaign. The goal is to ensure that any anti–spam legislation enacted in Cayman Islands is an effective tool as part of a multi–pronged attack on spam.

More information can be found here.

The Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts has conducted a legislative review of the Spam Act.

The review is required by legislation to assess the operation of the Spam Act after two years of its operation. The Department prepared a report based on the submissions received. The Minister tabled the report in Parliament on 22 June 2006.

The Minister’s press release is available here.

More information can be found here.

The ITU held an international workshop under its New Initiatives Programme on the topic "The Regulatory Environment for Future Mobile Multimedia Services" in Mainz (Germany) from 21-23 June 2006. The final report [PDF]  of the chairman has now been published.

Workshop presentations can be found here. Background documents, including country case studies and thematic papers are also available on the workshop homepage.

 

Interim results of the investigation on regional policy and regulatory trends related to the Voice over IP have been presented today as a contribution to the ITU New Initiative Programme project on the Future of Voice.

In her presentation, Ms Anna Riedel focused on VoIP in South and Eastern Europe: Strategy and Policy Considerations [pdf]
Ms Nathaly Rey concentrated on Ruling Voice over IP: Challenges for Regulators in Latin America [pdf]

Both presentations are available on the new resources website related to the Future of Voice project.

ITU and infoDev, recently launched a new module of their collaborative online ICT Regulation Toolkit. This module is dedicated to the Legal and Institutional Aspects of Regulation

"This is the single most helpful regulatory tool that I have seen", said Dr. Salomão Manhiça Chairman, Instituto Nacional de Telecomunicações de Moçambique, Mozambique. "It has such a tremendous potential to assist all the staff at the INCM, as well as to help me too", he added. Tracy Cohen, Councillor of the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa, agrees: "The ICT Regulation Toolkit is a critical resource for regulators, both in developed and developing countries. With its origins in the well known 2000 Telecommunications Regulation Handbook, its credibility and usefulness is already established. The revised toolkit builds on this reputation and is essential reading for all regulators needing to gain access to the leading thinking on effective regulation, especially in a converging environment." The ICT legal and institutional framework determines how rapidly markets grow in different countries and how many users have access to ICT. An enabling environment is key to reaching the goal of connecting all the world’s villages to ICT by 2015, as agreed by world leaders at the World Summit on the Information Society.

For further information, access the Legal and Institutional Framework Module and other modules of the ICT Regulation Toolkit.

United Kingdom's Ofcom is currently working on a publication examining various national and international approaches to protecting consumers on the internet.

Coincidening with this publication, the regulator will hold a seminar will that allow stakeholders to examine the results of Ofcom's survey, hear the views of Internet industry stakeholders and discuss what can be done in the future to better protect consumers on the Internet. Ofcom organising such an event is a measure of the challenge posed to both regulator and consumer by the growth of net services and the collision of the highly regulated world of broadcasting with the virtually unregulated world of the internet.

This news item was accessed through Roger Darlington's CommsWatch blog.

According to a recently released article by CircleID, the United Kingdom today is one of the main attack targets by phishing organized crime groups, globally. Worldwide it is estimated (CircleID) that phishing damages will amount to about two billions USD in 2006 -- not counting risk management measures such as preventative measures, counter-measures, incident response and PR damages.

In most cases, phishing is caused by the fault of the users, either by entering the wrong web page, not keeping their computers secure or falling for cheap scams. Often this is due to lack of awareness or ability in the realm of Internet use rather than incompetence by the users.

For more information see CircleID article on Phishing: Competing on Security. 

A news release by the Japanese MIC announces the signing of a "Joint Statement between France and Japan, Concerning Cooperation in the Field of Anti-spam Policies and Strategies".

Particular areas of cooperation will include:

• Exchanging information about anti-spam activities such as anti-spam policies and strategies, as well as technical and educational solutions to spam, including mobile spam;
• Encouraging the adoption of effective anti-spam technologies and network management practices by French and Japanese Internet service providers and major business network managers, and further cooperation between government and private sectors;
• Supporting French and Japanese marketers or bulk email senders in adopting spam-free marketing techniques;
• Identifying and promoting user practices and behaviours which can effectively control and limit spam and supporting the development of public relations and awareness campaigns for the multi-stakeholders to foster increased adoption of anti-spam practices and behaviours by end users in France and Japan;
• Cooperating to strengthen anti-spam initiatives being considered in international forum.

More information can be found here.

[Via APCAUCEWiki News]

OVUM's Research Director, Mr. Dan Bieler, presents few observations on NGNs.

To read the article, please click here.  

 

Will Content Be King?, presentation by Robert Shaw, Deputy Head, ITU Strategy and Policy Unit, at the 7 June 2006 conference Digital Content: a Modern Fairy Tale or the Old King in the New Clothes in Vilnius, Lithuania. The event was organized by the law offices of Norcous & Partners, in association with the Communications Regulatory Authority of the Republic of Lithuania and Vilnius University Faculty of Law.

The ITU has just published an Issues Paper on the Regulatory Environment for Future Mobile Multimedia Services, available for download here (.pdf format).

The paper was prepared by Lara Srivastava, of the Strategy and Policy Unit (ITU), and Ingrid Silver & Rod Kirwan of the law practice of Denton Wilde Sapte.

Together with case studies (on Germany, China, Hong Kong SAR) and a thematic paper on spectrum flexibility, these background papers will form part of the input material for an international ITU New Initiatives Workshop on The Regulatory Environment for Future Mobile Multimedia Services, to be held in Mainz (Germany) from 21-23 June 2006, and jointly hosted by Germany's Federal Network Agency.

The Advance Programme for the workshop is now on-line, and will be regularly updated.

More information about the ITU New Initiatives Programme can be found here.
More information about the international workshop on the topic can be found here.  

 

The 5th Annual Mobility Roundtable was held in Helsinki from 1-2 June 2006, hosted by the Helsinki School of Economics. Since 2002, mobility roundtables have been held in Tokyo (Japan), Stockholm (Sweden), Austin (United States), and Hong Kong, China. The main objectives of the roundtables are:

1. to build and support a sustainable international network of research and industry best practices for the mobile communication and computing business, market and industry;
2. to exchange research and knowledge about best practices for different mobile modes of business; and
3. to facilitate communication and collaboration among global researchers, practitioners and policy makers.

The 2006 programme, and all final papers can be found here. There were four keynote speakers at the event: Jarkko Sairanen (Vice President and Head of Corporate Strategy, Nokia), Dr. Elizabeth Keating (University of Texas at Austin), Ari Tolonen (CEO, InfoBuild), and Lara Srivastava (ITU).   Lara Srivastava is a member of the international advisory committee for the mobility roundtables. Her keynote address was entitled "Mobiles for a Smaller World" and is available here.

The 6th roundtable will be held in Los Angeles (California) in June 2007, hosted by the University of Southern California.

Do not panic if your data is hidden by virus writers demanding a ransom. A woman from Greater Manchester has become a victim of an internet scam in which hackers hijack computer files and blackmail owners to get them back.

More information can be found here.

Study Group 17 Questionnaire on information about experiences on the use of IDN

"The World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (Florianópolis, 2004) in Resolution 48 instructed Study Group 17 (Security, languages and telecommunication software) to study Internationalized Domain Names (IDN).  The belief is that IDN implementation will contribute to easier and greater use of the Internet in those countries where the native or official languages are not represented in ASCII characters.

To assist this plan, Question 16/17 (Internationalized Domain Names) has been brought into being and tasked with investigating all relevant issues in the field of IDNs.

To recognize national, regional and international issues concerning IDNs, Study Group 17 prepared a questionnaire (see Annex 1) on information about experiences on the use of IDNs.

The objective of this questionnaire is to collect information and experiences on Internationalized Domain Names under ccTLD (country code Top Level Domain) around the globe. This will help identify Member States’ needs and practices concerning this subject. This information will serve to prepare a report on the implementation of IDNs and facilitate future work on IDN within Study Group 17.

If there are two or more ccTLDs in the responder's Member State, please complete separate answer sheets for each, unless they have exactly the same answers.

If the Member State is not responsible for the ccTLD, please forward the questionnaire to the concerned body."

Australian PC users can now get more proactive about combating SPAM email with the launch of a reporting system by the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

More information can be found here.

The German government is preparing a law that would allow the use of mobile phone jammers during major events and in prisons. The blocking of mobile phone use by criminals is seen as an important measure in the war against crime and terrorism.

By transmitting on the same radio frequencies as the mobile phone, a phone jammer can effortlessly stifle annoying chatter in movie theatres, at funerals or in hospitals. However, in many countries, including Germany, the technology is officially illegal. Phone jammers not only disrupt licensed services operated by the mobile carriers, but might also disrupt other services operating in adjacent bands.

Read the full article from The Register here.

The winners of the third annual Mobile Entertainment Awards (the "Meffys") were announced by the Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF) this week in London.

The mobile games award went to Digital Chocolate, the mobile music award to Warner Music's WAMO Packs, the mobile content award to Chooz Active Content's Foreplay, and the mobile entertainment handset award to Nokia's N70. Wiinners in other categories included Bango, France Telecom, 3 UK and Yospace.  The special recognition award was given to Jim Brailean, CEO/President and Founder of PacketVideo. The top entries for each category were selected by panels of independent industry media and analyst experts.

The Awards took place alongside Mobile Entertainment Market (MEM) 2006 at Islington's Business Design Centre in London (UK), at which the MEF also revealed its new Board of Directors. Ingrid Silver (Partner, Denton Wilde Sapte) was newly elected to the MEF Board and attended the Meffys reception with ITU's Lara Srivastava. Ingrid Silver and Lara Srivastava (with Rod Kirwan of Denton's) are presently co-authoring a paper on "The Regulatory Environment for Future Mobile Multimedia Services" as part of the ITU's New Initiatives Programme. The paper will be presented at an international workshop on the topic to be held in Mainz, Germany from 21-23 June 2006.

 

Winners of the Prix Ars Electronica 2006, one of the most important awards for creativity and pioneering spirit in the field of digital media, have been announced. The competition called for entries in 7 categories, including a youth competition and a grant for young creative talent:

• Digital Communities

• Computer Animation / Visual Effects

• Digital Music

• Interactive Art

• Net Vision

• u19 – freestyle computing

• [the next idea] Art and Technology Grant

The 2006 winner for the Digital Communities category was "canal*ACCESSIBLE". Canal Accessible was chosen because it addresses the accessibility or inaccessibility inherent in the topographical surroundings of people who have difficulty walking. The city of Barcelona was taken as an example:  handicapped individuals document the problems they encounter on their way through the city by using images and, in a few cases, sound recordings. This material is posted to the website, and the places at which each one was created are specified on a city map. These locations can then be accessed using a built-in “find” function. ITU's Lara Srivastava was Jury Member for the Digital Communities category, which explores the promotion of the social use of ICTs and the creation of common public goods, the sharing of knowledge, and the narrowing of the digital divide. This category was introduced to the Prix in 2004 by Jury Member Andreas Hirsch and Howard Rheingold. The other Jury members were: Steven Clift (Chairman, e-democracy.org) and Peter Kuthan (Founder, Tonga Online).

The prizes will be awarded at the annual Ars Electronica Festival (31 August - 5 September 2006). More information about the winners can be found here.

The Continued Transition of the Technical Coordination and Management of the Internet Domain Name and Addressing System

SUMMARY: The United States Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) seeks comment on the continuation of the transition of the technical coordination and management of the Internet domain name and addressing system (Internet DNS) to the private sector. In June 1998, the Department issued a statement of policy on the privatization of the Internet DNS, which among other things articulated four primary functions for global Internet DNS coordination and management, the need to have these functions performed by the private sector and four principles to guide the transition to private sector management of the Internet DNS. On June 30, 2005, NTIA released the U.S. Principles on the Internet’s Domain Name and Addressing System further elaborating on these issues. The Department of Commerce seeks comment regarding the progress of this transition and announces a public meeting to be held on July 26, 2006, to discuss issues associated with this transition.

This brochure summarizes the results of a workshop on Tomorrow’s Networks Today, held in Saint Vincent (Aosta), Italy from 7 to 8 October 2005. It was prepared by Cristina Bueti and Marco Obiso on the basis of specially prepared case studies, input documents and contributions to the workshop. The enclosed CD-Rom contains the background materials and documents of the workshop as well as a wide range of background resources related to tomorrow’s networks.

More information can be found here.

Click here to buy the brochure.

ITU has just released its new statistics on global broadband penetration per 100 inhabitants as of 1 January 2006. Iceland has taken over as this year's leader from Korea with Netherlands, Denmark and Hong Kong, China rounding out the top five.

The April MessageLabs Intelligence Report includes analysis of the threat landscape during the first quarter of 2006. Overall, threat levels remained largely stable with previous months, with the U.S. continuing to play the role as the largest source of malware, spam and phishing attacks, hosting 18.1 percent of the world’s compromised (zombie) computers in the first quarter of 2006 (down from a high of 44 percent in Q2 05).

More information can be found here.

On 17 May, World Information Society Day, ITU together with other partners (including UNCTAD and the KADO) launched a new series of reports entitled World Information Society Report. The summary of the report is available on the website at www.itu.int/wisr. The report itself will be published in June 2006.

The partners involved have created the Digital Opportunity Index (DOI) to measure digital opportunity for 180 economies. It is a composite index created from a set of eleven internationally agreed core ICT indicators (established by the Partnership on Measurement of the Information Society). The DOI has a flexible and versatile structure, based on three categories: opportunity, infrastructure and utilization.  This classification is intended to help policy-makers in determining where countries are strong and weak in order to focus attention on priority areas. The top ten economies for Digital Opportunity are shown below on the left with Korea and Japan leading the rankings. The top major gainers in the DOI during the period 2001-2005 is shown on the right with India and China leading with the most gains. The rankings of all measured economies is shown on page 17 of the World Information Society Report summary.

  

17 May 2006 On 17 May, World Information Society Day, ITU together with other partners (including UNCTAD and the KADO) launched a new series of reports entitled World Information Society Reports. It is intended to be an annual report, tracking progress in implementing the outcomes from the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). The reports will include a new benchmarking tool, the Digital Opportunity Index, which is a composite index for measurement of the information society, endorsed by the Tunis Phase of the WSIS. The summary of the report is available on the website at www.itu.int/wisr. The report itself will be published in June 2006.

The Filipino telecoms watchdog, the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC), says it will revoke the mobile licence of any operator found guilty of breaking its guidelines on unsolicited broadcast messaging via SMS. The amended rules and regulations also require content providers – alleged to have sent out spam promos to subscribers – to register with the NTC.

This will serve as the basis of an application with the Department of Trade and Industry that grants permits to allow companies to advertise promos. Mobile phone operators and content providers risk being blacklisted if found guilty of violating the agency’s rules.

More information can be found here.

The Draft Amendement to the Rules and Regulations on Broadcast Messaging Service is available here.

The European Commission has launched a public consultation on RFID, with a view to developing a coherent RFID Policy for Europe. In order to prepare for the consultation, the Commission is organizing a series of workshops (5) between March and June 2006, in which experts and stakeholders from all over Europe and the world come together to debate the key issues.

ITU's Lara Srivastava spoke at the first workshop (6-7 March 2006), and also at the third workshop in the series held 16-17 May 2006 on "RFID Security, Data Protection & Privacy, Health and Safety Issues" (see the presentation here). The Policy Framework Paper written by the Commission in advance of the meeting highlighted the vision of the ITU's 2006 Internet Report on "The Internet of Things" released in November 2005.

Two more workshops are planned in early June, after which the Commission will open up the debate for a wider on-line public consultation, resulting in a Communication on RFID to be issued later this year.

For more information, including webcasts, see the European Commission RFID Consultation Website.

 

The Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) and Extensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML) authored by OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) have been consented as internationally recognised ITU-T Recommendations. The announcement is the first result of the formal relationship between the standardization sector of ITU and OASIS.

The standards (ITU-T Recommendations X.1141 (SAML) and X.1142 (XACML)) address the concern of how to allow safe single sign-on, a system that enables a user to authenticate once and gain access to the resources of multiple software systems. While solutions existed in this space, all were proprietary, and therefore not addressing the problem on a global level.

SAML and XACML are designed to control access to devices and applications on a network. The need for standards in this area has become more of an issue as business networks increasingly use the public Internet.

SAML addresses authentication and provides a mechanism for transferring authentication and authorization decisions between cooperating entities, XACML leverages this information to determine access to resources by focusing on the mechanism for arriving at those authorization decisions.

An additional feature of SAML is that it allows organizations to communicate information without any change to their own internal security architectures.

[via ITU-T Newslog]

From the Wall Street Journal: Plan for Adult Area Sparks a Fight On Control of Web, by Christopher Rhoads

Mobile Industry Outlook 2006, a new 180-page report from Informa Telecoms & Media answers the most significant questions facing today's mobile operators, equipment vendors and handset vendors as they seek to plan their strategy in 2006.

The report is available here.

From Newsweek's international edition: The Internet Breaks Up.

Now underway is the ITU/UNESCO Global Symposium on Promoting the Multilingual Internet which is a follow-up to Phase 2 of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). The Tunis Agenda for the Information Society, adopted at the Tunis Phase of WSIS, highlights the importance of multilingualism for bridging the digital divide. It identifies ITU as taking the lead role in the implementation of information and communication infrastructure (WSIS Tunis Agenda Action Line C2), ITU/UNESCO for access to information and knowledge (WSIS Tunis Agenda Action Line C3), and UNESCO for cultural diversity and identity, linguistic diversity and local content (WSIS Tunis Agenda Action Line C8).

The event is being audiocast live in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish. The programme is available here and contains links to all the presentations and speaker biographies.

3 Italia has launched Walk TV, the first digital TV mobile broadcast using DVB-H technology in Europe. Programming will initially consist of channels from state broadcaster RAI, Mediaset and News Corp unit Sky Italia. And in June, the TV services will expand to include 3 Italia's own La3-branded channels, and World Cup soccer action, for which 3 Italia has bought the DVB-H Italian territory rights.

The 3 Italia DVB-H service reaches 65% of Italy's population and customers will need specific handsets to access the content.

More information can be found here.

Singapore’s mobile users – 99.8% of Singapore’s population, according to the Infocomm Development Authority’s (IDA) February 2006 stats – will have more protection against mobile spam in the future. IDA has put its foot down on this issue, warning of “swift enforcement” of penalties should mobile operators continue to fail to resolve mobile spam issues satisfactorily.

A strong warning letter was sent to SingTel, StarHub and M1, the three mobile operators in Singapore. In addition, IDA decided to make an example of errant content operator mTouche in the highly publicized mTouche spam case. Between 30th January to 5th February this year, 300,000 mobile end users were billed S$1 for unsolicited SMSes sent by mTouche through the three telcos.

More information can be found here.

The US Federal Communications Commission today adopted a Second Report and Order and Memorandum Opinion and Order (Order) that addresses several issues regarding implementation of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), enacted in 1994. Among other things, the Order affirms that the CALEA compliance deadline for facilities-based broadband Internet access and interconnected VoIP services will be May 14, 2007, as established by the First Report and Order in this proceeding. The Order concludes that this deadline gives providers of these services sufficient time to develop compliance solutions, and notes that standards developments for these services are already well underway. Further details and background are available in the FCC news release and statement by individual FCC commissioners:

• News Release: Word | Acrobat
• Martin Statement: Word | Acrobat
• Copps Statement: Word | Acrobat
• Adelstein Statement: Word | Acrobat
• Tate Statement: Word | Acrobat

At a recent Study Group 17 (SG17) meeting in Korea, SG17 gave final approval to a Question on Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) that provides direction and focus to ongoing work.

The news comes as ITU makes final preparations for the Global Symposium on Promoting the Multilingual Internet, it is convening together with UNESCO, 9-11 May 2006.

ITU-T was mandated to work on IDN at the 2004 World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly in Brazil. IDN will contribute to easier and greater use of the Internet in those countries where the native or official languages are not represented in ASCII characters.

Andrzej Bartosiewicz, representing Poland and acting as Rapporteur for IDNs said: “We have received a number of contributions in this area and have been impressed with the level of interest and the productive nature of discussions. There are a number of organizations working in the field and I believe coordination will be an important focus of any work. The upcoming workshop will be a particularly useful tool for facilitating networking between experts in the field and furthering the study in general.”

Bartosiewicz said that a webpage will be published shortly with news on ITU-T study in the area, as well as related events and technical documents. An official 'circular letter' will be sent sent to Member States he said, requesting information about their experiences on the use of IDN. Given the response to this communication SG 17 will be able to better assess the current situation and needs.

[via the ITU-T Newslog]

The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom by Yochai Benkler, Yale University Press.

Information, knowledge, and culture are central to human freedom and human development. How they are produced and exchanged in our society critically affects the way we see the state of the world as it is and might be; who decides these questions; and how we, as societies and polities, come to understand what can and ought to be done. For more than 150 years, modern complex democracies have depended in large measure on an industrial information economy for these basic functions. In the past decade and a half, we have begun to see a radical change in the organization of information production. Enabled by technological change, we are beginning to see a series of economic, social, and cultural adaptations that make possible a radical transformation of how we make the information environment we occupy as autonomous individuals, citizens, and members of cultural and social groups. It seems passé today to speak of "the Internet revolution." In some academic circles, it is positively naïve. But it should not be. The change brought about by the networked information environment is deep. It is structural. It goes to the very foundations of how liberal markets and liberal democracies have coevolved for almost two centuries.

A series of changes in the technologies, economic organization, and social practices of production in this environment has created new opportunities for how we make and exchange information, knowledge, and culture. These changes have increased the role of nonmarket and nonproprietary production, both by individuals alone and by cooperative efforts in a wide range of loosely or tightly woven collaborations. These newly emerging practices have seen remarkable success in areas as diverse as software development and investigative reporting, avant-garde video and multiplayer online games. Together, they hint at the emergence of a new information environment, one in which individuals are free to take a more active role than was possible in the industrial information economy of the twentieth century. This new freedom holds great practical promise: as a dimension of individual freedom; as a platform for better democratic participation; as a medium to foster a more critical and self-reflective culture; and, in an increasingly information dependent global economy, as a mechanism to achieve improvements in human development everywhere.

The rise of greater scope for individual and cooperative nonmarket production of information and culture, however, threatens the incumbents of the industrial information economy. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, we find ourselves in the midst of a battle over the institutional ecology of the digital environment. A wide range of laws and institutions—from broad areas like telecommunications, copyright, or international trade regulation, to minutiae like the rules for registering domain names or whether digital television receivers will be required by law to recognize a particular code—are being tugged and warped in efforts to tilt the playing field toward one way of doing things or the other. How these battles turn out over the next decade or so will likely have a significant effect on how we come to know what is going on in the world we occupy, and to what extent and in what forms we will be able—as autonomous individuals, as citizens, and as participants in cultures and communities—to affect how we and others see the world as it is and as it might be.

Following a decision by ITU Council during Council 2006 held 19-28 April, the following documents are available: Council Document 2006/04: ITU activities related to Internet Protocol (IP)-based networks and management of Internet domain names and addresses; including activities related to Internet governance (PDF), Addendum 1 (PDF), Briefing Note (PDF).

References to related materials can be found here and here.

A new wave of spam could be on the way that tricks recipients by looking like it’s a message sent from their friends' e-mail address. This sort of spam would bypass even those filters that currently weed out 99% of the bad stuff, says John Aycock, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Calgary.

Aycock and student Nathan Friess conducted research and wrote a paper dubbed "Spam Zombies from Outer Space" to show that generating such customized spam -- such as in the form of e-mail replies -- would not be too difficult, as has been assumed in the past. Spammers have leaned toward bulk e-mail generation that is less customized.

More information can be found here.

In a press release, the European Commission has indicated its views on follow-up to the international policy commitments made at WSIS:

To keep up the momentum of the successful World Summit on Information Society (Tunis, 16-18 November 2005), the European Commission has set out today its priorities for implementing the international policy commitments made at the Summit. These priorities include safeguarding and strengthening human rights, in particular the freedom to receive and access information. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) should be used to contribute to open democratic societies and to economic and social progress worldwide. The Commission calls for continuing international talks to improve Internet governance through the two new processes created by the Summit: the multi-stakeholder Internet Governance Forum and the mechanism of enhanced cooperation that will involve all governments on an equal footing.

The EC has also issued a FAQ on Internet Governance.

Looking back, 2005 saw a rise in profit-driven attacks. These were reflected by phishing, which now represents as much as one percent of the global e-mail traffic and is far more effective than spamming.

Viruses, worms, and malicious software are becoming part and parcel of information and communications technology. According to Trend Micro's report, called Virus and Spam Roundup 2005 and Predictions for 2006, this year will see more spy phishing and spear phishing on the Internet.

More information can be found here.

Though the United States is making progress in the war on unsolicited commercial e-mail, or spam, it still generates more than any other nation in the world, according to recent statistics from Sophos, a provider of anti-malware solutions.

Sophos ranked spam outputs of the top 12 countries and top six continents based on messages it received in its “global network of spam traps” between January and March, according to the group’s release.

More information can be found here.

Brough's Communications points to Yale's Yochai Benkler's Coase’s Penguin, or, Linux and The Nature of the Firm whichs suggests that the open source development phenomenon has much deeper significance.

For decades our understanding of economic production has been that individuals order their productive activities in one of two ways: either as employees in firms, following the directions of managers, or as individuals in markets, following price signals. This dichotomy was first identified in the early work of Nobel laureate Ronald Coase, and was developed most explicitly in the work of neo-institutional economist Oliver Williamson. In the past three or four years, public attention has focused on a fifteen-year-old social-economic phenomenon in the software development world. This phenomenon, called free software or open source software, involves thousands or even tens of thousands of programmers contributing to large and small scale project, where the central organizing principle is that the software remains free of most constraints on copying and use common to proprietary materials. No one "owns" the software in the traditional sense of being able to command how it is used or developed, or to control its disposition. The result is the emergence of a vibrant, innovative and productive collaboration, whose participants are not organized in firms and do not choose their projects in response to price signals.

In this paper I explain that while free software is highly visible, it is in fact only one example of a much broader social-economic phenomenon. I suggest that we are seeing is the broad and deep emergence of a new, third mode of production in the digitally networked environment. I call this mode "commons-based peer-production," to distinguish it from the property- and contract-based models of firms and markets. Its central characteristic is that groups of individuals successfully collaborate on large-scale projects following a diverse cluster of motivational drives and social signals, rather than either market prices or managerial commands.

The paper also explains why this mode has systematic advantages over markets and managerial hierarchies when the object of production is information or culture, and where the capital investment necessary for production-computers and communications capabilities-is widely distributed instead of concentrated. In particular, this mode of production is better than firms and markets for two reasons. First, it is better at identifying and assigning human capital to information and cultural production processes. In this regard, peer-production has an advantage in what I call "information opportunity cost." That is, it loses less information about who the best person for a given job might be than do either of the other two organizational modes. Second, there are substantial increasing returns to allow very larger clusters of potential contributors to interact with very large clusters of information resources in search of new projects and collaboration enterprises. Removing property and contract as the organizing principles of collaboration substantially reduces transaction costs involved in allowing these large clusters of potential contributors to review and select which resources to work on, for which projects, and with which collaborators. This results in allocation gains, that increase more than proportionately with the increase in the number of individuals and resources that are part of the system. The article concludes with an overview of how these models use a variety of technological and social strategies to overcome the collective action problems usually solved in managerial and market-based systems by property and contract.

The National Communications Authority of Hungary (NCAH) started last summer the elaboration of a regulatory strategy for the period 2006 to 2010. In this process a detailed breakdown is given of the means by which NCAH intends to promote the development of electronic communications markets which play an increasingly important role in the Hungarian economy contributing to the creation of the information society and consequent improvement of the country’s competitiveness.

The concept is available here.

The Telecommunications Policy Review Panel was established by the Minister of Industry on April 11, 2005, to conduct a review of Canada's telecommunications framework. The Panel was asked in particular to recommend on:

1. how to implement an efficient, fair, functional and forward-looking regulatory framework that serves Canadian consumers and businesses, and that can adapt to a changing technological landscape,
2. mechanisms to ensure that all Canadians continue to have an appropriate level of access to modern telecommunications services,
3. measures to promote the development, adoption and expanded use of advanced telecommunications services across the economy.

The Panel's reviewed Canada's telecommunications policy and regulatory framework and made recommendations on how to make it a model of 21st century regulation.

The Final Report of the Telecommunications Policy Review Panel 2006 is available here.

On 6 April 2006 Quallo Center held 2006 Quello Communication Law and Policy Symposium.

For programme of the event and presentations please click here.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) joined 29 other countries in calling for increased cooperation between nations in combating spam. The FTC signed off on a set of anti-spam recommendations by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a coalition of 30 countries organized to promote economic growth and trade.

More information about OECD activities on  countering spam can be found here.

Please clik here to read the article.

The third edition of the International Critical Information Infrastructure Protection (CIIP) Handbook focuses on key aspects of CIIP related to security policy.

The CIIP Handbook is the product of a joint effort within the Comprehensive Risk Analysis and Management Network (CRN) partner network. The CRN is run by the Center for Security Studies (CSS) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) and is a member of the Center for Comparative and International Studies (CIS).

"The first (2002) edition of the CIIP Handbook contained an inventory of protection policies in eight countries (Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States) and their methods employed for CII assessment. The second edition (2004) included an update of existing surveys and covered six additional countries (Austria, Finland, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, and New Zealand) as well as international protection efforts."

"The latest version continues the tradition of the past two editions, while its scope has been extended: not only has the country survey section been further expanded with a specific focus on Asia by including India, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, and Russia, but it is also accompanied by a second volume with in-depth analysis of key issues related to CIIP."

Please click here to read more about the 2006 CIIP Handbook.

Volume 1 of the 2006 CIIP Handbook can be downloaded here.
Volume 2 of the 2006 CIIP Handbook can be downloaded here. 

The United States National Science and Technology Council (NSTC), a Cabinet-level Council that coordinates science and technology policies across the Federal Government, on April 17th, 2006, released the Federal Plan for Cyber Security and Information Assurance Research and Development.

"This report sets out a framework for multi-agency coordination of Federal R&D investments in technologies that can better secure the interconnected computing systems, networks, and information that together make up the U.S. information technology (IT) infrastructure."

"This country’s IT infrastructure – which includes not only the public Internet but also the networking and IT systems that control critical infrastructures ranging from power grids to emergency communications systems – is vital not only to our national and homeland security but to our economic security," said John H. Marburger III, Science Adviser to the President and Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). "This report provides a blueprint for coordination of Federal R&D across agencies that will maximize the impact of investments in this key area of the national interest."

The Plan was prepared by the Interagency Working Group (IWG) on Cyber Security and Information Assurance (CSIA), whose members represent more than 20 government organizations. The CSIA IWG operates under the auspices of the NSTC’s Subcommittee on Infrastructure and Subcommittee on Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD).

The Federal Plan for Cyber Security and Information Assurance Research and Development is available through the NITRD Program Web site.

Please see the recent Press Release and the Federal Plan for further details on these activities.

The ITU has released the Results of its 2006-2007 Questionnaire on Future Topics  for workshops under the ITU New Initiatives Programme.

The top three winners are as follows:

1. Pushing the Boundaries - Wireless Networking

2. The Future of Voice

3. Privacy and Data Protection in Telecommunications

More information about the ITU New Initiatives Programme can be found here.

ITU will take the lead in international standardization for IPTV with the announcement that it is to form a Focus Group on IPTV (IPTV FG).

The announcement, while acknowledging that standards work is ongoing in many different places, including ITU, is a reaction to an industry call for ITU to push forward and coordinate global standardization effort in the field.

IPTV is a system where a digital television service is delivered to consumers using the Internet protocol over a broadband connection. It will help pave the way for players, many of whom are already moving to IP-based NGN infrastructure, to offer a triple-play of video, voice and data.

Standards are necessary in order to give service providers, whether traditional broadcasters, ISPs or telecoms service providers, control over their platforms and their offerings. Standards here will encourage innovation, help mask the complexity of services, guarantee QoS, ensure interoperability and ultimately help players remain competitive.

The mission of IPTV FG is to coordinate and promote the development of global IPTV standards taking into account the existing work of the ITU study groups as well as SDOs, fora and consortia. The group was launched following a decision taken at a public consultation meeting attended by around 120 experts from the world’s ICT companies. Attendees agreed that all players in the IPTV value chain will benefit from worldwide standards, that there is a lot of work to be done and that rapid progress is necessary in order to avoid market fragmentation. The Focus Group mechanism was seen as the most effective way of addressing this. Inputs to the meeting as well as a webcast can be found here.

Houlin Zhao, Director of the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau of ITU: "We have seen a desire to expedite and accelerate a global focus on standards for IPTV. There has been extraordinary consensus that ITU must lead this work and I am pleased that – again - ITU is seen as the right place to develop and harmonize this international standardization work, as well as identify and help fill gaps where there is still a standardization need." The FG will build upon existing work. Its scope will include architecture and requirements, QoS, security, network and control aspects, end system aspects – terminals etc., interoperability, middleware and application platforms.

Please see the ITU-T IPTV website for more information on the focus group.

China’s Ministry of Information Industry has adopted the Measures for the Administration of Internet E-mails. The regulations, which took effect from 30 March 2006, are designed to apply to email service providers and apply to any person operating an email service for Internet users in Mainland China.

The regulations are as follows:

• A provider is defined as any person in the service supply chain involved in delivering or helping users to receive email;
• Service providers must register with the government and obtain a license before providing email services;
• Violators face warnings or penalties of up to 30,000 yuan (approx. $3,700 US) and risk losing their license;
• Firms are barred from sending unsolicited commercial messages without prior consent from recipients;
• All commercial email must have a subject header of “AD” or the Chinese character for advertisement;
• The rules only apply to email containing commercial advertisements;
• The rules state that providers must stop delivery of any messages containing commercial advertisements even if a recipient first consents, but later changes his or her mind.

A copy of the rules (in Chinese) can be found here.

 

The IEEE 802.11 Working Group has passed a major milestone in the development of IEEE 802.11s(TM), "Wireless LAN Medium Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer (PHY) Specifications: Extended Service Set Mesh Networking", by voting to confirm a single proposal as the initial basis for the IEEE 802.11s standard. Many additional steps, which will include technical changes, are necessary before this standard becomes final; but this vote sets the baseline from which the group will work. Once completed, IEEE 802.11s will provide an interoperable and secure wireless distribution system between IEEE 802.11(TM) mesh points. This can reduce backhaul and installation costs. It also will extend mobility to access points in IEEE wireless local area networks (WLANs), enabling a new class of IEEE 802.11 applications that require untethered infrastructure.

See the IEEE website for more details with regards to this development related to wireless mesh networks (Wikipedia).

The Federal Trade Commission and members of the International Consumer Protection and Enforcement Network (ICPEN) are meeting in Jeju, Korea, on March 26-28, to discuss the progress of international efforts to combat cross-border fraud and explore new international initiatives to protect consumers around the world.

The FTC’s participation in ICPEN is one part of the agency’s ongoing effort to combat a rising number of cross-border fraud complaints from American consumers. ICPEN members discussed the results of a recent Internet surf for Web sites that are “hidden traps online.”

Over 30 countries participated in the international surf. In the United States, the focus was on Web sites with fraudulent claims advertising “miracle cures” for diabetes, with the FTC, FDA, and several states Attorneys General offices participating.

The FTC and its partners reviewed over 1,000 Web sites and identified over 150 with potentially misleading diabetes claims. The FTC will follow-up, sending warning letters to Web sites that appear to have deceptive or false claims.

More information can be found here.

"The European Commission launched a new website which aims to help consumers get a better deal when using their mobile phones abroad. For this purpose, the website makes public roaming tariffs from the operators in all 25 EU Member States. The launch of this site was signalled in July when Commissioner Viviane Reding highlighted the high cost of using mobile phones abroad and the need to ensure greater transparency of these charges. By means of tables of sample tariffs and direct links to EU mobile operators, the website intends to give EU consumers a concrete idea of the level of tariffs they are likely to face when going on holiday as well as guidance and tips on how to manage their international roaming bills. Since the announcement of the website before this summer, there are signs that competition is starting to develop, in particular with some operators offering special holiday and other tariff packages."

More information can be found here.

Owing the dangers of cybercrime and the need for common minimum technical and legal standards to fight such crime at a global level, the Convention on cybercrime (ETS N° 185) was prepared by Council of Europe member States and Canada, Japan, South Africa and the United States. It entered with force on 1 July 2004. Its Additional Protocol concerning the criminalisation of acts of a racist and xenophobic nature committed through computer systems (ETS N° 189) entered into force on 1 March 2006.

The Convention is the only binding international instrument dealing with cybercrime. It has received widespread international support and is open to all States.

The Convention provides for consultations of the Parties (the Convention Committee on Cybercrime (T-CY)). The first meeting of the consultation of the parties took place in Strasbourg, France from 21-22 March 2006. Documents and materials from the meeting are available on the T-CY website.

Activités de l’UIT dans la Lutte contre le SPAM, PDF, Cristina Bueti, ITU Strategy and Policy Unit,21 March 2006, presented at the workshop on "Lutte contre le SPAM"(Rabat, Morocco).

The fight against spam, phishing and e-mail fraud should focus on economic incentives and aiding law enforcement, according to attendees at a conference examining the problem this week. Speakers at MIT's 2006 Spam Conference were notably cognizant of the recent proposals of white lists and AOL's Goodmail, a pay per e-mail service offering preferential treatment in e-mail delivery for marketers.

More information can be found here.

 

World Telecommunication Day (WTD) commemorates the founding of ITU on 17 May 1865. This year, WTD could carry added significance as 17 May has been identified by the Tunis phase of the World Summit on the Information Society as “World Information Society Day”.

While World Information Society Day is yet to be proclaimed, ITU, as the leading ICT agency of the UN system, upholds the idea and looks forward to its members to raise awareness of the role of ICT in achieving the development goals of all people.

For WTD 2006, the ITU Council chose the theme of Promoting Global Cybersecurity to highlight the serious challenges we face in ensuring the safety and security of networked information and communication systems.

In today’s interconnected and increasingly networked world, societies are vulnerable to a wide variety of threats, including deliberate attacks on critical information infrastructures with debilitating effects on our economies and on our societies. In order to safeguard our systems and infrastructure and in order to instill confidence in online trade, commerce, banking, telemedicine, e-government and a host of other applications, we need to strengthen the security practices of each and every networked country, business, and citizen, and develop a global culture of cybersecurity.

The urgency of promoting cybersecurity has been called for by the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference in 2002, the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (WTSA-2004) as well as the United Nations General Assembly (resolutions 58/199, 2004, and 57/239, 2002).

Invitations to organize national programmes in the context of promoting the theme Promoting Global Cybersecurity for WTD 2006 were sent to all ITU Member States and ITU Sector Members. Sector Members represent over 647 public and private companies and organizations with an interest in telecommunications. Also in conjunction with WTD 2006, the ITU is conducting a survey of cybersecurity trust and awareness. A list of links to the related materials includes:

• Message from the ITU Secretary-General, Yoshio Utsumi
• Circular Letter sent to ITU Member States
• Circular Letter sent to ITU Sector Members
• Cybersecurity Trust and Awareness Survey

 

From today's Wall Street Journal Europe: How France Became A Leader in Offering Faster Broadband

"For years, France's telecommunications industry was a state-owned monopoly with one of the world's most backward broadband markets. But thanks to deregulation six years ago, French consumers have access to high-speed Internet service that is much faster and cheaper than in the U.S.

One telecom company in particular has exploited the changes and created competition in France -- a start-up called Iliad. Over 1.1 million French subscribers pay as low as €29.99 ($36) monthly for a "triple play" package called Free that includes 81 TV channels, unlimited phone calls within France and to 14 countries, and high-speed Internet. The least expensive comparable package from most cable and phone operators in the U.S. is more than $90, although more TV channels are generally included.

"We are coming into people's living rooms and changing the way they consume telecom services," says Michael Boukobza, Iliad's 28-year-old chief executive."

Key to France's success has been the active intervention of ARCEP, the French communications regulator. At last week's ITU workshop What Rules for IP-enabled NGNs?, François Varloot of ARCEP presented an overview of the French marketplace and their views on emerging symmetric and asymmetric IP regulatory issues.

At a technology forum in Brussels hosted by EuroISPA - the European Internet Services Providers Association, and co-sponsored by Interpol, Neil Holloway, president, Microsoft (Europe, Middle East and Africa), inaugurated a global law enforcement campaign targeted at cybercriminals responsible for phishing attacks.

This is part of Microsoft's larger program dubbed - the Global Phishing Enforcement Initiative (GPEI), that aims at co-ordinating and expanding the company's anti-phishing efforts globally.

More information can be found here.

The Economist one said: "if the Net does have a God, he is probably Jon Postel."  David Maher, Senior Vice President, Law and Policy at PIR has published his memoirs of the early day attempts to revamp the internet's domain name system, which he has entitled Reporting to God. Ten years later, it appears that decisions surrounding the DNS remain as equally controversial as in the mid-1990's.

On 23-24 March 2006 at ITU headquarters, the ITU Strategy and Policy Unit hosted a high-level experts workshop entitled What Rules for IP-enabled NGNs? focused on the policy and regulatory challenges related to the deployment of IP-enabled NGNs. The following materials are now available:

• The original workshop concept document providing details on the objectives of the workshop
• Final Agenda
• Background papers:
  • Ruling the New and Emerging Markets in the Telecommunication Sector by Christian Wey, Pio Baake and Sven Heitzler 
  • Interconnection in an IP-enabled NGN Environment by Scott Marcus
  • Universal Service in an IP-enabled NGN Environment by Patrick Xavier
• All presentations and contributions
• Webcast archives

A public talk was given on 22 March 2006 at Michigan State University's Quello Center for Telecommunication Management and Law on "The Changing Face of Cyberspace" (Lara Srivastava, ITU). 

The 4th International Conference on Communications Convergence was held in Mumbai (India) and hosted by the Indian Merchants Chamber on the theme "Connecting India: The Global Challenge".  Lara Srivastava (ITU) spoke on the topic of connecting rural communities in India in a talk entitled "Connect! Developing Rural Perspectives".

As part of its work on preparing an ICT Regulatory Toolkit, the Regulatory Reform Unit of ITU hosted, on 15 March 2006, a virtual conference on the impact of new technologies on TELECOM/ICT Regulation.

The conference recording, together with presentations from Tim Kelly (ITU), Anthony Rutkowski (Verisign), Sharil Tarmizi (Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission), Michael Best (Georgia Tech), Michail Bletsas (One Laptop Per Child) and Russell Southwood (Balancing Act) are available here. 

The « Direction du Développement des Médias (France), l’Agence Nationale de Réglementation des Télécommunications (Morocco), l’Institut Francophone des Nouvelles Technologies de l’Information et de la Formation (Francophonie) et le Service Public Fédéral Economie, PME, Classes moyennes et Energie (Belgium) » are jointly organizing a workshop on the « Fight against Spam ».

The workshop will be held in Rabat (Morocco) from 22 to 23 March 2006.

More information can be found here.

Click here to see the agenda.

The draft agenda (PDF) for the 23-24 March 2006 ITU Workshop What Rules for IP-enabled NGNs is now available.

A related page of NGN Policy and Regulatory Initiatives around the globe is also available.

The OECD hosted a workshop entitled The Future of the Internet in Paris on 8 March 2006. Presentations given at the event will serve at "food for thought" for future OECD work.

The Economist has a related article entitled Reinventing the Internet.

"The case for promoting a global culture for cybersecurity was strongly emphasized at the World Telecommunication Development Conference (WTDC) during an information session for participants conducted by ITU on Friday.

ITU pointed out that in an increasingly interconnected and networked world our societies are vulnerable to a wide variety of threats, including deliberate attacks on critical information infrastructures with debilitating effects on our economies and on our societies. In order to safeguard our systems and infrastructure, we need to strengthen our collective cybersecurity.

As this depends on the security practices of each and every networked country, business, and citizen, we need to develop a global culture of cybersecurity. According to ITU, cybersecurity is critical in the use and development of ICT. The lack of adequate security is an obstacle for using ICTs that rely on the protection and confidentiality of sensitive data. Unless these security and trust issues are addressed, the benefits of the Information Society to governments, businesses and citizens cannot be fully realized.

The information session was aimed at raising awareness on this very important subject and to contribute to bridging the information and knowledge divide between and within countries.

At that session, ITU launched a new reference guide on Cybersecurity for Developing Countries and informed delegates of ITU’s initiative in Promoting Global Cybersecurity as the theme for World Telecommunication Day on 17 May this year. ITU will also assist developing and least developed countries in increasing cybersecurity and will conduct workshops and seminars to enable countries to exchange ideas and discuss common issues." [Via WTDC 2006 Highlights]

For more information about the World Telecommunication Development Conference (WTDC), please click here. 

At a workshop on ICT Indicators for performance benchmarking, held in Delhi 1-3 March, under the auspices of LIRNEasia and TRAI, representatives from the region's national statistical offices and regulatory agencies committed themselves to developing a set of ICT Indicators for the region based around "core set of ICT Indicators" defined by the Partnership for Measuring ICT for Development. This methodology means that they will be able to apply the composite "Digital Oppoportunity Index", which has been developed by a multi-stakeholder partnership, including ITU, KADO and UNCTAD, for the measurement of the digital divide within the region and within individual countries.

The proceedings of the conference, which included presentations from TRAI, LIRNEasia, ITU, OECD and NRRI, are avaialble on the LIRNEasia website at: http://www.lirneasia.net/2006/03/workshop-on-ict-indicators-for-benchmarking-performance-in-network-and-services-development/.

ITU and UNESCO are organizing a Global Symposium on Promoting the Multilingual Internet in Geneva from 9 - 11 May 2006.

Participation in the meeting is open to any organization or individual from ITU or UNESCO member countries. Written contributions are invited on the themes of the event and should be sent to multilingual (at) itu.int before Tuesday 25 April 2006.

The Tunis Agenda for the Information Society, adopted at the Tunis Phase of WSIS, highlights the importance of multilingualism for bridging the digital divide. It identifies ITU as taking the lead role in the implementation of information and communication infrastructure (WSIS Tunis Agenda Action Line C2), ITU/UNESCO for access to information and knowledge (WSIS Tunis Agenda Action Line C3), and UNESCO for cultural diversity and identity, linguistic diversity and local content (WSIS Tunis Agenda Action Line C8).

The symposium will examine issues highlighted in paragraph 53 of the WSIS Tunis Agenda, including:

1. Options for advancing the process for the introduction of multilingualism in a number of areas including domain names, email addresses and keyword look-up; 
   
2. Options for implementing programmes, also in cooperation with other appropriate organizations, that allow for the presence of multilingual domain names and content on the internet and the use of various software models in order to fight against the linguistic digital divide and ensure the participation of all in the emerging new society;
   
3. Options for strengthening cooperation between relevant bodies for the further development of technical standards and to foster their global deployment; In addition, the event will review technical solutions and current experiences, identify open issues and discuss a roadmap for further steps in the direction of promoting internet multilingualism.

The draft agenda of the symposium, background information and other information are available on the event website.

Including data from some of the world's largest Internet Service Providers, MAAWG (Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group) has developed its first metrics report outlining the scope of the problem and validating that approximately 85 percent of Internet traffic today is abusive email.

The report, "MAAWG Email Metrics Program: The Network Operators' Perspective," provides data for the fourth quarter of 2005 and will continue to be updated on a quarterly basis as an objective tool for tracking the industry's efforts at controlling abusive email.

For more information, please click here.

Efforts by governments to counter internet spam by tracking down and prosecuting spammers have had limited impact and require far more resources than most countries can muster, the United Nations telecoms agency (ITU) warned on Tuesday.

It says in a report that while all countries need anti-spam legislation so that spammers have nowhere to hide, a more effective approach would be to require the establishment of enforceable codes of conduct by internet service providers (ISPs).

For more information about the article, please click here.

For more information about the report "Stemming the International Tide of Spam", please click here.

According to a press release from the UN, the UN Secretary-General has decided to establish a small Secretariat in Geneva to assist in the convening of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF).  The Secretary-General was asked by the World Summit on the Information Society, held in Tunis in November, to convene such a Forum for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue.

Nitin Desai, the Secretary-General’s Special Adviser for the Summit, held open consultations on 16 and 17 February in Geneva aimed at reaching a common understanding on how the Forum should function.  Those discussions produced a consensus that the IGF should have a strong development orientation.  It was also felt that the Forum should be open and inclusive, and allow for the participation of all interested stakeholders with proven expertise and experience in Internet-related matters.

The Secretariat will be headed by Markus Kummer, who has been the Executive Coordinator of the Secretariat of the Working Group on Internet Governance, which was established by the Secretary-General at the request of the first phase of the Summit, in Geneva in 2003.  The first meeting of the Forum is expected to take place later this year in Athens, Greece from October 30 - November 2 2006.

On a separate issue, the Secretary-General has also decided to ask Mr. Desai to consult informally on how to start a process aimed at enhancing cooperation on international public policy issues related to the Internet.  The Summit had requested the Secretary-General to start such a process in paragraphs 69-71 of the WSIS Tunis Agenda for the Information Society.

An interesting workshop organized by WIK: Bill and Keep: A New Model for Intercarrier Compensation Arrangements?, 4-5 April 2006, Hotel Königswinter near Bonn, Germany.

The European Commissions’ plan to promote digital access to Europe’s heritage is rapidly taking shape. At least six million books, documents and other cultural works will be made available to anyone with a Web connection through the European Digital Library over the next five years.

In order to boost European digitisation efforts, the Commission will co-fund the creation of a Europe-wide network of digitisation centres. The Commission will also address, in a series of policy documents, the issue of the appropriate framework for intellectual property rights protection in the context of digital libraries.

For more information, please click here.

A study by Carnegie Mellon University researchers in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy (EPP) has found that cell phones and other portable electronic devices, like laptops and game-playing devices, can pose dangers to the normal operation of critical electronics on airplanes.

"We found that the risk posed by these portable devices is higher than previously believed," said Bill Strauss, who recently completed his Ph.D. in EPP at Carnegie Mellon.

"These devices can disrupt normal operation of key cockpit instruments, especially Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers, which are increasingly vital for safe landings." Strauss is an expert in aircraft electromagnetic compatibility at the Naval Air Warfare Center in Patuxent River, Md.

For more information, please click here.

Recognising the importance of electronic interdependencies, India and the United States on Thursday agreed for greater cooperation to protect electronic transactions and critical infrastructure from cyber crime.

"The two sides recognised the importance of capacity building in cyber security and greater cooperation to secure their growing electronic interdependencies, including to protect electronic transactions and critical infrastructure from cyber crime, terrorism and other malicious threats," the Indo-US joint statement said.

For more information, please click here.

Soon PC users could be literally stamping out spam instead of hitting the delete key.

"Many information workers spend a majority of their time trapped at their desk dealing with e-mail," said Brian Meyers, from the Step User Interface Project Group who helped develop the prototype.

For more information, please click here.

ITU-T together with the US Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) is holding a free workshop Next Generation Network Technology and Standardization at the Mandalay Bay Convention Centre in Las Vegas , USA , 19-20 March 2006 during the TelecomNEXT event.

This workshop will: 

• Examine the status of NGN standards 
• Identify standards work needed to support ongoing viable businesses for all parties as NGN becomes reality, and 
• Enhance and extend standardization community cooperation to further coordinate NGN work

A particular emphasis of the event will be next generation network (NGN) requirements and standards objectives from a North American perspective and how these can be best taken into account in global NGN standardization by the ITU-T.

More information on the event and the draft meeting programme can be accessed through the ITU-T website. 

On Tuesday, the anchors of the coalition – the Electronic Freedom Foundation and Free Press -- hosted a national conference call asking for allies to unite to fight AOL's "e-mail tax."

Under the banner of DearAOL.com, a total of fifty organizations, including MoveOn.org, Civic Action, Gun Owners of America, The Association of Cancer Online Resources and Craig Newmark of Craigslist.com joined in to offer up a number of explanations as to why such a "pay-to-send" policy would harm the Internet forever.

For more information, click here.

See also "The Future of Some Email May Not Use Email".

Symantec launches a new Internet security barometer that gives consumers clues on which online activities are currently safest. But unlike rival security meters, Symantec's new Internet Threat Meter breaks out current risks by activity: e-mail, Web browsing, instant messaging, and file sharing.

For more information, please click here.

Three civil suits were filed under Virginia's new anti-phishing statute, the Federal Lanham Act, marking the first time an ISP has used the new law.

For more information, please click here.

Vodafone's Face Sensing Engine uses a 3.2-megapixel camera to authenticate a user's facial features and eliminate the need for passwords or fingerprint verification.

A face recognition technology with a one second validation feature from Oki Electric will be offered on a Vodafone Group handset in Japan this April, according to an announcement Tuesday by Oki.

For more information, please click here.

Two interesting discussions of current US communications policy:

• Is the U.S. Dancing to a Different Drummer?, Communications & Strategies, no. 60, 4th quarter 2005 from former FCC staffer Scott Marcus, provides an analysis of recent US telecom policies and demonstrates how they are at odds with current European policies founded on economic theory.
  
  
• Communications Policy For 2006 And Beyond, former members of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Reed E. Hundt and Gregory L. Rosston propose sweeping changes to the current US telecommunications regulatory regime. With impending reform in telecommunications laws, they argue that an important first step is the creation of a bipartisan, independent commission to examine and recommend implementation of more market-oriented communications policy. [via CommsWatch]

APCAUCE's 2006 meeting was organized in Perth, Australia in conjunction with the APRICOT Conference. The Regional Update meeting was on Sunday 26 February 2006, and APCAUCE (Asia Pacific Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email) will also organize an antispam technical conference track as part of APRICOT on 1 March 2006.

For more information, please click here.

This publication, with a foreword by Nitin Desai, provides an overview of the key debates on Internet governance. It presents the work of the Open Regional Dialogue on Internet Governance, an Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme (APDIP) initiative that has collected perspectives from regional experts and end users.

According to an article from Interfax China, the Ministry of Information Industry has announced the revamping of the country's Internet domain name system which will be enforced from March 1, 2006.

The new domain names system consists of a total of 4 Country Code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs) including the English language domain .CN and 3 Chinese-character top-level domains "中国" (.China), "公司" (.com)- in China .com is used to refer to companies, and "网络"(.net).

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has published comments received on its recent consultation paper on Issues pertaining to Next Generation Networks (NGN) released in January 2006. Also see accompanying Press Release.

The ITU Strategy and Policy Unit is hosting a workshop entitled What Rules for IP-enabled NGNs? in March 2006. The ITU also has a website on related national, regional and international policy and regulatory initiatives.

The Japan E-mail Anti-Abuse Group (JEAG), a working group founded by Japan's ISPs and mobile operators to counter spam, has drafted a list of recommendations for the reference of companies and mail server system administrators that are considering counter-spam measures. The recommendations include information on introducing effective technological counter-measures and working policies to eliminate spam.

For more information, please click here.

A group of technology chief executives are calling on the U.S. Congress and President George Bush's administration to create a "21st century" radio spectrum policy that would transfer poorly used government spectrum to private companies.

For more information, please click here.

Liberal political action group MoveOn.org is organizing a petition drive against America Online's certified email service, whereby advertisers could pay a per-message fee to guarantee their messages will bypass AOL's spam filtering technologies and be delivered directly to AOL users.

Claiming the service amounts to an "email tax" by granting large email senders preferential access to AOL users mailboxes, while leaving other email users (like small businesses, friends, family members, charities, and co-workers) in the dark, wondering if their mail will get through.

For more information, please click here.

In line with paragraph 108 and the Annex of the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society, a consultation is being held on 15-16 May 2006, at ITU Headquarters in Geneva, on WSIS Action Line C5: Building Confidence and Security in the use of ICTs. The purpose of the meeting is to discuss the WSIS multi-stakeholder implementation process for Action Line C5.

The meeting is open to all WSIS stakeholders that are interested and involved in the implementation process in the field of building confidence and security in the use of ICTs.

A draft agenda for the consultation on WSIS Action Line C5 Facilitation and the invitation letter to the meeting from ITU Secretary-General Yoshio Utsumi can be viewed on the WSIS C5 Implementation website.

More information on the activities related to WSIS implementation and follow-up can be viewed here.

China's Ministry of Information Industry launched its anti-spam center, www.anti-spam.cn, today as part of their net safety efforts. There are ongoing efforts to also enhance its email management sometime between March and April 2006.

Additionally, the Chinese government issued a regulation on the management of emails, which will take effect on 30 March 2006. Sending advertisement emails without the receiver's permission is banned, according to this new regulation.

For more information, click here

European Commission has just released 11th Report on the Implementation of the Telecommunications Regulatory Package.

The report draws attention to many regulatory and market developments in the European telecommunication market. Telecom operators in Europe are investing in new technologies to cut costs and seize new opportunities opened up by the convergence of communication networks, media content and devices. Growing competition, especially in retail markets, is bringing increased consumer benefits and the outlook for innovation and investment within Member States and across borders is positive. Member States have made good progress in implementing the EU telecom rules of 2002, which is opening up markets to new entrants. The report highlights rapid take-up of high-speed “broadband” internet connections. In the mobile phone sector, while take-up of services is still growing, particularly in the new Member States, there are signs that the voice market is maturing. Meanwhile, revenues from traditional voice services remain the largest source of revenue in the fixed line market, despite a gradual decline.

For full version of the Report, please click here.

ITU Study Group 15 (Study Group focusing on access network transport and optical technology) has consented a Recommendation that will address a key concern in the evolution to next generation networks (NGN).

With the proposed move to packet switched networks, carriers, mobile operators and system integrators all have a need to support time-division multiplexing (TDM) over packet networks. TDM, experts say, today forms all of the transmission network and a good part of the access network.

The role of this Rec - G.8261 - is to outline the requirements for the support of a crucial part of TDM's operation in packet networks. The Recommendation's authors say that without proper synchronization, applications such as mobile telephony simply will not work.

G.8261 analyses synchronization aspects in packet networks, with particular focus on the Ethernet, and outlines the minimum requirements for the synchronization function of network elements. In particular it focuses on the transport of synchronization information required for the transport of TDM signals over packet networks. The transport of SDH signals is for further study.

Read more about Study Group 15 activities.

At the behest of the GSM Association (GSMA), fifteen network operators have founded a joint initiative against the spread of spam via mobile communications networks and published a "Code of Practice" (PDF file).

The initiative is focusing on spam sent as a text message or MMS, which has been divided into three categories: first, advertising that the cell phone user did not request; second, messages that directly or indirectly lead to calls of expensive premium services; and third, fraudulent content, such as the spoofs familiar to users of fixed Internet.

For more information, click here.

OECD Scoping Study for the Measurement of Trust in the Online Environment:

Creating an online environment which builds on trust among users of ICT networks is an increasing priority for business, industry and governments and has been on the OECD agenda since the late 1990s. The aim of this report is to undertake a review of the data available from official, semi-official and private sources which can assist in informing developments and progress in this area. There is a need to be able to use relevant data to assess the effectiveness of public and private initiatives aimed at building trust among users.

Circle ID has an interesting piece entitled Internet Governance: An Antispam Perspective by Meng Wong, who is known for his work on the email authentication mechanism SPF*:

I believe that we must move to a default-deny model for email to solve phishing; at the same time we must preserve the openness that made email the killer app in the first place. The tension between these poles creates a tremendous opportunity for innovation and social good if we get things right, and for shattering failure if we get things wrong.

* SPF is derived from original concept work by Paul Vixie which is now also the core of Microsoft's Sender ID.

Eli Noam: Moore’s Law at risk from industry of delay:

"So, in technology, Moore’s Law is alive and well. But technology does not operate in a vacuum. No business or government institution can change at 50 per cent a year. While stability and tradition are important, if a fundamental technology progresses far beyond society’s ability to absorb its impacts, a growing disconnection occurs. When, in the 19th century, technology proceeded at a rapid pace while social institutions did not, the results were upheavals and revolutions. Today, again, the key elements of the information economy are progressing at a scorching rate, while private and public institutions are lagging behind.

Examples include the way the US lost leadership in mobile wireless and broadband internet because of interminable governmental processes in spectrum allocation. Around the world, it has taken more than a decade to set the rules on interconnection among telecommunciation carriers, and they are still far from settled. This has slowed the entry of new-style carriers.

The question of whether new broadband services should be treated in the same time-consuming way as traditional telecommunication has tied regulators in knots and recently created a confrontation between Brussels and Germany. In South Korea, video over the internet requires a broadcasting licence, which has slowed how much the network is used. Patent offices every­where are falling behind their workload. It may soon take more than five years to get a patent in the US."

In line with para 108 and Annex of the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society, a consultation on WSIS Action Line Facilitation for WSIS action line C2, i.e. information and communication infrastructure will take place in conjunction with WTDC-06 in Doha, Qatar, on 9 March 2006, in the Convention Center, Room Al Majlis, to benefit from the presence of many WSIS stakeholders present at WTDC-06. The meeting will run from 14.00 – 17.00 hours. The meeting is open to all WSIS stakeholders that are interested and involved in implementation process in the field of information and communication infrastructure. The meeting will be held in English.

The purpose of the meeting is for information exchange and to discuss the WSIS multi-stakeholder implementation process in field of information and communication infrastructure.  ITU, UNESCO and UNDP are holding a consultation meeting to establish the nature of the coordination process, its outputs, modalities and logistics, of the work to be undertaken on WSIS implementation on 24 February 2006, in Geneva, and the outcome of this meeting will be reported. A draft annotated agenda is attached, together with a registration/badge request form for those not registered for WTDC-06. Further information is available from the implementation website.