Hop 255

Broadband Digital Divide in UK

Some nice UK maps with broadband density take-up figures from point topic.

Skype blocking and "DOS attack"

A couple of posts on Skype worth reading at Skypejournal. One on UAE allegedly blocking the Skype website which the author supposes is either to prevent bypass of the PSTN rates or because calls are encrypted making them harder to tap. UAE is one of the more progressive countries in the region in terms of telecom policies and Dubai is trying to become a high tech hub.  So if they are doing it, for whatever reason, it doesn't really make sense in terms of their overall ICT and economic strategy for the country. Makes you wonder what happens in those countries which have a more centralised system through which all traffic must pass. One of the people commenting at Skypejournal suggests users in the UAE try the EFF's TOR but that is probably blocked as well.  Easier for expats to get a friend or relative to top up their account if that is the only barrier. Paradoxically, Skpejournal also covers Andrew Ferguson's blogging of his suggested POTS denial of service scheme for annoying Spammers.  A very funny post by Andrew and even funny recording of his call to a spammer. But as Skypejournal points out there is too much potential for misuse here in relation to the PSTN.  How long before governments other than UAE not kindly disposed towards VoIP competition (or PSTN tapping bypass) start pointing to legitimate public policy concerns. Time for Skype to hire some government relations types and send them to the WGIG meetings and the other international forums where governments discuss these issues.

Internet Peering Spat

An interesting spat going on between France Telecom and Cogent in respect to traffic exchange between their networks. Media reports indicate FT's Open Transit de-peered with Cogent and the latter responded by allegedly blackholing FT's network. A behind the news discussion is availbale at NANOG's April mailing list archive from various posts on this issue. Cogent has a traceroute tool here which shows networks (Verio for the trace I ran) through which they now exchange traffic.

Hong Kong Broadband

Milestone launch of a 1 Gbps residential broadband service in Hong Kong this week. At US$215 per month it would be out of the reach of the average Internet user but they probably don't mind having alternatives such as 100 Mbps for a bit over US$30 or even 10 Mbps for less than $20.  This development reaffirms that it is easier to wire up densely populated areas and offer inexpensive broadband. The Economist also comments on that this week. Notwithstanding this advantage it is still apparent that telcos in some countries are dragging their feet with DSL offers at 256 to 512 kbps (and even some of those have very low usage allowances).

Blinx, Podscope, Snapcom

UK centric for media but Blinx is an interesting search engine beta for trawling through video and television. Podscope does the same for podcasts. Snapcom is a new search engine for traditional web content but aims to use other peoples search terms and suggestions to enhance the experience. Alerted to these and other by John Battele's excellent searchblog  which I had not seen before. It is a long time since I regularly read search engine watch basically because search engines started to get boring after Altavista stopped innovating and Google became so masterful at what it does best. Searchengine watch also lost the plot a bit in format after being taken over and now looks like a cheap traffic aggregation site. But with even Amazon trying to get into the search engine game it is starting to get interesting again. By the way, Amazon's A9 search tool reminds me of Altavista's Cow9 in title.

Skype Users by County (Part 4)

Fourth post in the series on Skype users by country. My take on the relative penetration of Skype's registered users by country from the data posted at James Enck's blog. Image  below should open in pop-up up window. See previous posts for discussion. One user may of course have multiple accounts but this wouldn't be expected to have a greater impact in one country over another.

the other conclave

A transcript of the other conclave potentially impacting on the lives of nearly a billion Internet users here and here. For signs of white smoke on Internet governance, however, we may have to wait right up to WSIS.

ICANN, .pro and .net

The Economist has an article this week on ICANN's problems with the process for selecting who will run .net and compliance for the .pro registry. Both problems can be related to the selection process and both cases argue the case for using auctions as part of the process. The .pro domain has become a more valuable resource because of the flouting of the original "beauty contest" promises. The .net controversy has resulted because the arbiter said that while all candidates wanting to run .net were beautiful, Verisign was the fairer by a smidgen. The other candidates disagree and point to flaws in the methodology and errors of judgment essentially forgetting that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. An auction, on the other hand, would have given others a chance to bid for .pro (or another name of their choice) and been a fair way to choose from the technically qualified candidates to run .net.  Hopefully, if the engineers listen at ICANN, there will be a change by the time the .com contract comes up for renewal.

Future of newspapers and Internet advertising

Thoughtful speech by Rupert Murdoch on the future of the Internet and newspapers. Cites Bill Gates to the effect that the Internet will "...attract $30 billion in advertising revenue annually within the next five years. To give you some perspective, this would equal the entire advertising revenue currently generated each year by the newspaper industry as a whole."

Skype Users By Country (Part 3)

Interesting link up this week between Skype and TDC the Danish incumbent. As noted earlier in the week Denmark has the third highest penetration of Skype. A case of if you can't beat them join them? It does still raise the question of why Skype is more popular in some countries than others. Denmark had been number one until being overtaken in the last six months by Israel and Taiwan. The latter no doubt a result of Skype's rebranding deal in that country. Israel, on the other hand has all the characteristics that might expected prerequisites for Skype. A relatively high broadand penetration, large ex-patriot share of the population and so forth. Why Skype has, to date, been so popular in Denmark is more of a mystery. It is true that Denmark has one of the highest broadband penetrations but as we have seen that is not enough to ensure high Skype take-up. There is a high degree of mobility in the Nordic countries so there may be an element of wanting to bypass TDC, TeleiSonera, Telenor and so forth. Nordics are early adopters in telecoms. Denmark also has some other peculiarities caller connects. As far as I know Danes still pay just to listen to the phone ringing even if it doesn't complete.  Another characteristic of Denmark is that VAT is 25% which is one of the highest rates in the world. A Skype user in Denmark would of course only pay 15% (Luxembourg rate) but this would only be important for SkypeOut users. None of this quite explains the popularity in Denmark with a penetration nearly double Sweden and es. Historically TDC was one of the few telephone companies in the world to charge users has soon as they dial. By way of contrast most telcos only begin charging when Norway and Finland no where to be seen.