IPv6 isn’t in the news as much as it was two or three years ago but that doesn’t mean it isn’t being adopted, those involved in pushing for its deployment said in interviews. Internet Society (ISOC) Technology Program Manager Phil Roberts said people aren’t reaching out to ISOC as they did in the past, but that may be because IPv6 is no longer news. Websites that track deployment worldwide, such as ISOC’s world launch website (http://www.worldipv6launch.org/measurements/), show that as of Monday, 13.4 percent of Alexa top 1,000 websites are reachable over IPv6. Google’s IPv6 site (http://bit.ly/1sk6pWP) showed that since ISOC’s June 2012 world IPv6 launch, more than 4 percent of those accessing the Google search engine do so on IPv6-enabled networks. The idea that IPV6 isn’t being taken up is “wrong,” said Cisco Senior Director IPv6 Program Alain Fiocco.
New European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker’s push for a single digital market is a good thing, said telecom and Internet industry officials in recent interviews. Although the composition of the incoming commission won’t be known for several months, Juncker said he intends, within the first six months of his term, to take “ambitious legislative steps” toward such a market. But it’s too soon to tell whether the newly elected European Parliament will play ball and what impact, if any, the changes to all three EU institutions -- Italy took over the EU presidency July 1 -- will have on policy, said stakeholders.
"Light fidelity” (Li-Fi) technology could help power the Internet of Things and boost communications security, its developers said in recent interviews. Li-Fi refers to signals sent via light rather than radio waves. Companies such as General Electric and Philips are incorporating the technology into their products, but it hasn’t been commercialized for consumers, said Swati Nigam, senior research associate for market research consultancy MarketsandMarkets. She predicted that would happen in two to three years. But Ovum analyst Dimitris Mavrakis disagreed, saying he sees no immediate commercial opportunities for Li-Fi.
Talks on updating broadcasting protections stalled Saturday when the World Intellectual Property Organization Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights meeting ended without any recommendations. Despite the failure to agree on conclusions -- they'll now be drafted by SCCR Chairman Martin Moscoso -- there seems to be a pretty strong inclination by delegates toward a general agreement that pure webcasting is out of the treaty, WIPO sources said.
Conclusions on talks on an updated treaty to protect broadcasting signals won’t be firmed up until Friday or later, though discussions this week at the World Intellectual Property Organization Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) have led to a decision that pure webcasting signals won’t be part of the treaty’s scope, broadcast officials said in an interview Wednesday. That, and the move toward creating a single, broad right protecting simultaneous and near simultaneous transmissions, could relieve some concerns of nongovernmental organizations and pave the way for a diplomatic conference, they said. Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) and the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), however, said they still believe those seeking the broadcasting treaty haven’t proved they need it.
With European Parliament elections May 22-25, and European Commission members changing in the fall, some telecom and civil society organizations are working to ensure that their issues remain high on the agenda of the bodies, they said. They may not be backing specific EC or parliamentary candidates, but they have made clear what they want from the winners.
High-altitude drones for broadband connectivity are a “major area” of focus for Facebook and its partners in Internet.org, which says it wants to make “affordable basic Internet services available to everyone in the world.” The plan is to operate drones at 65,000 feet to transmit a signal that covers a city-sized area with a medium population density, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a March 28 paper (bit.ly/1gucfL7). It leaves unanswered the origin of the spectrum for Internet connectivity and how the drones will avoid interfering with other spectrum users. Internet.org declined to comment. Other founding partners are Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, Qualcomm and Samsung.
Talks on an updated treaty to protect broadcast signals appear to have moved beyond consideration of strictly traditional broadcast and cablecast services to those available now and in the future via different technologies, broadcast officials said during last week’s World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) committee meeting in Geneva. Discussions on the treaty text (http://bit.ly/1nPuvGl) so far have been based on old technologies, but broadcasters want to focus on what they do today and will be doing in the near future, a broadcast official said in an interview. Broadcasters want to make clear that today’s technology and the Internet-connected TV of tomorrow -- including simulcast transmissions and catch-up services -- should be included in the treaty, the source said. Civil society groups said covering Internet-related activities would only add more complexity and harm users.
A global initiative is “urgently needed” to boost user protection and security online, said a report for the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) approved Wednesday in Strasbourg. CoE members must enact and enforce “powerful laws” that ensure data is moved, stored and intercepted only in ways that are compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), and all new devices and services should automatically include encryption, filtering, virus protection and authentication tools, said the report by Axel Fischer, of the European People’s Party (EPP) and Germany. Providers of cloud services or Wi-Fi hotspots “should face special oversight,” and ISPs must be more up-front about their policies, it said. It urged the ITU to set technical standards. The assembly also green-lighted a report by Jaana Pelkonen, of the EPP and Finland, urging governments to make Internet access a universal service requirement and adopt strict net neutrality rules.
Europe’s phone and Internet data traffic storage law is invalid, the European Court of Justice ruled Tuesday. To the joy of digital rights and privacy activists, the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) and others, the court said the data retention directive (CD Dec 13 p25) “entails a wide-ranging and particularly serious interference” with fundamental rights, without the interference being “precisely circumscribed” to ensure that it’s limited to what’s strictly necessary. The judgment “finds that untargeted monitoring of the entire population is unacceptable in a democratic society,” said Digital Rights Ireland (DRI), one of the law’s challengers. The big question now is what happens to national laws based on the directive, some said in interviews.