Stories from Abroad

Nine OECD countries – up from six a year ago – now have high-speed fibre making up 50% or more of their fixed Internet connections, according to an update to the OECD’s broadband portal. Across the 37 countries studied, the share of fibre in total broadband has only risen slightly, to 27% as of 30 June 2019 from 24% a year earlier, reflecting the still-wide gap between countries in rolling out fibre, which enables much faster fixed and mobile Internet. The data shows Lithuania, Latvia, Spain and New Zealand starting to c

After years of strong connectivity growth, high-income countries are approaching universal Internet access and the 5G era, however, the pace of growth in low-income countries has fallen to just 3.8%, making progress towards universal and affordable Internet access more arduous. Global Internet connectivity has grown substantially over the past five years, yet today nearly half the world remains on the other side of the digital divide.

From autocratic Iran to democratic India, governments are cutting people off from the global web with growing frequency and little scrutiny. Parts or all of the internet were shut down at least 213 times in 33 countries in 2019, the most ever recorded, according to Access Now, a nonprofit that advocates for a free internet and has monitored the practice for a decade.

The tech world is closely watching President Donald Trump’s two-day visit to India, which could have implications for digital trade, 5G and other policy areas. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai is part of the US delegation in tow. “We will be discussing issues of mutual interest like 5G and bridging the digital divide,” Chairman Pai said in a video he shared via Twitter, “and we will aim to deepen the friendship between the world’s oldest democracy and its largest.”

Inrupt, the start-up company founded by Sir Tim Berners-Lee to redesign the way the web works, is expanding its operational team and launching pilot projects in its quest to develop a “massively scalable, production-quality technology platform.” Berners-Lee said there had been a “rush of interest” from open source developers, entrepreneurs, tech company executives, and government officials to support Inrupt’s mission to decentralise the web and hand power back to users. But Inrupt now had to focus on the complexities of turning its underlying Solid technology into a scalable platform.

The UK's Ofcom will be put in charge of regulating the internet, the government has announced, with a new range of powers intended to protect users from “harmful and illegal content” online. The regulations are broadly focused on two new sets of requirements. One, around illegal content, will see platforms hit with new targets to ensure that such content is removed quickly, ideally prevented from being posted in the first place, with a particular focus on terrorist and child sexual abuse content.

US officials say Huawei can covertly access mobile-phone networks around the world through “back doors” designed for use by law enforcement, as Washington tries to persuade allies to exclude the Chinese company from their networks. Intelligence shows Huawei has had this secret capability for more than a decade, US officials said. Huawei rejected the allegations. The US kept the intelligence highly classified until late 2019, when American officials provided details to allies including the United Kingdom and Germany, apparently.

The death of former WorldCom chief Bernie Ebbers at 78 brings back memories of the “broadbandit” era of telecoms around the turn of the century, when a bubble burst that inflicted huge damage on the industry and its investors, contributing to the rise to pre-eminence of China's Huawei today. Ebbers was sentenced to 25 years in jail in 2005, but was released in Dec 2019 on compassionate grounds to spend his final weeks with his family. He was convicted for orchestrating an $11 billion accounting fraud at WorldCom that led to the biggest bankruptcy in US history at the time.

In this article we draw on our recent case study research to examine the policy (and politics) shaping implementation of Australia's National Broadband Network (NBN) and its likely effects on equity of access to high speed broadband (HSB) services. We monitored NBN policy and implementation from 2015 to 2018 through policy documents, reports, and media. We found that equity considerations competed with political and commercial imperatives during the rollout of the NBN.

I want to propose that we use this opportunity to reaffirm what is fundamental: our commitment to a global and open internet for all. In the age of the always-on internet, the idea of suddenly flicking connectivity off like a switch sounds dystopian. But for so many people in so many places this is becoming a reality.  21 countries shut down the internet 122 times in 2019 alone. That means there were more internet shutdowns in 2019 than ever before. These shutdowns are not just the instruments of authoritarian regimes, they have been used by democracies trying to tackle problems, too.