Stories from Abroad

On October 13, 2023, in Kyoto, IGF Workshop #297 brought subject matter experts together with interested members of the IGF Community to discuss the policy issues involved in achieving a multilingual Internet.

Much as it is in North America, Europe's wireline future is tied to fiber. However, widely deployed hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) networks will continue to live on and support customers for years to come. Fiber is clearly the fastest-growing access technology in Europe.

Canada has ordered large online streaming services to pay 5 percent of their Canadian revenue to the government in a program expected to raise $200 million per year to support local news and other home-grown content. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) announced its decision after a public comment period. The fees apply to both video and music streaming services.

The Marubo people have long lived in communal huts scattered hundreds of miles along the Ituí River deep in the Amazon rainforest. They have preserved this way of life for hundreds of years through isolation — some villages can take a week to reach. But since September, the Marubo have had high-speed internet thanks to Elon Musk. The 2,000-member tribe is one of hundreds across Brazil that are suddenly logging on with Starlink, the satellite-internet service from Space X.

Can you imagine a future where everyone relies solely on their cellular connection, and they don’t subscribe to a fixed broadband connection at all? Currently, the U.S. government is undertaking a big push to get everyone in the country connected to fiber broadband to close the digital divide. But ironically, a research group from the U.K.

Vice President Kamala Harris has worked to promote digital inclusion in Africa. She said that the United States is committed to build collaborations between public and private industries to increase digital inclusion on the continent of Africa. She said the United States will “double down” on our effort to mobilize millions of dollars in public and private capital from the United States, Africa, and around the world to increase digital inclusion. Now, the Vice President is announcing the following public-private partnerships, coordinated on behalf of the U.S.

New commitments to develop AI safely have been agreed with 16 AI tech companies spanning the globe, including companies from the US, China and the Middle East, marking a world-first on the opening day of the AI Seoul Summit on May 21. Where they have not done so already, AI tech companies will each publish safety frameworks on how they will measure risks of their frontier AI

The Council of the European Union approved a ground-breaking law aiming to harmonise rules on artificial intelligence, the so-called artificial intelligence act. The flagship legislation follows a ‘risk-based’ approach, which means the higher the risk to cause harm to society, the stricter the rules. It is the first of its kind in the world and can set a global standard for AI regulation. The new law aims to foster the development and uptake of safe and trustworthy AI systems across the EU’s single market by both private and public actors.

Elon Musk’s ongoing war against the Brazilian judiciary is more than just another high-profile feud between arguably the world’s most prolific right-wing troll (who also happens to be one of its richest men) and the liberal governments that vex him. By going after Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes after he ordered numerous right-wing accounts removed from X in that country, Musk has turned a debate over Brazilian censorship into a global conserv

According to new figures from Rewheel, T-Mobile's purchase of Sprint in 2020 helped to keep mobile prices in the US sky high. "Five years on, the Sprint / T-Mobile 4-to-3 mobile merger made the US one of the most expensive mobile markets in the world," the Finland-based research firm wrote in a new report.