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News of Note — World IPv6 Day Approaches

Wednesday June 8, 2011, has been designated as World IPv6 Day by the Internet Society. The Society is highlighting Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, and Akamai as key participants. Missing from the list: governments and ISPs. ISPs are being asked to join the event, but there’s little reward for doing so unless you’ve already rolled out IPv6. ISPs that do so generally generally run a dual-stack network. For example, Comcast’s is being rolled out in time for IPv6 Day. Charter claims it will have dual-stack on its entire network by the end of 2012.

Those not participating in IPv6 Day should not notice any changes to the internet. It’s no surprise that IPv6-only websites are years away (h/t Slashdot).

Rule changes ahead

Warning! The FCC is developing outage reporting rules for broadband and VoIP providers. Expect WISPA and Rini Coran to have an opinion once the FCC delivers details.

“The FCC now proposes to set the same 100 watt power limit for vehicle radars aimed in any direction, all the time, moving or stopped,” for 76 GHz – 77 GHz spectrum.

The FCC is blocking channel number changes by TV stations.

Consumer lobbyist group Free Press is asking FCC Commissioners to pledge to not work for AT&T after approving the company’s acquisition of T-Mobile.

Business

If only WISPs could finance takeovers this way. Qwest, recently acquired by Centurylink, is issuing $575 million of debt to pay for its own acquisition.

Arris Group is working with UBS bank to structure the acquisition of video on demand provider SeaChange.

LightSquared appears to be ready to pay Sprint $2 billion per year for access to Sprint’s network.

Technology and equipment

Microsoft is building a “Disneyland Adventures Experience” that will allow people to walk through Disneyland on their TV using the Kinect.

Politics, regulation, and the law

Once again, another study shows that unbundled local loops improve telecommunications competition (this time, in Australia).

The New America Foundation’s Sascha Meinrath writes that the Broadband Map, “runs the risk of becoming a $350 million boondoggle — a map to nowhere filled with inaccurate and useless information.” In contrast, Meinrath says, a stimulus-free effort run by Google and Measurement Lab provides better data collected form the real world.

The Mayor of Seattle opened city conduit to telecom providers who lay fiber, initially in a four block area. That’s the sort of public-private partneship that WISPA supports — as long as all companies, not just the large ones, get to use government facilities.

Despite heated opposition, Verisign was allowed to renew its monopoly contract with ICANN. One commentator is suggesting that domain name owners should register domains for the long term to save money.

The State of North Carolina passed an anti-municipal network bill written by cable companies (h/t Robert Cannon).

Tucows won a domain name dispute (Tucows subsidiary Platypus is a WISPA vendor member) covering part of its portfolio of family names. Tucows owns about 65 percent of North American surnames.

National Rent a Car won a typo squatting lawsuit protecting the domain name national.com, but: “Are you ready for the kicker? National Car Rental doesn’t own National.com. Yep, that’s right. National.com is owned by National Semiconductor. So a panel just handed National Car Rental a typo of a semiconductor firm’s website.”

The UN has declared internet access a human right. I wonder what all those PC-less people will do with their new internet.

Security and crime

Skype spam is here, delivered by virus purveyors.

This is not a crime. A researcher in The Netherlands created a database of 35 million Google profiles.

The hacker group Anonymous claims to have posted thousands of Iranian government e-mails to file sharing sites. (Meanwhile Iran is building out internet service.)

It seems that China launched a cyber attack on the Google accounts of White House staff.

RSA SecurID hacks on defense contractors continue.

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