Major Publications and Studies

 
Avoiding the Centralized Government of Communications: Is there a place for Network Neutrality?” January 2007 Technopolicy paper for the Master’s Course in Law and Technology, University of Ottawa

From the conclusion:

“The concern of this paper has been to alert the reader that issues of discrimination are not going to be defined out of existence in the forthcoming world of increased reliance on market forces. They will become more acute. The second purpose was to show that we have much to be concerned about in the possible re-establishment of the centralized governments of communications. It would be ironic and self-defeating for the most pro-competitive of recent Canadian governments to assist in their re-establishment. Such a thing might occur if attention were not paid in a timely way to the implications of some carriers’ existing legal privileges, and to the future occasions and incentives for the practice of anti-competitive discriminations in an Internet era.”


“Privacy Issues in ENUM”: A Study for Industry Canada, October 21, 2003

ENUM is a protocol that translates telephone numbers into domain names. More precisely, ENUM is a protocol that defines a method to convert an ordinary telephone number into a format that can be used on the Internet to look up Internet addressing information, such as, for example, VoIP or email addresses.


“A Paradigm Shift for the Stupid Network: Interconnecting with Legacy Networks in the Internet Era” by Timothy Denton and François Ménard, June 15, 2000

Following on our work in “Bellheads versus Netheads”, this is a policy piece on the need for regulators to understand that the end-to-end architecture of the Internet needs to be protected against the central-planning model of telephony and cable television.


“The Internet Illustrated”

I have not seen a better explanation of how the Internet works than the one found in this chapter of a piece I am doing on International Charging Arrangements for Internet Services (please forgive the apparent conceit!). Plenty of great illustrations by Albert Prisner (613-230-8604) which clarify the differences between circuit-switching and packet-routing architectures.

The client is the Singapore Telecommunications Authority and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC). The whole of the first round report on Internet charging and settlement issues is found at the APEC telecom working group web page


“Netheads Versus Bellheads: Research into Emerging Policies in the Development and Deployment of Internet Protocols”by Timothy Denton, with François Ménard and David Isenberg, for the Federal Department of Industry, Telecom Policy Branch, March 31, 1999

We deal with two different visions for the future of the Internet and what it means in terms of policy. This essay is interesting, informative and doubtless controversial. The choice lies between the

  • Intelligent network: The system that specifies what services are and can be, and the
  • Dumb network/stupid network: A network that does not define what ‘services’ are or can be.

The last monopoly of the owners of PSTN is to define what “services” are.


This article received over 35,000 hits in July, 1999 and 3,303 user sessions, many from leading US and foreign network manufacturers.

“The Distribution of Signals in Cyberspace: An Examination of what the Internet means for Signal Distribution and Broadcasting” by Timothy Denton, prepared for the CRTC, August 14, 1998

This was written for the CRTC in relation to the new media hearings scheduled for autumn, 1998. A review in several chapters of the history of the regulation of radiocommunication and broadcasting, the nature of the Internet, and the policy choices for Canada brought about by these new realities. Thoughtful comments are welcomed.

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