Tag: internet

ICANN announces opening of Istanbul office as part of globalization effort

ICANN announces opening of Istanbul office as part of globalization effort

By Mikael Ricknäs, IDG News Service

As part of ICANN’s efforts to become a more global organization it detailed plans on Thursday for its new office in Istanbul.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers coordinates the DNS (Domain Name System) and IP addresses, which are the cornerstones of the Internet.

The announcement marks a significant step for ICANN as it prepares to spread its operational functions across three global headquarters—Los Angeles (which is the current location), Istanbul and Singapore—a setup that will fundamentally change the way the organization operates, according to CEO Fadi Chehadé, who will spend parts of the year in all three cities.

“It will result in a complete change in ICANN’s posture and understanding for what our stakeholders around the world need, because we are not just about opening new offices. I am taking the functions within ICANN and slicing them in three, so every function we have will literally be running across the world in all time zones,” Chehadé said.

To make this possible, ICANN is also putting in place standardized platforms and mechanisms to track processes, so that they can be followed around the world, according to Chehadé.

The choice of Istanbul may surprise some people, but Chehadé is convinced it’s a good place to be. The city has a growing infrastructure and a good airport. It is located close to Europe, the Middle East and Africa and has a young population with technical and linguistics skills.

The Istanbul office will be led by David Olive, ICANN’s current vice president for policy development. A number of current ICANN staff will relocate to Istanbul over the coming months and local staff also will be hired.

“I would like our first people to start at the Istanbul hub as early as June, and if possible June 1,” Chehadé said.

At the same time, the lease for the Singapore office is being finalized. The necessary legal entity was formed in the last few days, according to Chehadé

ICANN not locating one of its global headquarters in the E.U. may be seen as a snub. But the feedback Chehadé has received from E.U. members has been very supportive, he said.

“There is a clear appreciation, I think, for Turkey being the right hub between the Middle East, Europe and Africa,” Chehadé said.

Turkey applied to join what was then the European Economic Community at the end of the 1980s, and in 1997 it was declared eligible to join the E.U. Accession negotiations started in 2005, according to the E.U.’s website, but they are still far from finalized, highlighting the troubled relationship between the two.

This is a busy time for Chehadé and his colleagues at ICANN as they work on both the globalization effort and the introduction of new gTLDs, which will add more suffixes to the end of domain names.

“By mid-year this year we should start being in a position to recommend the delegation of new gTLDs. Some people ask what mid-year means, and I am giving us some room given that there are many, many moving parts, but sometime in the July to August time frame we should hopefully be ready,” Chehadé said.

April 26, 2013
Boom on the Bosporus

Lots of young people, eager to shop and play online: no wonder Turkey’s internet industry is crowded

MUSLIM farmers do not keep pigs. This is as true of those who play at virtual agriculture as of those who fill physical food-troughs. So there are no pigs in the Arabic version of “Happy Farm”, published by Peak Games, a young firm based in Istanbul. For the same reason “Happy Farm” has no vineyards, and female farmhands wear the hijab. Local tastes matter.

Peak Games has found rich soil. It already employs 200 people and has developers in Jordan and Saudi Arabia as well as Istanbul and Ankara. More than 35m people play its games at least once a month, many of them on Facebook. Half of the players are in Turkey; the rest are in the Middle East and north Africa. Rina Onur, one of its founders, says that she and her colleagues saw a gap in the online-games market that companies catering to Western tastes could not fill. So Peak Games offers people in Turkey and nearby countries games with a regional twist, like “Happy Farm”, as well as online versions of traditional amusements. Okey, a Turkish game played with tiles, is most popular.

Turkey is bursting with internet companies, many of them selling things to the young. It is not hard to see why. The country is big, youthful and embracing the internet eagerly. Half of its 75m people are under 30. Around 44% of Turks use the internet, up from just 14% in 2006 and 3% in 2000. They comprise Facebook’s seventh-largest national audience. Turks are also happy to use credit cards, which are handy for buying things online: the country has three of them for every five people, says GP Bullhound, an investment bank, more than the European average. And the market still has a lot of room to grow. Penetration rates are well below those in western Europe (see chart).

Several companies have attracted foreign money. Peak Games has raised $20m. In September General Atlantic, an American investment firm, and others put $44m into Yemeksepeti, through which Turks order meals for delivery from local restaurants. In 2011 Naspers, a South African media company, paid $86m for 68% of Markafoni, an online fashion club; eBay raised its stake in GittiGidiyor, an auction site, to 93%, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Tiger Global Management, both based in America, invested $26m in Trendyol, another fashion site.

Typically, Turkish internet companies have borrowed business models from abroad and given them Turkish tweaks. Mustafa Say, whose iLab Ventures owns the other 7% of GittiGidiyor, says that buyers pay into an escrow account, from which money is sent to sellers only when goods turn up. That, he says, has helped to build trust. Yemeksepeti’s customers pay nothing extra for delivery and can pay in cash on the doorstep. This still accounts for 37% of sales, says Nevzat Aydin, a founder and its chief executive. Not only money and ideas have come from abroad. So have people: returning Turks, most of them equipped (like Mr Say and Mr Aydin) with American education and experience.

The size of the Turkish market is a “double-edged sword”, says Numan Numan, a former Goldman Sachs banker now at 212, a venture-capital firm which takes its name from the telephone code for the European side of Istanbul. Scale at home is a boon, but start-ups in smaller countries, such as Israel or Estonia, have more incentive to look beyond their borders from the outset. Of the six Turkish firms in which 212 has invested, Mr Numan expects “a minimum of four to go regional at least”.

Turkish internet firms think they have a good base from which to expand, especially into the Middle East and north Africa. Peak Games is perhaps the best example, but others also have ambitions. Because Turkish television and culture are popular in the region, endorsements by Turkish celebrities can help to sell clothes and shoes. General Atlantic’s money will partly finance Yemeksepeti’s move abroad.

Lots of others are hoping to follow the successes. In November, in a hall at Bilgi University in Istanbul, 20 young Turkish companies coached by Bootcamp Ventures, the event’s organiser, presented their plans to prospective investors.

Events like this, Bootcamp’s fifth in Turkey, have become common. “When we started here six years ago,” says Didem Altop of Endeavor, a non-profit organisation which seeks to encourage entrepreneurs in countries from Brazil to Jordan, “there used to be three events a year. Now there are three a day.”

Turkey has so far been short of “angel” investors who will sprinkle money on a seedling company without demanding most of its equity. That is changing, as the first generation of founders become investors and mentors for the next. In Galata Business Angels, Istanbul has a network of such people including Mr Numan and Sina Afra, co-founder of Markafoni. Incubators are being set up: at Enkuba, in Istanbul, Piraye Antika, a former local head of HSBC, a big bank, and her colleagues have taken on Bu Kac Para Eder, which values antiques online, and torpilli, which helps students preparing for university-entrance exams.

The government’s policies have been a bit disjointed, says Ms Altop, but are becoming more concerted. Young companies can already get grants for research and marketing; those in “technoparks” are excused some taxes. More encouraging is the prospect of tax breaks to accredited angels, which are due to come into effect soon. Most start-ups will fail, as they do everywhere: fashion and daily deals, in particular, look horribly crowded. But more of them may get the chance to emulate those already on the road to success.

December 26, 2012
Turkey’s Internet Tiger Shows Signs of Stirring

Turkey has that most scarce, yet highly sought-after, attribute among European economies: growth. With this rising tide, is now the time for investors to be contemplating Turkey’s growing Internet economy?

Certainly the statistics look good. According to the European Union, Turkey’s real gross-domestic-product growth for 2010 was 9%, compared to just 2% for the 27 EU members. It is forecasting that growth for 2011 will be 7.5% against 1.9% for the EU.

Turkey has 35 million Internet users—out of a total population of around 77 million—70% of whom, according to research firm Comscore, are younger than 34. That makes the country the fifth-largest Internet audience in Europe. Those users are engaged, spending the third-longest time online in Europe, after the Netherlands and the U.K.

Turkey has also embraced social media: It is one of the top five audiences on Facebook and top 10 on Twitter. Furthermore, Turkey’s infrastructure is well developed. Credit-card penetration, at some 60%, is higher than the European average of 50%. Online retail is strong and growing fast.

And unlike in Russia, logistics and physical infrastructure are good. Thanks to heavy investment, communication links are good. The third-generation network, at least in major urban areas, is often faster than that found in many other European countries.

Toss into the pot a couple of major exits for Turkish start-ups (South Africa’s Naspers acquired a majority stake in Markafoni, an e-commerce site; eBay Inc. snapped up online marketplace GittiGidiyor and Amazon.com Inc. took a stake in flower retailer Çiçek Sepeti), and the arrival of the Russian search engine giant, Yandex, and the picture is starting to look pretty good. Is an online Anatolian Tiger starting to stir?

However, despite the recent panel at the Munich DLD conference hyping Turkey as a golden investment opportunity, the experience of attending the recent Startup Turkey conference in Antalya leads one to conclude that it’s a brave investor who jumps into the market right now.

Burak Buyukdemir, the conference organizer, says the Turkish Internet scene is still heavily dominated by copycat e-commerce sites. Of the 33 startups that made pitches at the conference, more than half were shopping sites of some sort, aimed at selling Turkish products to Turks living in Turkey.

Commentators often look down their noses at copycats, but they serve an important part in the development of the ecosystem. Entrepreneurs need to learn their craft. Taking a successful model and turning it into a Turkish equivalent is both safer—the model is proven—and faster.

Nor need they be unattractive to international investors, says Charles Irving of Pond Ventures. With about 80 million Turks world-wide, three million of whom live in Germany, it is possible to build a reasonably sized company that might make it onto the investors’ radar.

But, admits Ali Karabey, founder of Turkey’s newest venture-capital organization, 212 Ventures, problems still need to be overcome if the market is truly to take off. Investors only get their money back when a company is sold, and the exit route for Turkish companies isn’t that clear, he says. The public markets in Turkey aren’t really suitable for the size of Internet companies at the moment, so trade sales remain the most likely exit, and so far they have been to international companies, not local players.

Meanwhile, looming on the horizon is the threat to the emerging Internet scene from Rocket Internet, the startup factory founded by Germany’s Samwer Brothers. Its aggressive model of rolling out competitors is a worry for local players, says Hans-Jürgen Schmitz, the managing partner of Luxembourg-based Mangrove. He acknowledged that the prospect of a heavily funded Rocket site would certainly force him to look twice at opportunities in Turkey right now.

The other worry for Turkish investors, says local business angel Ömer Faruk Akarca, is the worrying valuations startups are trying to claim. There is a risk, he said, that Turkey could go straight from nascent scene to bubble without stopping in between. He called for some realism to be injected into the market. While investors weren’t being taken in by the numbers, he said, there was a risk that as Turkey’s profile raises ever higher, and more and more capital becomes available, that people will start to believe the valuations.

Despite all that, Turkey has certainly caught the eye of the investment community. That leading venture-capital company Accel Partners, an investor in Facebook, Groupon, Etsy and Spotify, decided to send two people to attend a conference of 300 Turkish startups shows how seriously the country is taken.

Nor should the threat from Rocket be exaggerated, cautioned Niels van der Linden, a Dutch adviser based in Istanbul: “Companies do not have a right to exist, and if Rocket can produce better companies, more quickly, then Turkish startups need to learn and adapt. Competition is good. At the moment the field is clear, but that will not last.”

With its impressive growth, its alignment with the European Union and its historic role as a bridge between east and west, Turkey is certainly a country of great opportunities. Fortune favors the brave, so for those willing to play a high-stakes game, get on the flight to Istanbul tomorrow. For everyone else, the tiger has just started to stir. Be there when it eventually wakes.

via Turkey’s Internet Tiger Shows Signs of Stirring – WSJ.com.

February 26, 2012
The conspiracy theory that Turkey forgot

Turkey’s growing Internet filtering debate could stand a reboot to sync up with the world. A critical link is missing between the two discussions.

Most of the world, particularly the United States, is on alert to the threat of “cyber terrorism.” Just days ago, the U.S. electronic spy authority known as the National Security Agency began a “voluntary” program of filtering the data run through Internet Service Providers, or ISPs, to snare lethal viruses aimed at military infrastructure.

“We hope the… cyber pilot can be the beginning of something bigger,” U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn told a Paris security conference last week. “It could serve as a model that can be transported to other critical infrastructure sectors…” Privacy groups and civil libertarians are wary, fearing “back door” eavesdropping and expansion of filtering into private and personal lives.

In Turkey, however, we’ve skipped virtually any discussion of cyber terror, save a documentary on TV’s Channel 8 and some discussion in defense policy circles. Instead, we’ve gone straight to government filtering mandates amid cries to protect family values. The result has set the government against web denizens and Internet companies. Executives, including the chief of Google, are flocking to Ankara while the skirmish plays out with hack attacks on government websites and two major street protests so far in Istanbul and Adana.

My sympathies are with the wary in Turkey and abroad. But the absence here of concern over cyber terror may yet prove the debate we should have had.

Most international discussion turns on the mysterious and devastating “Stuxnet” virus that, vectored via those little UBS memory sticks we all use, apparently set back Iran’s nuclear program last year by disabling research centrifuges. The curious should also Google “Farewell Dossier,” a Cold War-era coup by the Americans against a trans-Siberia gas pipeline (Nabucco was to come along later as a kinder means to prevent Russian domination of European energy markets). The Soviets were stealing American pipeline software. Rather than bust them, the Americans dusted the software with a virus. “The Trojan Horse” triggered a pipeline explosion in the Siberian wilderness equivalent to a fourth the firepower of Hiroshima back in 1982.

The technology behind all of this is dizzyingly complex. But it boils down to something we hardly ever think of; little boxes the size of a cigarette pack called programmable logic controllers, or PLCs, in techspeak. PLCs are the hidden slave labor of what we often think of as “low tech” industry. They run the processes in virtually every textile factory. They start and stop the metro running between Taksim and Levent. They open and shut the sluice gates on every dam in Turkey, not to mention the valves on the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline.

Like the cough of a passenger on an airplane, a lab-made virus can spread from a memory stick or web file throughout industrial systems, essentially taking over and paralyzing the PLCs that quietly run our lives. This technology runs Turkey. The threat to it is real.

Turkey loves conspiracy scenarios. Somehow, this is one we’ve missed.

via The conspiracy theory that Turkey forgot – Hurriyet Daily News.

June 26, 2011
Internet access is ‘a fundamental right’

Almost four in five people around the world believe that access to the internet is a fundamental right, a poll for the BBC World Service suggests.

The survey – of more than 27,000 adults across 26 countries – found strong support for net access on both sides of the digital divide.

Countries such as Finland and Estonia have already ruled that access is a human right for their citizens.

International bodies such as the UN are also pushing for universal net access.

“The right to communicate cannot be ignored,” Dr Hamadoun Toure, secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), told BBC News.

“The internet is the most powerful potential source of enlightenment ever created.”

He said that governments must “regard the internet as basic infrastructure – just like roads, waste and water”.

“We have entered the knowledge society and everyone must have access to participate.”

The survey, conducted by GlobeScan for the BBC, also revealed divisions on the question of government oversight of some aspects of the net.

Web users questioned in South Korea and Nigeria felt strongly that governments should never be involved in regulation of the internet. However, a majority of those in China and the many European countries disagreed.

In the UK, for example, 55% believed that there was a case for some government regulation of the internet.

Rural retreat

The finding comes as the UK government tries to push through its controversial Digital Economy Bill.

As well as promising to deliver universal broadband in the UK by 2012, the bill could also see a so-called “three strikes rule” become law.

This rule would give regulators new powers to disconnect or slow down the net connections of persistent illegal file-sharers. Other countries, such as France, are also considering similar laws.

Recently, the EU adopted an internet freedom provision, stating that any measures taken by member states that may affect citizen’s access to or use of the internet “must respect the fundamental rights and freedoms of citizens”.

In particular, it states that EU citizens are entitled to a “fair and impartial procedure” before any measures can be taken to limit their net access.

The EU is also committed to providing universal access to broadband. However, like many areas around the world the region is grappling with how to deliver high-speed net access to rural areas where the market is reluctant to go.

Analysts say that is a problem many countries will increasingly have to deal with as citizens demand access to the net.

The BBC survey found that 87% of internet users felt internet access should be the “fundamental right of all people”.

More than 70% of non-users felt that they should have access to the net.

Overall, almost 79% of those questioned said they either strongly agreed or somewhat agreed with the description of the internet as a fundamental right – whether they currently had access or not.

Free speech

Countries such as Mexico, Brazil and Turkey most strongly support the idea of net access as a right, the survey found.

More than 90% of those surveyed in Turkey, for example, stated that internet access is a fundamental right – more than those in any other European Country.

BBC

March 8, 2010
British software used to crash Iranian websites

Union Jack behind green revolution

By Nick Farrell

A BLIGHTY web designer has noticed that an application he developed is being used by members if the Green revolution in Iran.

Ryan Kelly told Channel Four News he had developed www.pagereboot.com to automatically refresh websites such as Ebay, but said Iranians had emailed him saying they were using it to mount distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks on that country’s official government websites.

He noticed that he was suddenly getting large numbers of download requests, then he started received emails from grateful Iranians saying they were using the application to attack government websites and bring them down.

There have been protests, as well as a web campaign, apparently, against Iran’s government after the results of Friday’s presidential election were announced, amid complaints of vote rigging.

Kelly took down the website because it could not handle the traffic, but after an online appeal for donations to cover the increased costs, he was able to make it available again. µ

Source: www.theinquirer.net, 18 June 2009

June 21, 2009