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As you may recall, back in September
the European Commission finally came out with its proposals for net
neutrality, part of its larger "Connected Continent" package designed
to complete the telecoms single market. I learned yesterday that the
European committee responsible for this area, ITRE (Industry, Research and Energy), has launched something of a stealth consultation
on these proposals. Stealth, because neither I nor anyone else that I
know covering this area, was aware of them, which is pretty bizarre.
On Open Enterprise blog.
As long-suffering readers of this column will know, I've been
following for a while the winding road leading to the European
Commission's proposals regarding net neutrality in Europe. Along the
way, there have been many twists and turns, with hints of first one
direction, then another. But today, the Commission has finally released
its plans - not just for this area, but for the whole telecoms market in Europe:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
As I've pointed out many times in previous posts, one of the key
benefits of mandating network neutrality is that it promotes innovation
by creating a level playing field. Such statements are all very well,
but where's the evidence? An important new study entitled "The
innovation-enhancing effects of network neutrality" [.pdf], commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs from the independent SEO Economic Research unit provides perhaps the best survey and analysis of why indeed network neutrality is so beneficial:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
There are few areas in tech policy where the waters are so muddied as
those swirling around net neutrality. That's as true for the EU as it
is for the US. The latest statement by the person responsible for this
area in the European Commission, Neelie Kroes, does little to clarify things.
On
Techdirt.
I've been trying to fathom what exactly Neelie Kroes, Vice-President
of the European Commission with responsibility for the Digital Agenda,
intends to do about net neutrality in Europe for a while. Back in
January of this year, I asked: "Will Neelie Kroes Defend or Destroy EU Net Neutrality?", and in June I was still wondering: "What's the Net Net on Neelie Kroes's EU Net Neutrality?"
On
Open Enterprise blog.
It's been a while since I wrote about net neutrality, but of course
it's never gone away as an important theme. Indeed, it was inevitable
that it would start to rear its ugly head again, since so many powerful
companies have vested interests in destroying it. For example, in
Germany the telecom giant Deutsch Telekom (DT) has already made a move
to kill net neutrality by giving preference to its own IPTV platform. This has led to a heated debate about net neutrality in that country (for those who read German, the site hilf-telekom.de offers some hilarious satire of DT on the subject.)
On
Open Enterprise blog.
As a recent post noted, net neutrality
is under threat in France, with ISPs like Free asking Google to pay
extra for delivery of its traffic. According to this post on the Forbes
Web site, Google has already agreed to pay the French telecoms company Orange in precisely this way. As well as damaging the whole principle of net neutrality, something that Google has been championing for many years,
this would seem to be a pretty bad business decision. After all, if
Orange is now getting paid to carry Google's traffic, why shouldn't
every other telecom company out there also receive money for delivering
Google's services?
On
Techdirt.
Not content with giving the world the "three strikes" approach to
copyright enforcement, France has recently shown signs of wanting to
undermine one of the Internet's foundations: net neutrality. This has
come about as a consequence of the French ISP Free's decision to block
ads on its service. As Mike noted,
this was essentially an attempt to persuade Google to pay the ISP an
extra fee to carry its traffic, even though Free's customers already do
that. That was resolved, at least for the moment, when France's Digital Economy minister Fleur Pellerin stepped in and persuaded Free to restore the ads.
On
Techdirt.
I have a lot of time for Neelie Kroes,
Vice-President of the European Commission with responsibility for the
Digital Agenda. She's easily the most tech-savvy of the European
Commissioners - although cynics would point out that's setting a low
bar. Sometimes, she's downright radical, as in this speech about copyright, delivered back in 2011:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
As you may have gathered, I'm a big fan of consultations: if they are
asking us what we think, we really ought not pass up the chance of
telling them. Sometime those consultations concern extremely specific
and urgent matters, like surveillance or net neutrality, and sometimes
they are more general. Here's an example of the latter:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Yesterday I wrote
about an extraordinarily clueless document from an arm of the UN that
seemed to have no real understanding of what the Internet was, how
people used it, or what should be done to build on its strengths. The
awfulness of that report contrasts painfully with a recent paper from
another international agency, the OECD.
On Open Enterprise blog.
One of the depressing things about net neutrality is that it is a
battle that must be won again and again. It's becoming increasingly
clear that another effort will be made by telecoms companies to destroy
net neutrality at the big World Conference on International
Telecommunications (WCIT). Here's how it describes itself:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
As I noted recently, net neutrality is back in the spotlight, so I
thought it would be useful - and maybe entertaining - to look at an
anti-net neutrality article for the insights it gives us about how the
other side views things. It's called "Pick Up On One and Let The Other
One Ride", and appears in the Huffington Post. Here's how it frames the discussion:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Yesterday I wrote that I hoped to post here my submission to the
important EU consultation on net neutrality that is currently open.
However, there have been some important developments in this area that
need to be covered first.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Net neutrality is one of those areas that most people are vaguely in
favour of, without giving it much thought. Governments take advantage
of this to make sympathetic noises while doing precisely nothing to
preserve it. For example, following a UK consultation on net neutrality two years ago, Ofcom came out with a very wishy-washy statement that basically said we think net neutrality is a jolly good idea but we won't actually do anything to protect it.
On
Computerworld UK.
Net Neutrality has suddenly become a hot topic again. Partly, that's
thanks to some awful ideas about regulating the Internet coming from
the International Telecommunication Union, notably those proposed by the
ETNO -- the European Telecommunications Network Operators Association
-- discussed recently on Techdirt. New information from WCITLeaks Wikileaks (found via the Net neutrality in Europe site) provides us with the following details (pdf):
On
Techdirt.
One of the key arguments used by companies who want to see the end of
net neutrality is that with growing use of high-bandwidth services like
video on demand, or video telephony, there isn't enough bandwidth to go
around, and that other services will suffer as a result. This leads
them to call for differential pricing, charging more for such services.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
A couple of weeks ago, I was talking about the striking success of
the Pirate Party in the German local elections. Since then, an opinion
poll has suggested that, currently at least, the party enjoys a
similarly wide support throughout the country - around 8%
On
Open Enterprise blog.
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