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Reading about the EU Neutrality vote, I'm reminded of the challenge faced by traditional telecommunications regulators in understanding the very concept of the Internet. To put it bluntly zero-rate is a policy framed in terms of Minitel and setting the price based on what phone number is dialed and not at all about the Internet where the value is determined by relationships entirely outside of a network. more
Have you ever wanted to quickly find out information on key Internet policy issues from an Internet Society perspective? Have you wished you could more easily understand topics such as net neutrality or Internet privacy? This year, the Internet Society has taken on a number of initiatives to help fill a need identified by our community to make Internet Governance easier to understand and to have more information available that can be used to inform policymakers and other stakeholders about key Internet issues. more
My attention was drawn recently to the article Europe Is About to Adopt Bad Net Neutrality Rules. Here's How to Fix Them by Barbara van Schewick from Stanford Law School. Much as I would like to spend my morning doing other work, I can see imminent harm that these (and many similar) proposals cause to the public. As a responsible professional and native European, I would like to summarise why it is imperative for EU regulators to ignore these siren calls (if they want to retain their legitimacy). more
While speaking at a town-hall-style meeting in India on Wednesday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended the company’s controversial Internet.org project, insisting on how the project can help connect parts of the country that otherwise wouldn’t have access to the Internet. more
On Thursday, Oct 1, 2015, from 9:30am-4:30pm US EDT (UTC-4), Dyn will be holding their "TechToberFest" event in Manchester, NH, and also streaming the video live for anyone interested. There are a great set of speakers and a solid agenda. As I wrote on the Internet Society blog, I'll be part of the security panel from 3-4pm US EDT... and we who are on the panel are excited to participate just for the conversation that we are going to have! It should be fun! more
What do Europeans interested in Internet policy think about cybersecurity, network neutrality, IANA, improving Internet access and other topics? Tomorrow the second day of the European Dialog on Internet Governance (EuroDIG) 2015 in Sofia, Bulgaria, will cover all those topics and many more. I've listed some of the sessions that either I or my Internet Society colleagues are participating in. I will personally be involved as a panelist on the two sessions about cybersecurity. more
Net Neutrality has become a hot topic in India, following a brief but high-profile national debate instigated by a consultation paper from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) that solicited views on what net neutrality is, and whether regulations protecting it are needed in India. The paper also hinted at possible regulation of all kinds of online services (like Skype, Uber, or Google) in the future. But no-one could have predicted what happened next... more
To date, proponents of a neutral internet have had relatively scant reason to raise their voices beyond anything more than a murmur in Australia. While the FCC's Open Internet Order of 2015 has been hailed as a significant win for consumers in the US, and the wording of proposed legislation to institute ex-ante regulation of service providers is soon to be considered in the EU, Aussies have been quarantined from anything other than the fringes of the Net Neutrality debate. more
At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Tom Wheele, the FCC Chairman, gave a range of spirited responses to a grilling from the Director of the GSMA, Anne Bouverot. She was following the line of the telcos and questioned if the FCC intervention would stifle growth and investments in the market; however she had problems reconciling her position with the fact that, despite these regulatory changes, the American industry was still prepared to invest a whopping $45 billion in new spectrum. more
NBC soon will join the ranks of content providers offering a streaming option to cord cutters and mobile consumers. This future service warrants special attention, because two corporate affiliates within the Comcast family will participate in many parts of the United States: Comcast as the last mile, "retail" ISP and Comcast the parent of NBC-Universal. Operating as an ISP, Comcast has at least three pricing/interconnection options, each of which raise questions relating to network neutrality... more
The Obama administration's proposals to regulate the Internet according to common carrier rules have set off a storm of opposition from carrier interests, whose scale and reach have been impressive. The arguments they muster are fatuous and deceitful. The Internet is not what the carriers own or have created; the Internet is what they seek to extract money from. "Regulating the Internet" is not the issue; regulating the carriers is. more
Federal Communication Commission (FCC) Chairman, Tom Wheeler, today in an open letter in the Wired Magazine writes: "After more than a decade of debate and a record-setting proceeding that attracted nearly 4 million public comments, the time to settle the Net Neutrality question has arrived..." more
On December 17th a US proposal for online commerce in a major trade negotiation, the Trade in Services Agreement ("TISA") leaked. A flurry of press releases and opinion pieces claim that TISA is a threat to the Internet. The headlines are lurid: "TISA leak: EU Data Protection and Net Neutrality Threatened" and "Leaked TISA text exposes US threat to privacy, civil rights"... Because I've spent years in Geneva regularly meeting with and advising negotiators on the networked economy I have a very different perspective. more
At the 2014 TelSoc Charles Todd Oration the former Chair of the ACCC, Graeme Samuel, warned against the looming content monopoly... "There is a constant risk that the exclusive tie-up of rights to content for new and emerging markets will allow the right holders to shut out competition across a wide range of services delivered over new networks." He didn't think that the current telcos have the right expertise to enter the content market... more
President Obama released a letter today stating that Internet services -- including both wired and wireless Internet -- should fall under Title II of the Telecommunications Act. Reclassifying broadband this way would prevent providers such as Comcast from charging fees to companies like Netflix in exchange for faster delivery speeds. more
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