Excellent critical analysis of ETNO proposal for WCIT and likely outcome

Why is the UN Trying to Take over the Internet? - Forbes (skip straight to page 3 and ignore the political spin): "Developing nations may see sending-party-network-pays as a return to the good old days.  But the more likely outcome is that content providers [meaning content delivery networks - ed] will simply refuse requests from countries where the expected revenue from its users (e-commerce, ad revenue, subscriptions) is less than the cost imposed by the receiving network.  As the ISOC report puts it, “Sending-party-network-pays could therefore reinforce and make much worse the existing ‘digital divide.’”  Countries who today may largely be requesting content without providing much in return may find their citizens cut off." 'via Blog this'

Tor Project and net neutrality

I'm attending a great talk by Rune from Tor at #EINSS in Oxford. I had not previously thought a great deal about how Tor use (and all SSL to some extent) can be more or less stopped by ISPs who have effective QoS tools and can dial down heavy encrypted users. As the Tor Project: FAQ states: "Tor is never going to be blazing fast. Your traffic is bouncing through volunteers' computers in various parts of the world, and some bottlenecks and network latency will always be present. You shouldn't expect to see university-style bandwidth through Tor. But that doesn't mean that it can't be improved. The current Tor network is quite small compared to the number of people trying to use it, and many of these users don't understand or care that Tor can't currently handle file-sharing traffic load." 'via Blog this'

VP Pick, Paul Ryan, Has (Mostly) Been A Friend To Technology

VP Pick, Paul Ryan, Has (Mostly) Been A Friend To Technology | TechCrunch: "With respect to our friends at Wired, it’s unclear whether Ryan opposes net neutrality. While he did oppose a Democratic-backed bill to mandate net neutrality, so did virtually every single Republican, including long-time friends of the Internet, such as Congressman Darrell Issa. Conservatives had issue with empowering the FCC to regulate Internet Service Providers; it wasn’t a blanket opposition to Net Neutrality, itself. If the tea-party friendly Ryan was actually a staunch opponent of net neutrality, he would have jumped on the misguided Paul-family libertarian bandwagon, which wrongly claimed that the Internet developed without any help from the government. He also would have co-sponsored the anti-net neutrality bill, The Internet Freedom Act (H.R. 96), along with many of his conservative colleagues." 'via Blog this'

Britain Sees Modest Gain: 27th in Europe for 'superfast'

Britain Sees Modest Gain In Average Broadband Speeds: "UK remains in a distant 21st position, with an average connection speed of 5.6 Mbps, although average connection speeds were much improved on the 4.9Mbps the UK achieved in the last quarter of 2011. Looking at the first quarter of this year, it is clear the UK really has its work cut out for it when comparing “high broadband” (i.e. superfast broadband) quality. The UK position here in the Akamai’s EMEA league table is 27th, behind the likes of Poland, Hungary, Romania and Portugal.
Akamai has redefined what superfast broadband is, now relating it to connections of 10Mbps or greater (shurely 100? ED).
The Akamai report reveals that global adoption of superfast reached 10 percent, up 19 percent quarter-over-quarter. It found that among the top 10 countries for high broadband adoption, South Korea topped the list with 53 percent penetration. Japan (37 percent), Hong Kong (28 percent), Latvia (26 percent) and the Netherlands (24 percent) rounded out the top five.
The average global connection speed in the first quarter was 2.6 Mbps."
'via Blog this'

Why net neutrality matters: my presentation in Edinburgh June 8

Upload here - it matters because, In short, neutrality exposes all the shortcomings in the micromanagement of telecoms in the 2009 European reforms.

Non-answer to BEREC's Consultation: We need Net Neutrality Law! | La Quadrature du Net

Non-answer to BEREC's Consultation: We need Net Neutrality Law! | La Quadrature du Net: "La Quadrature du Net publishes its non-answer to the EU body of telecoms regulators' (BEREC) consultation on Net Neutrality. It is not time for yet-another consultation on the EU Commission's failed "wait-and-see" policy aimed at letting telecom operators take control of the Internet by discriminating communications. The only way to protect a free Internet as well as freedoms and innovation online is to clearly enact and protect Net Neutrality in EU law." 'via Blog this'

Exploring Anti-Net Neutrality Arguments - Glyn Moody

Exploring Anti-Net Neutrality Arguments - Open Enterprise: "Even the mention above of using anti-trust laws betrays the old-world perspective, where things moved slowly enough that government action after the event might have made sense. But as the Microsoft anti-trust case made clear, now things are moving so quickly that by the time a court reaches its judgement, the damage has been done, and the remedies are probably irrelevant. That's why we need laws enshrining net neutrality before the problems arise." 'via Blog this'

How Google Forced Verizon to Allow Smartphone Tethering

How Google Forced Verizon to Allow Smartphone Tethering - Technology Review: "The FCC settlement was made under rules set in 2007, when it auctioned off a chunk of radio channels known as the C block for use for mobile communications. Verizon bought that for $9.63bn, but only after Google intentionally drove up the price to trigger conditions that restricted the eventual winner to allowing “open devices and open applications” on connections using it. It was those rules that caused the FCC to force yesterday’s settlement. Verizon has made C block radio frequencies a core part of its wireless data network. That is correctly seen as a victory by those campaigning for “net neutrality”, who say it removes an egregious example of an internet service provider restricting what a person may do with a connection they are paying for". Schmidt's diplomacy with Verizon is from a previous less principled Google? 'via Blog this'