Net neutrality hits the UK mainstream: NOTW story on iPhone and 02

Its interesting to see even the chavs are now deemed interested in zettafloods and crawling mobile 'broadband' speeds: nice of 02 to point out the difference between video and text traffic, from the richest to the poorest game on network traffic....'O2 technology chief Derek McManus explained: "Watching a YouTube video on a smartphone can use the same capacity on the network as sending 500,000 text messages simultaneously. In the past 12 months the mobile industry has seen an unprecedented change in demand."

Poor mobiles, shouldn't have sold iPhones in the first place...?

Kroes will continue to shake up DG INFSO

Now you may have noticed that most senior technologists are male. You may have also noticed that the last Commissioner was a very glamorous (for Brussels and Luxembourg, certainly!) woman - and that the new Commissioner's cabinet is majority women (great touch that she chose to sit on the floor in the photo!). I predict a certain feminising influence being exerted in the first year of the new DG, where almost all the heads of unit are men, especially in Directorate B, the policy Directorate.

Job title creation in Brussels: SEVEN vice-presidents

Its like a US corporation - everyone gets made Vice-President of the European Commission! That includes both Kroes and Reding...note the CV link doesn't work;-)

• Joaquín ALMUNIA: Competition. Vice-President of the Commission.
  
• Baroness Catherine ASHTON: High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security and Vice-President of the Commission.
  
• Siim KALLAS: Transport. Vice-President of the Commission.
  
• Neelie KROES: Digital Agenda. Vice-President of the Commission.
  
• Viviane REDING: Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship. Vice-President of the Commission.
  
• Maroš ŠEFČOVIČ: Vice-President of the Commission for Inter-Institutional Relations and Administration.
  
• Antonio TAJANI: Industry and Entrepreneurship. Vice-President of the Commission.
  

Nellie Kroes: new Commissioner for INFSO

The European Commission announced its reshuffle - and its difficult to say what happened to Reding - was she promoted or pushed aside? She's now Vice-President and responsible for the cross-cutting brief on implementing the Charter of Fundamental Rights that comes in with the Lisbon 'Constitution' but most of her brief seems to be spin-doctoring for Barrroso. In any case, she'll stay involved in the Internet-access-as-human-right meme.
The new Commissioner is formerly of DG COMP, where she was initially considered less than 'adequate' but eventually respected as a tough old bird (she's 68). Her portfolio is reduced by moving the billion-Euro MEDIA programme back to Education&Culture, from which Reding lifted her Audiovisual/Media units in moving back in 2005 (Francophone Audiovisual stays adrift in the telecoms empire). So this is back to a purer neo-liberal techno-economic DG, with its enormous framework research budget and responsibility for implementing the new Telecoms Package.
Does that make Kroes an adjunct of DG COMP on telecoms matters? There's certainly not much significant policy left to fiddle with. She's been shunted out of breaking up the crisis-stricken banking sector. But after beating up Microsoft and Intel, she obviously has an eye for multinational oligopoly - which will now be tested to the full.

'Net Neutrality - The Book': out in 2-3 weeks

The book has been in production for a while, but I now have the corrected page proofs and it should be available online by mid-December and in bookshops early in 2010. I will post the link to the CC version here. Any potential reviewers, including blog reviewers (yes, it will be viral) who want a free review copy, email me.
Anyone reading this who wants a hardback copy at 40%, can also email me.

Surveillance-industrial complex: DPI trials for Virgin

I have elsewhere discussed the incentives for ISPs and spooks to work together on DPI and other surveillance techniques, measured in cash terms against ISPs' core business of providing connectivity. Now Virgin has entered a trial with a subsidiary of BAE, the UK's largest arms dealer and most sophisticated large-scale technology exporter, to instigate DPI inspection of aggregated subscriber traffic - identifying pirated material according to copyright industry claims, using both deep and shallow packet inspection.
It will be interesting to see whether Virgin subscribers increasingly resort to encryption in response.

Internet TV without the Internet: from those nice people at D-Telekom

Here's the ultimate anti-NN solution: offer people Internet TV and phone service but no Internet connection. Avoid Internet TV, avoid VOIP, but make them pay through the nose for video and voice. Genius. Wonder who's stoopid enough to subscribe?
‘With Entertain Pur we offer telephone and TV from a single source, reaching new user groups for our Entertain service,’ noted Christian P. Illek, T-Home board member, adding, ‘Customers who are not interested in internet services do not have to miss out on the innovative possibilities of Entertain any longer.’ The package includes over 120 TV channels, as well as access to an online video store, TV archive, time-shift function and HD content.