Carter's £6 rural NGA tax examined

£6 tax on all BT lines to support the 'Final Third' - VDSL in rural areas. Why, oh Lord Carter, why? You could not get less hypothecated if you tried...

"My gran will be happy, she's always complaining that without fibre to home her current 22mbps is just not fast enough for her torrents to download at the same time as running apache server to to distribute her content to the other people in her sheltered housing."

Educated readers respond to Carter

Hope I'm not flattering The Register's clientele, but I rather enjoyed reading their responses to Lord Carter's throttling charter. There's more by Monica Horten here - yes, of course its worse than Sarkozy's wet dreams of how restrictive Hadopi could be!

Stephen Carter: evil genius!

Poison pill defence against both Ofcom (his erstwhile employees) and the next Tory government: cut copyright violators by 70% in a year by saying 'no, don't'. If that doesn't work, adopt Plan B - deliberate Parliament-ordered anti-pirate throttling without a court order! You couldn't make it up...

"Government will also provide for backstop powers for
Ofcom to place additional conditions on ISPs aimed at reducing or preventing online copyright infringement by the application of Blocking (Site, IP, URL), Protocol blocking, Port blocking, Bandwidth capping Bandwidth shaping, Content identification and filtering– or a combination of these measures"

- unless file-sharing is reduced by 70% in 6 months, Ofcom's job!

Its almost exactly what was ruled unconstitutional in France last week - graduated response without a court ruling, to restrict users' access.

Note that it applies after 12 months of Ofcom's notification procedure - i.e. after the Election!

Digital Britain - nothing to see here....

Times cuts through the spin to reveal a shivering naked emperor and his sidekick Carter leaving government

The Prime Minister promises inThe Times today that the Government will help the private sector to move “farther and faster” to provide the next generation of superfast broadband, and the aim is that all households should enjoy broadband speeds of 10 megabits. But today Lord Carter of Barnes, the departing Communications Minister, will promise only that all households will be able to get a minimum standard speed of 2 megabits.

It was known already that the 2-megabit proposal would be partfinanced with £200 million, taken from a BBC-run scheme to help the elderly and vulnerable to change from analogue to digital television.

Lord Carter’s Digital Britain White Paper will reveal that the Government has been unable to strike deals with any of the main players on key elements of the digital strategy, including:

— a plan to take millions of pounds from the BBC licence fee to subsidise other media activities, including ITV’s regional news and local newspapers;

— the merger of BBC Worldwide and Channel 4;

— who will pay for fibre-optic connections across the country;

— the release of mobile radio spectrum by Vodafone and O2 for new national wireless broadband.

Instead, there will be only a modest package of initiatives and tax breaks to help BT and Virgin Media to extend faster, fibre-optic connections around the whole country

NGA - duopoly is enough competition?

The EC consultation seems to think so! Are Barroso and Kroes railroading Reding?

"several people, including a telecom regulator, a diplomat from one large E.U. member state, ECTA, and even one person from within the Commission itself have said that the Commission's draft recommendation may be biased in favor of incumbents. Only ECTA spoke out publicly. The other sources insisted on remaining anonymous. There have been numerous meetings this week about the draft recommendation, and it does appear that political pressure has been brought to bear in favor of incumbent operators," said one person close to the discussions.

According to the diplomat, the political pressure stems from the German government, which is fighting to secure a better deal for Deutsche Telekom. "Germany is pressuring Barroso to intervene in favor of the incumbents. It is also lobbying other countries to do likewise," he said. Barroso has publicly stated his interest in leading the next Commission once the current team's mandate expires in the fall. To ensure that he gets the job again, he needs the endorsement of the heads of national governments, and Germany's in particular because Germany is the biggest E.U. member state."

Metaphor for net neutrality: a digital Checkpoint Charlie?

Can you think of a better book cover?

3rd Reading 15 December - or is it?

Monica Horten as usual is first with the news on the Package - it appears that it must go to Conciliation on 12 June at the Telecoms Council, but there is a rumour that only Amendment 138 - on user rights and 3 strikes - will go.