Euro-sclerosis and Sesame Street

I missed this rather wonderful summary of new European institutions to follow ENISA and the IRG - which are coined ERNIE and BERT.

I think BERT is now BEREC but its a good topic for both a new institutional economics thesis and a linguistics examination. BEREC is pronounced like a young Australian rugby five-eighth, or a town on the Scottish border.

iPhone under FCC scrutiny for blocking Google/others

Apple demonstrates its anti-net neutrality pose, and Genachowski steams in to show the FCC will act.

Upcoming events: GikIV, TPRC, SCL POlicy Forum, Future of the Internet

I will be in Europe in September, and besides taking my Cambridge flat back (tenants moving out, sniff...), I will be:

9-10 September, Brussels for the Future of the Internet project I am advising;

17-18 September, Amsterdam for GikIV, speaking on net neutrality;

21-22 September, London for the SCL Policy Forum;

27-28 September, Washington DC (driving from Montreal via NYC...) for TPRC.

Let me know if you're anywhere near any of them!

Grotersque comic-book villain Allen Sanford: regulation entirely broken

The new Vanity Fair contains fascinating details of just how unbelievably asleep the SEC had to be to allow Sanford to operate for so long in the manner he did - its clear regulators just didn't have the balls (or political authority?) to regulate.

Its called 'regulatory commitment' and it needs social anbthropologists to examine just how rotten our financial regulators (and many comms regulators) have been.

Marshall on Ofcom pointlessness and putative Broadband Bill of Rights

By Gary Marshall - excellent! Though note several points relate to the useless Advertising Standards Authority, a self-regulator Ofcom and others hide behind.

"What is the point of Ofcom? Every now and then it carries out a study into something important - 3G network coverage, say, or broadband speeds - and discovers that everybody's getting shafted... Perhaps the answer is for Ofcom to create a Broadband Bill of Rights, a set of rules that ISPs and network operators have to follow - and because we're helpful types, we've written a few of them to get Ofcom started.

1. Eradicate "up to" - "Up to…" doesn't cut it when the average speed of fixed line and mobile broadband isn't even half of the advertised figures. ISPs and network operators should be compelled to print not just the "up to" numbers, but the real figures too...

2. Use words properly - Unlimited means without limits, yet stacks of ISPs and operators are allowed to use the term to describe services with bandwidth caps, fair usage policies and other restrictions. If it's restricted, it isn't unlimited.

3. Tell the truth - ISPs that deliberately throttle traffic - such as peak-time iPlayer nobbling - or block entire protocols should say so up-front.

4. Stop banging on about the BBC - ISPs who moan about high bandwidth services such as iPlayer should be compelled to shut up. If you can't deliver the service at a particular price, put your prices up for heavy users.

5. Offer universal access - Broadband is a utility, and it's becoming increasingly important as government services move online... ISPs shouldn't be able to boot people off the internet for alleged copyright infringement. If people are pirating, that's a job for the courts.

6. Performance-related pay - Of all our proposals, this is the biggie: customers shouldn't be expected to pay for a service they don't get, so if it's £20 for "up to 20MB" then the price you pay should be "up to" £20, too... The same applies to 3G: if someone's paying X per month for a 3G connection but can't get 3G service half the time, why should they pay full whack?"

My book 31 October: "Net Neutrality"

Linked to it on Amazon!

Twitter and mobile net neutrality

If its been quiet the past week, that's because I've been weaving through the rights jungle trying to watch the Ashes and Lance Armstrong on the Internet, settling for audio and delayed video of the cricket (well done, Freddie!) and video of the cycling in English and without ads, too, courtest of Versus.

I also got into Twitter, mainly to follow the cricket and cycling stars who bypass the official media this way (Armstrong has 1.6million Twitter followers).

Its interesting to me to see how Twitter is having to negotiate with UK mobile networks to secure a bulk texting contract so avoid prohibitive standard wholesale charges, and has cut deals with Vodafone (sort of) and O2. These services are fleeced by mobile networks and will not succeed without net neutral regulation or market power. Does Ofcom care, except as a user?

Anyhoo, follow me on Twitter and you'll see I'm off to Nova Scotia for a week's holidays - bonnes vacances, eh?