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Wednesday, December 28, 2011

BEREC publishes its guidelines on transparency and Quality of Service

Documents BoR 53(11) QoS and BoR 67(11) transparency - with much more promised for 2012. This is the type of detailed guidance that the subject called out for, including for instance Network Performance (i.e. what ISPs can actually be monitored for, see p3, BoR53[11]) - and the regulators must have secretly dreaded. They have to implement now, no excuses. However, on transparency, "BEREC states that probably no single method will be sufficient" (p5, BoR67[11]) and points out the limited role of NRAs. So governments' consumer bodies are not off the hook, either.

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Telecoms Council conclusions: errr, we'll wait on BEREC for net neutrality


6. WELCOMES (a) The Commission's intention to assess the need, based on BEREC's investigations, for
more stringent measures and to publish additional guidance on net neutrality  [;-)];
b) The Commission’s commitment to monitor the implementation of the EU Regulatory Framework;
c) The Commission’s commitment to issue a Code of existing EU Online Rights by 2012 [hot air].
7. INVITES THE COMMISSION TO (a) Encourage its dialogue with Member States and stakeholders on net neutrality while supporting Member States in ensuring the rapid development of broadband;
b) Monitor, jointly with BEREC, the issue of traffic management to allow for a smooth flow (?) of proportional, necessary and transparent traffic management practices that do not affect net neutrality;
(c) Continue analysing, jointly with Member States, the sharing of costs of traffic and financial flows (????) between players of the Internet value chain;
d) Continue studying, with the support of BEREC's investigations, any aspects of net neutrality where significant and persistent problems are substantiated, including charges and conditions that mobile operators impose on VoIP users (well done, JJ) as well as throttling of content, applications and services;
e) Further assess, jointly with BEREC, the discrepancy between advertised and actual delivery speeds occurring in Member States, and report to the Council and to the European Parliament on the situation thereof by 2012 (I presume not in January...);
f) Provide additional information on traffic management best practices and on how to respond to the requirements of global service providers concerning quality and pricing of services.
8. INVITES MEMBER STATES TO (a) Encourage the application of the principle of net neutrality and continue their dialogue with the Commission and stakeholders on the openness of the Internet and net neutrality, taking into account ongoing analyses;
b) Ensure the open and neutral character of the Internet as their policy objective.
9. INVITES STAKEHOLDERS TO (a) Continue the dialogue with Member States, National Regulatory Authorities, BEREC and the Commission to further the benefits of an open and innovative Internet;
b) Develop behaviours and economic choices that support an open Internet platform, thus preventing the exclusion of small players and innovative models, and enabling access to, or the transmission of, online content, applications and services;
c) Seek wide consensus on the aspects of net neutrality through balanced discussions blah blah."

Internet co-regulation: 2013 letter writing and Ed Vaizey round table, 7 Dec

Internet co-regulation: Notes and thoughts from Ed Vaizey copyright and web blocking round table, 7th December:

'via Blog this'

Neelie's hilarious Christmas joke: 'No disconnect' to be led by least reputable ex-politician in Germany

I presume this is all part of some elaborate sarcasm designed to show the limits of libel law when faced by parody? The disgraced plagiarist zu Guttenberg has been asked to act as an official (unpaid) advisor on net freedom to the Commissioner, despite his extraordinary record - see comments on her reply to the astonished blog reaction.

Friday, December 02, 2011

TelecomTV: The end of the Internet show

Old article but worth a mention: TelecomTV | News | The end of the Internet show: 'via Blog this'

Evidence-gathering: email from RespectMyNet

Dear Mr Marsden,
As you may already know, in September, La Quadrature du Net launched with Dutch NGO Bits of Freedom a website for citizens to report Internet access restrictions and Net neutrality violations, http://RespectMyNet.eu. RespectMyNet's goal is to build a comprehensive and strong case of Net neutrality violations across Europe, and to present the collected and verified data to the European Commission to force Commissioner Neelie Kroes to move away from her wait-and-see approach and start protecting neutrality in law.
So far, the website has been quite successful: over 200 cases have been reported, and several cases have been confirmed and commented on many times. When we met with BEREC last Friday, we used cases from the site as evidence and learned that they were considering data from RespectMyNet as a source for their own study.
However, only a few cases have been reported and commented on for the UK,which is quite surprising given the poor situation neutrality-wise in your country. Here are the cases in the UK so far: http://respectmynet.eu/list/UK
Given your expertise and knowledge of the issue, your help in getting more people to report cases and confirming them using the "me too" function would be particularly useful. To help those willing to help RespectMyNet, we've put together a short how-to: https://pad.lqdn.fr/p/respectmynet-confirmations
Best regards,
Axel Simon
Campaigner / chargé de campagnes – La Quadrature du Net

Fiberevolution: Do data caps punish the wrong users?

Some transparency in the debate? Fiberevolution: Do data caps punish the wrong users?:

'via Blog this'