The recent elections and the Democrats win of the American Presidency spurred discussions on all open issues in telecom field. I have been watching the complete set of debate coming up to the surface as the day that the President-elect will assume office gets closer. An important issue brought in the spotlights was the Network Neutrality debate. Largely, it all started with a paper published by Timothy B. Lee at CATO. The paper is entitled “The Durable Internet: Preserving Network Neutrality without Regulation“. Discussions picked up on some key points of Lee’s paper. Lee attempts a balanced approach to the debate. However, considering myself originating from the “openist” group – given my internet engineering background, though without strong prejudices I assure you – due to my business alter ego, I stil don’t share the conclusions drawn by the author that regulation (ie net neutrality enforcement by central authorities) will most likely harm Internet innovation and consumers. One thing that is not clearly differntiated in the paper is discrimination and prioritization of traffic,which makes a huge difference especially in business terms. Anyways, from my standpoint, leaving net neutrality to the discretion of the operators opens the door for network discrimination, possibly in the future. Network discrimination may not immediately (or at first, if you wish) target/affect directly the end customer rather competition, third party content and services, alternative business models, and what do you think this will do to innovation? I plan to write a more detailed post on this soon.
Anyways, Benoit was the first I’ve read that pointed out that Americans are starting to think again about broadband adoption rates and government’s active involvement in broadband investments. IIA discussed in a recent policy symposium the challenges of broader coverage for broadband services and invited the new administration to craft a national broadband strategy while keeping high-speed Internet adoption in mind with every policy decision if faces. Read this article. It’s interesting.
Getting back to home-Europe, in UK, BT is growing frustrated due to Ofcom’s unreasonable delay (according to the Telco) to decide on the rules surrounding BT’s $2.2 billion for a superfast broadband network. The British Telco pushes Ofcom for a decision with what seems contradictive announcements. On one hand, BT issues a warning that if Ofcom further delays decision the allocated capital for the project will be released and put in other uses. On the other hand, BT declares that the economic crisis will not affect their superfast broadband plans adding that superfast broadband is important for both BT and the UK.
Ah, this just came in and made me smile 
“Incidentally he speaks well too“. Enjoy!
