Stephen Conroy, Australia’s Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, today gives a talk ([Tags: broadband telecommunications australia ftth fttp net_neutrality ]‘>transcript here) to the National Press Club in which he outlines the case for treating broadband access as a service as fundamental as electricity. Australia is implementing a national rollout, providing wholesale access to competitive access retailers. They want 90% of the country connected. “Our rollout will start at 100Mbps, but once fibre is distributed, future hardware upgrades can boost speeds even further to 1000Mbps and beyond.” (No mention of Net neutrality or the openness of access; a truly competitive market would help ameliorate some of the need for that.)

Conroy ends his talk with a summary:

Broadband, like electricity in the century past, has the potential to drive innovation, productivity, efficiency and employment across the economy.

It will, over time, influence every activity and process throughout our daily lives.

Broadband will transform health care.

Broadband will revolutionise education.

Broadband will underpin our future carbon constrained economy.

vBroadband will secure our infrastructure investments.

The National Broadband Network will support applications and services in these and other sectors that today we cannot begin to imagine.

And for the first time they will be delivered over a genuinely competitive platform.

It is our responsibility and obligation to ensure that these opportunities are available to future generations of Australians.

[Tags: broadband telecommunications australia ftth fttp net_neutrality ]

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At Freedom to Connect, I was unable to blog Benoit Felten‘s excellent and very popular talk because there was too much in it, and there were some terms I didn’t understand. But I did like the following quotation from Ad Scheepbouwer, CEO of the Dutch telecom, KPN:

In hindsight, KPN made a mistake back in 1996. We were not too enthusiastic to be forced to allow competitors on our old wireline network. That turned out not to be very wise. If you allow all your competitors on your network, all services will run on your network, and that results in the lowest cost possible per service. Which in turn attracts more customers for those services, so your network grows much faster. An open network is not charity from us, in the long run it simply works best for everybody.

Benoit went on to talk about whether the US situation is sufficiently like that of the Netherlands to warrant learning a lesson from KPN. You can see a version of his talk here: 1 2 3 4.

[Tags: benoit_felten broadband net_neutrality fcc ]

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The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has published a set of solicited essays on the wisdom of using software that looks at the content of the data being sent over the Net, AKA deep packet inspection or DPI. The essays are from notables such as Susan Crawford , and Berkman’s Chris Soghoian and Max Weinstein. The essays overall condemn DPI as a general practice, on privacy and free speech grounds.

The page itself reads like something that comes not out of government but out of e-government.

[Later that day:] By the way, the Privacy Commissioner is the only federal government org in Canada with an outward facing blog. I can’t tell if that should be filed under Irony or Appropriate.[Tags: dpi canada e-gov egovernment net_neutrality ]

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Tim Karr, campaign director of Free Press, moderates a small panel: Nathaniel James ( Media and Democracy Coalition) and Ellen Miller (Sunlight Foundation).

Tim: We’re in a period of turmoil, torn between “two distinct value systems”: Mass media and social media. Now is the crucial time for making the right policies. We’re seeing a perfect alignment of three movements: media reform, free culture, and open government. The principles of the unity of these three movements: Openness (neutral, nondiscriminatory net), transparency, innovation (through copyright reform), privacy, access.

Ellen: As Andrew Rasiej says, technology is not a slice of the pie, it’s the entire pan. (Ellen talks about the origins and current projects of the magnificent Sunlight Foundation.)

Nathaniel mentions that he’s very involved in One Web Day. But his talk is about fighting for the freedom to connect. He says the process of providing access needs to include a diverse swath of the country. The Internet policy process ought to be as participatory as Internet culture itself. “Are we building programs that allow empowerment and peer to peer education?”

Q: Politically, what’s it look like with the new administration and Congress?
Tim: We’re more hopeful. “The more the public gets involved in the sausage-making, the more visionary and courageous our politicians become”
Nathaniel: The Dems and Reps are equally opportunity offenders in this area.
Ellen: When it comes to the new admin, “it’s a delight to be pushing on an open door.”

Q: [googin] We’re seeing an increase in bottom up business, not just in media.

[Tags: f2c egov egovernment transparency f2c09 ]

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I’m at Freedom to Connect, David Isenberg‘s annual conference on building open, fast, dumb networks. If you go to the F2C site, there should be instructions about how to live stream the proceedings. The twitter hashtag is #f2c09. The room’s backchannel is here.

[Tags: f2c f2c09 telcom wifi broadband net_neutrality ]

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“Unbundling” means that the companies that run the Internet wires to our homes and businesses also act as wholesalers to others who want to be our ISPs. Benoit Felten of the Yankee Group gave a talk recently arguing that this can be very profitable for all involved. (It also creates competition, which generally is good for us users.)

Scott Cleland disagrees with Benoit.

[Tags: broadband benoit_felten scott_cleland net_neutrality ]

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David Isenberg, exercising his freedom to disconnect, has posted photos from his trip to Antarctica here, here, and here.

Meanwhile, there’s still time to sign up for David’s Freedom to Connect conference, March 30-31, in Silver Spring MD (a subway ride from DC). It’s a terrific get-together and learning-fest for those who think that pervasive access to an open Internet is important and do-able. It attracts a whole bunch of the do-ers. I try not to miss it.

[Tags: antarctica david_isenberg isen freedom_to_connect net_neutrality broadband ]

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Yochai Benkler, who wrote the seminal book on the new collaborative economics (and of course posted it for free), and is also a Harvard Law professor and holder of the Berkman Chair at the Berkman Center (and is also one of the sweetest people ever) … I got lost in my benkleration, so let’s just start again …

Yochai Benkler has posted at Talking Points Memo his analysis of the Senate and House versions of the stimulus package for broadband. (Thanks for the link to David Isenberg, who provides his own, usual insightful analysis.)

[Tags: yochai_benkler berkman broadband stimulus net_neutrality david_isenberg ]

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Steve Schultze explains how the FCC got into the business of regulating the Internet in this Radio Berkman interview. I’m the interviewer, so I’m biased, but I think Steve does a great job talking us through this, so that Title I vs. Title II, etc., is clear at last.

[Tags: berkman stephen_schultze steve_schultze fcc telecommunications internet net_neutrality ]

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Harold Feld is very happy that the stimulus package includes “only” $6 billion for broadband to underserved areas. He puts it this way:

There’s an old Jewish joke about how a Frenchman, a Pole, and Jew saved Napoleon’s life. Napoleon asks what they want as a reward. The Frenchman says his family were aristocrats before the revolution and he wants his family lands restored. “Granted,” says the Emperor. The Pole says he wants Poland liberated and her pre-partition borders restored. “Granted,” says Napoleon. The Jew says: “I want a real nice piece of herring.”

Napoleon stares, turns in disgust to one of his attendants, and says “get this man a nice piece of herring from the kitchen and then get him out of my sight.”

The Frenchman and the Pole turn to the Jew and laugh “You could have asked for anything! You idiot, that’s the Emperor of France! And you asked for a nice piece of herring!”

“Ha,” answered the Jew. “You think you’re so smart? I’m actually gonna get my herring.”

That’s about how I feel about the broadband stimulus package. Sure, I’d love to have had the feds build fiber out to every home. But I always knew that wouldn’t happen. Worse, I figured that any HUGE pot of money would invariably end up chock full of goodies for incumbents with zippo oversight. ….

But a reasonable set of grant proposals, properly targeted, can do a boatload of good. Consider Mark Cooper’s community hotspot approach, for example, or the work of ongoing projects such as the Mountain Area Information Network in rural North Carolina or the Lawndale Community Wireless Network in Chicago or any of thousands of projects in hundreds of communities working to bridge the gap between connectivity and digital exclusion…

[Tags: harold_feld broadband stimulus herring jewish_jokes ]

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