I have previous covered the arrival of fibre-to-the-home broadband at Hambleton, a village in Rutland in the United Kingdom courtesy of Gigaclear and Rutland Telecom.
This included doing a Skype-based telephone interview on this network. Now I have seen and provided this video which exemplifies the benefit of this real broadband Internet service to this village.
An example of this was the Finch’s Arms pub which had experienced a different from of trade that a “local” wouldn’t experience. They had installed a Wi-Fi hotspot and there has been more through the till for them due to this broadband service. They also acquired more of the business traffic again due to the high-speed Internet traffic,
Of course, there was a change of life brought about buy the provision of this fibre-optic network with the city-style Internet service being exposed to these residents. Some were even achieving reliable Skype videoconferencing sessions with distant relatives while others were making telecommuting more feasible.
From what I have seen, this is an example of what can be done to enable a village or small country town with real Internet.
There has been a lot of discussion about the Net Neutrality idea where there is to be equal treatment for data that flows over the Internet compared with a commercial desire to prioritise data that favours an ISP’s or partner’s interests or limit or throttle data that goes against those interests.
In Europe, various national and regional governments are endorsing or mandating the concept of Net Neutrality with the provision of Internet service. For example, the Berlin city-state’s regional government have recently endorsed this concept and Luxembourg have, from 17 November, moved a motion that Net Neutrality is part of that country’s national law and to be promoted through the European Union. It has already been adopted in France who have a lively competitive Internet-service environment as well as the Netherlands. As well, the European Parliament have moved motions to stand behind an open and neutral Internet.
But the mobile operators are seen to be against the Net Neutrality concept due to their investment in their cellular telephony services.
This issue is very much about permitting competitive service providers to exist in the IP-based broadcasting / content-delivery and communications space; but is also about free speech and a free press. It would also ring true with environments that push the competitive-trade issues like France and the UK; and could encompass the issue of whether mobile operators should charge extra for tethering or not.
I stand for Net Neutrality because it permits a competitive environment for providing Internet-hosted communications or content delivery services as well as permitting a free press and freedom of speech. The ISPs should really be seen as common carriage-service providers like telephone companies or public utilities.
Through this action. the FCC have become the first national-government telecommunications department in a major English-speaking country to use their executive power to “set in stone” a minimum standard for “Net Neutrality”.
Basically, their standard requires wireline services (cable Internet, ADSL, optical-fibre) to pass all lawful Internet content and allow users to connect non-harmful devices to their Internet services. This would therefor prohibit limiting of access to “over-the-top” Internet video, VoIP and similar services. Similarly it requires wireless services (3G, WiMAX, etc) not to blocking sites that compete with their business offerings like VoIP services.
There is still a problem with the wireless services in that they could block access to competing app stores on platforms that permit such stores, set up “walled gardens” when it comes to mobile content or provide “preferential tariffs” for particular services. This can be of concern to those of us who, for example, use client-side applications and commonly-known URLs to gain access to the Social Web rather than the carrier’s preferred “entry point” bookmarks or URLs. Similarly, the carrier could gouge people who go to favourite media Websites rather than the ones that the carrier has a partnership with. This last point may be of concern when mass-media outlets and wireless-broadband carriers see the “mobile screen” as another point of influence over the populace and establish partnerships or mergers based on this premise.
Net Neutrality will also have to be considered an important issue as part of defining the basic Internet service standard for the country so that service providers or gavernments can’t provide it just to people who purchase upper-tier service for example.
A good issue would be for other national-government or trading-bloc communications authorities to tune this definition further so that if there is the goal of Net Neutrality, it becomes harder to avoid the standard.
Print This Post