Updated on July 19, 2013
Mrs. Neelie Kroes is having a hard time: grow wired and wireless broadband, remove borders to create larger telecom markets without high roaming costs, fight content piracy and achieve net neutrality. The latter is a key issue for the development of the OTT industry.
It is clear there will have to be a resolution soon. The concept of net neutrality Kroes is striving for does not seem to mean “free bandwidth” but one of commercial agreements. Edri considers that a serious flaw.
The discussion has prompted Nelie Kroes to issue a blog-post explaining her considerations. Though it does explain the considerations of why paid-for bandwidth is necessary in some cases and that she is all for an increasingly better “best effort” service, and against selectively throttling. All good things it seems, but it hardly addresses some of the real dilemma’s. Today OTT typically uses rented CDNs to efficiently deliver content in selected locations. She sees that practice as innovation. But what about the bandwidth from that CDN to the end customer? And will “truly free” internet now gradually become a messy slow and unpredictable experience in practice: if the internet companies “try” they can probably even kill IP-telephony with poor QOS.
DigitalTVEurope: Kroes firms up telecom single market plan, calls for net neutrality » Digital TV Europe reports a speech by Kroes on borderless networks, virtual bitstream concepts for QOS, amnd netneutrality ambitions.
IPTegrity.com: the European Damocles Moment talks about Kroes illegal content agenda and the role of ACTA in lobbying for stronger regulations.
Here is an online copy of a draft EC regulation and an article on the Edri website that addresses the above and contains ambiguous statements about net neutrality according to the Dutch website tweakers.net.
The blog from Nelie Kroes on the matter.
