Tag: EU

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End User internet Legal net neutrality

Consumer Rights and Net Neutrality

Consumer Rights

Consumer Rights is a far less toxic term than Net Neutrality.

I’ve previously written for Trefor.Net on the subject of Net Neutrality and what it means to members of the VoIP community. And I think it’s high time for an update, but this time considering consumer rights.

After a promising start the European Union went off the rails, passing a first reading of a text that essentially outlawed 4G services. VoLTE requires prioritisation. Hard line elements on the subject of “net neutrality” managed to convince a strange coalition that it was a good idea to promote their ideological definition just before an election. It was spun as a vote winner, this despite that fact that 999 calls would no longer be treated differently. Consumer rights being protected, were they?

Unforeseen consequences at their worse, which is why I believe that net neutrality is now a toxic term and should be avoided. In fact, I’ve worked on briefing documents that are four pages long that completely avoid the term. I also try to avoid “Open Internet” for similar reasons, as both — as I’ve written before — mean different things to different people.

That’s where consumer rights come into play.

What we want is a level playing field. We want a distribution system for content that doesn’t discriminate against certain types of lawful content for vested reasons. Most of all, we don’t want people misled, and we want consumer rights upheld.

If you ask the average consumer on the street whether Skype and YouTube are part of the internet, anyone other than a recent immigrant from Outer Mongolia that would no doubt answer “no”. By extension, I defy you to find anyone, other than hardcore employees of EE and Vodafone, who would suggest that internet access does not include access to Skype, YouTube, or similar services.

Remember the outrage when people were buying 15 burgers for 99p and it transpired that those burgers were made from horses? It’s the same thing. It’s a basic principle of consumer law that you don’t mislead at the point of sale; be it overtly or through trickery in the small print. Consumer rights need to be protected.

This is why I was so heartened to see Philip Davies MP (Conservative member of Parliament for Shipley) build upon his great performance sticking it to Ed Richards (Ofcom CEO – 40 minutes into the video on the link) on the subject by tabling an amendment to the latest consumer rights bill. This amendment basically just said that you can’t call something “internet” unless it complies with the spirit of everything I’ve said before. For those who are interested, the amended stated;

A term which has the object or effect of permitting a trader to block, restrict or otherwise hinder the access of a consumer to any lawful Electronic Communications Network or Electronic Communications Service on the basis of an unreasonable or unusual definition of “internet access”, “data”, “web access” or similar word or phrase. Nothing in this prohibition shall affect filters for the purpose of child protection.

Electronic Communications Network or Electronic Communications Service shall have the same meaning as in the Communications Act 2003.

tn_own_consumer-rights_tweetPhilip Davies MP is a libertarian Conservative and as a result is one of my favourite MPs. This means he’s often at polar opposites to Her Majesty’s Opposition and an uncomfortable bed fellow with their coalition partners. That makes it even more incredible that the amendment was gladly supported by both the Shadow Minister, Helen Goodman MP and Julian Huppert MP (Liberal Democrat Member for. Cambridge and a good advocate for the technological community). A rare moment of cross party backbench support that, alas, was defeated without Government support, which is still backing the self regulation horse.

All the amendment sought to do was to ensure that the likes of Vodafone and historically EE would be unable to call a spade anything other than a spade and that consumer rights would be upheld. As such, defeat was a great disappointment.

In any event, word on the street is that there may soon be new signatories to the Broadband Stakeholder Group’s Open Internet Code of Conduct. The amendment may get re-tabled in the House of Lords. And The Council of Europe may well get its ducks back in a row.

The battle is one that is very much being fought on three fronts, however the momentum is now behind those of us who just want a level playing field to compete on. Who knows, it might even be over by Christmas.

Categories
internet mobile connectivity net neutrality ofcom Regs

Net Neutrality update

Regular readers will remember my piece for Trefor.Net last September, where I defined what the average VoIP telco wants from an open internet. I know this article had a readership of at least one, because I saw someone brandishing a print out in Ofcom. Yay me!

Anyway, things have moved on. We had Ed Richards, Ofcom’s CEO, saying they weren’t “waiting for Europe” when Philip Davies MP pressed him on the issue at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee last year (for which Philip earned a nomination as ITSPA’s Members’ Pick at the 2014 Awards) – but Europe aren’t waiting for them earlier.

Last week, the European Parliament voted in favour of the so-called “telecoms package” which includes, amongst proposals regarding a Single Market I have previously slated here and the abolition of roaming fees (which I shall slate below), proposals on Net Neutrality. Before we get too excited, this was only the first reading. The College of Commissioners is about to be disolved, along with the European Parliament for elections and who knows what political landscape will be returned to Brussels in May. It’s not likely to receive much more Parliamentary time until the end of the year now at the earliest, which makes their December 2015 implementation date seem optimistic.

The European Union’s proposals mirror, largely, what ITSPA and the VoIP community would accept (in my view) as a legislative intervention. ISPs cans till offer specialised services to protect business critical applications, or prioritise video on demand, but would not be able to do so to “the detriment of the availability or quality of internet access services” offered to other companies or service suppliers, except for traffic management measures which are “transparent, non-discriminatory and proportionate” and “not maintained longer than needed” to protect the integrity of a network.

This is a good step, but I for one, along with ITSPA colleagues and others aren’t waiting for Europe like Ofcom – watch this space for a progress report soon!

Abolition of Roaming Charges

The European logic is rather federalist; it says you should be able to use your phone for the same rates anywhere in Europe for the same price as at home. Aside from the age old rule (which also applies in next generation telecoms – distance is still a factor in signal regeneration, rateable value of fibre etc) that the further a call is conveyed the more it costs, it is wholly illogical to be able to call next door with your mobile for the same rate as calling it from Lithuania, you cannot ignore the basket effect. 26% of socioeconomic group D and E households are mobile only. The reduction of roaming profits to mobile operators leads, in part or in whole, to a waterbedding…. (I almost wrote waterboarding, as that’s what it feels like to deal with a mobile operator’s customer services sometimes)… other products and services will increase in price to compensate for the foregone margin.

So, in short, one consequence of the EU’s proposal is that those that cannot afford to go on holiday in Europe, or those businesses that don’t trade in person in Europe, shall subsidise those that do. That just doesn’t seem right to me.

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Business online safety Regs

EU cookie legislation – a look at some of the implementations

EU Cookie Directive 2009/136/ec of the European ParliamentUK Cookie legislation  (DIRECTIVE 2009/136/EC) became law on May 25th 2011. This is the one where websites are meant to give you the opportunity to opt out of visiting them if they are using cookies. Cookies can be very “invasive of privacy” though in varying degrees and some potentially not at all. The law, whilst being passed with good intentions has had some unintended consequences, notably affecting some cookie functionality that is useful and likely unintrusive.

I imagine that most of us with a website use Google Analytics. We all like to look at our traffic levels – well I do anyway. There has been some confusion as to exactly what is being required of website owners – rumours for example that sites only using Google Analytics cookies would not be made to comply as GA was “beneficial and not intrusive”.

You may or may not know that I am on the Information Commissioner’s Office Technology Reference Panel. This is an expert body of representatives from stakeholder groups in information and technology related industry sectors.

The ICO, which is the industry regulator, has given the UK a year to implement the cookie directive. This year is up at the end of this month and naturally there has been press comment and a flurry of businesses making adjustments to their websites in an attempt at compliance.

One year on exactly what will the ICO do re enforcing the law

Continue reading “EU cookie legislation – a look at some of the implementations”
Categories
Business internet piracy Regs surveillance & privacy

Website blocking is not a good idea – petition

As part of the Digital Economy Act the goverment is potentially going to ask the ISP industry to block access to websites that perpetrate or encourage Copyright infringement.

There are two points to make here:

The first, which is one that has been repeatedly made, relates to the inefficacy of the methods used to block access to websites. It is very easy for people to get around a blocking system.

Continue reading “Website blocking is not a good idea – petition”
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Business Regs surveillance & privacy

BIS announces 75:25 cost sharing proposals for DEAct

The Department for Business Innovation and Skills has today finally published its response to the Digital Economy Act  (DEAct) cost sharing consultation. As expected, the Government has gone for a 75:25 rights holder to ISP split for costs of both notification and the appeals process. The Internet Service Providers’ Association (ISPA) and others argued long and hard for a beneficiary pays principle, which suggests that in fact the BIS postition should read 100% Rights Holder pays. That was always going to be a difficult one to win considering the whole dubious history of the DEAct.

Continue reading “BIS announces 75:25 cost sharing proposals for DEAct”
Categories
Business security

House of Lords inquiry into cyber security

Sub-Committee F (Home Affairs) of the House of Lords Select Committee on the European Union is conducting an inquiry into EU policy on protecting Europe from large scale cyber-attacks.

That opening sentence is, in my mind, a great example of beaurocracy in action. I will say however that actually this is a good subject for their venerable Lordships to be considering.

The European Union is very much concerened about “Protecting Europe from large scale cyber-attacks and disruptions: enhancing preparedness, security and resilience” and in March 09 issued a 400 page Communication on this subject. I’m not about to read the 400 pages but an international approach to cyber security makes sense.

In fact we really need a global approach to many interent related issues: child abuse, fraud, online copyright to name but a few.  The House of Lords inquiry is in the “Call for Evidence” phase which lasts until 13th November.

The original doc is here >  Cyberattacks call for evidence 16 10 09.

Categories
Business ofcom Regs

Regulators at odds with EU over number porting

EU Commissioner for Communications Vivian Reding has been in the news recently threatening to sue the UK over its stance on behavioural advertising. Her name came up again yesterday at my meeting with Ofcom during a discussion on Number Porting.

The coordinated effort to create a Number Porting system for fixed and mobile numbers ground to a halt last year following a law suit by Vodafone.

In the meantime there is activity going on behind the scenes at the regulators to try and rekindle the movement. Viviane Reding, I understand, is particularly keen to sort out the mobile market.

She apparently wants consumers to be able to walk into mobile retail stores and port their numbers on the spot. Do I hear some clapping coming from the back row?  The problem is that this is at odds with National Governments’ attempts at consumer protection.

Government doesn’t want to let operators and their agents push people into changing suppliers without giving them a cooling off period to reconsider their ways. Quite laudible actually.

I think we are going to have a fun time with Viviane Reding over the next year or two.

Categories
End User ofcom Regs

Telephone call charges – you never had it so good

Lots of interesting reading comes out of the European Union (sometimes).  On this occasion I continued to study the report that provided me with the VoIP league tables yesterday.

This time I noted the change in the cost of fixed line telephone calls over the last ten years or so.

call-charge-trends

 

The chart tells me that on average, and making it easy on myself by using a £>E exchange rate of 1 we in Europe were paying around two pounds for a ten minute long distance call ten years ago.  It doesn’t bear thinking about.

Of course it isn’t necessarily easy to figure out how much you are actually paying for a national call these days because for consumers it often comes as part of a bundle.  In fact the long term outlook has to be flat rate charge covering all calls.  It would certainly remove a lot of billing costs.

Categories
Business ofcom voip

EU report indicates UK is 22nd out of 26th in VoIP penetration!

According to the EU the UK is woefully behind the leaders in Europe in the adoption of managed VoIP with only a 1% penetration rate in terms of minutes. In contrast, Holland has 32% penetration , and France and Romania 27.34% and 24% respectively. The average penetration across the EU is 8.33%.

Managed VoIP is defined as PSTN replacement over managed IP networks and does not seem to include hosted Unified Communications services such as offered by the likes of Timico, pure play VoIP providers or P2P services such as Skype.

Click on the chart a couple of times to enlarge – the font is very small.

UK is 22nd in EU VoIP penetration table

One might conclude from this that VoIP is healthy in some countries but not in others and the UK performance in particular being woeful. In fact what the above chart tells me is that VoIP usage has certainly boomed in the aforementioned countries but also that the methodology for measuring in the UK at least is inadequate.

The EU data is for December 2007. Ofcom, with who I have a meeting on this subject next Thursday, is presumably the source of the UK numbers and they are missing a trick here.

The UK numbers, as far as I can see, are based on a survey that asked consumers whether they used VoIP or not. Many people will be unaware as to the fact that their telephone service is actually VoIP. BT Homehub for example is VoIP but not sold as such and this service is known to carry billions of minutes a month, although BT has not published specifics.

So good news in some countries which presumably will have got even better since the Dec07 datapoint and some work to be done in others. I will report back after my Ofcom meeting next week.

Categories
Business internet ofcom

EU threatens to sue UK over Phorm

EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding has issued a statement threatening to sue the UK over their stance concerning behavioural advertising and Phorm.  I covered this last October – Ofcom was saying it was OK for ISPs to use Phorm provided they were transparent about it despite the fact that the EU was saying it was illegal.

In the UK the use of Phorm is being driven by BT, other ISPs having stepped back, afraid of the negative publicity. The reality is that the whole industry would jump at the opportunity to make more money out of advertising, at least the consumer ISPs who have the volume subscriber bases.

Although there are huge privacy issues involved I think the momentum is beginning to gather to the extent that the use of behavioural advertising is bound to grow.  Facebook, for example, must already use this form of database mining because when I visit Facebook, as I am wont to do,  I often see adverts for golf and guitar related subjects – those being two of my stated interests.  Google is also talking about selling advertising based on a given user’s recorded web searching habits.

The UK Government has two months to respond.  The EU press release can be read here.