Ofcom net neutrality consultation

Ofcom asked me to speak this morning at their stakeholder consultation event on net neutrality; my slides are below. The other two speakers said what you would expect. BT (plus mobile network 3 in the audience) asked for evidence of harms that neutrality regulation would “fix”, and complained of the difficulties of defining a minimum acceptable level of Quality of Service. Skype described how restrictive some mobile data packages are, blocking access to Voice over IP and most other peer-to-peer, audio and video applications.

Everyone agreed that the “open and neutral” Internet the European Commission and Parliament wish to see involves much wider issues of public policy than communications competition regulation. This heated discussion is likely to continue for several years, much of it in Brussels rather than London.