A Broadband Bill of Rights?

That’s what Vonage’s Jeffrey Citron pushed for during the Aspen Summit’s telecom roundtable, and he wants it be the Law of the Land. This Bill of Rights would place into law what types of Internet access and service a broadband user could expect.

Citron has a vested interest because in a few instances Vonage’s VOIP services have been blocked by ISPs that offered a competing service. On one level, he has a point. There would probably be a hue and cry if Google blocked access to Yahoo! Or of a phone company’s 411 service blocked access to phone numbers of its competitors.

So, in this Bill of Rights, the law would prohibit an ISP from blocking access to a website. Sounds good, right? Well, dig a little deeper and it gets tricky....

...For example, there are family-oriented ISPs out there that block access to porn sites. Under the Broadband Bill of Rights, they would be barred from blocking those sites.

Good luck getting that through the FCC and Congress. Just look at what happened last week. A new domain name, .xxx for porn sites, was all set to be launched until it got media attention. Once it did, the Department of Commerce, which must approve it, got bombarded with angry emails from citizens demanding that it be stopped.

SBC, Verizon, and the National Cable Television Association all supported the ideas of the principles, but were dubious about making it the law of the land. SBC’s Forrest Miller summed it up when he questioned making “principles cats in stone and locked forever.”

The larger point of Aspen’s telecom roundtable was about what will be the new telecom regulatory structure now that Cable is getting into voice and the Bells into video.

There, we saw no agreement. Clearly, the FCC has signaled that it wants to revamp its approach to regulating the industry – and focus it more on services than industry. That would mean that Bells and Cable would be regulated based on what they are offering – voice, video, data services.

While no one said this during the panel, its clear from hallway talk both here in Aspen and in Washington that the prospects for a Telecom rewrite are fading for this Congress.

Comments

[Ed Hardy Clothing]

While no one said this during the panel, its clear from hallway talk both here in Aspen and in Washington that the prospects for a Telecom rewrite are fading for this Congress.

[ed hardy]

While no one said this during the panel, its clear from hallway talk both here in Aspen

[ed hardy clothing]

its clear from hallway talk both here in Aspen and in Washington that the prospects for a Telecom rewrite are fading for this Congress.

[ed hardy bikini]

Well Bob, unlike these other sneaker fiends or you perhaps I don’t have 250 pairs stashed in my closet. I come from a family that believes if you want, you earn it. Much like the Americans dream. So for that reason the only pair of sneaks is the ones that I have earned. So since I started making money I have copped every pair of Jordan

[Swimwear Adelaide]

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[Bernardo]

Costs and margins would exlpain why you often get the feeling Vodafone put up with' the iPhone at times, but view it as a necessary evil. Apple seems to have a huge say in final pricing, so the only way VF make money is on long haul contracts which is why you still can't buy one outright from them some 4 months after launch. Official carrier has little credibility on those grounds. Buying outright from Apple still seems the best to me, but then where do I take it? VF has arguably the best coverage in NZ, but data is slow, and their contract call plans are still on-net only. TCNZ has arguably the fastest network but no 2G to fall back on. 2D has excellent call plans but two zone data issues. No matter what phone I end up with there's still a compromise to be made on the carrier side for me at least.(JimmyC has made 54 comments)

[Sukran]

Personally, I don't think a three sentence tweet is relmteoy related to openly explaining anything.I believe there may well other reasons behind why Telecom can't manage to be an Official Carrier of the iPhone & I don't think their major Network outages earlier this year, done them any favours whatsoever. Neither do I think a company like Apple (who lets face it, are incredibly anal at times), would be particularly happy that Telecom NZ openly support the use an Unofficial Carrier Settings for their iPhones.Just a few thoughts .Cheers(Grant1010 has made 39 comments)

[Heri]

wouldn't exactly call Telecom's reosinang an excuse. Seems to me they have tried and tried to get the iPhone for the last 24 months and are about ready to call it a day and back the green robot instead.They are a business at the end of the day they have to make money. The iPhone is maximum orders qty (100,000 units) and minimal mark up. One of those alone would be bad enough but both is to much for a non global company.(Paul has made 318 comments)