An article on CNet quotes three of Australia’s biggest ISPs as saying that net neutrality is a US problem, based on a business model that delivers flat-rate internet. According to Simon Hackett, managing director of ISP Internode, the problem with an unlimited-access plan, is that it “devalues what a megabyte is worth.”

Telstra Media’s group managing director Justin Milne said that the problem for US telcos is that they have to expand their networks, but they are not getting paid any more money.

American ISPs are thus faced with a choice as to whom to charge in order to build out their networks to accommodate the increased traffic.

The first choice is to absorb the costs themselves, the status quo to date, which is less than desirable as a business model. The second choice is to cease to offer unlimited plans, which passes the cost of excessive bandwidth use onto those users that consume the most.

As I mentioned on Sunday, the NDP’s platform wants it both ways: flat rate for consumers and net neutrality regulations. By logical inference, the NDP’s platform leaves only one choice: no new funding for network upgrades.

Telstra’s Milne says:

You can’t just keep on building these networks forever for free. You can build them bigger and bigger and bigger, but somebody has to pay for it. There has to be a business model by which the network is paid for.

Down under, they don’t seem to share the NDP’s kind of upside down logic.

The Institute for Policy Innovation has released a report [pdf] that asks “Should the U.S. Favor a Free Nationwide Wireless Network Provider?“

The report is in response to plans under development by policymakers for a free nationwide wireless broadband network. The FCC has floated an idea to auction 25 MHz of spectrum for a national wireless network offering free filtered content.

The report takes issue with government intervention – picking a preferred supplier – which interferes with the workings of the marketplace.

Keeping a federal thumb off the scales in the competitive process between providers is important to maintain a stable climate for investments and maintain accountability to consumers.

Many US companies have already placed substantial investments in wireless broadband. Sprint and Clearwire plan a $3.5 billion joint venture with Google, TimeWarner, and others to provide a nationwide 4G wireless broadband service open to any device. AT&T; and Verizon have spent about $10 billion each on spectrum for 4G wireless broadband.

The report concludes that experience of a number of communities building free WiFi networks may be instructive. The firm contracted to offer municipal Wi-Fi in Portland, Oregon, found the deal uneconomical and tried to bow out, but found no buyers. The nationwide wireless proposal sets up a future bailout at taxpayer expense.

In the meantime, the Washington Post reports that the US has passed new legislation that requires the FCC to compile a list of locations that lack broadband service, detailing the population and income levels in those areas. The bill will also require the US Census Bureau to add questions about Internet use, asking whether respondents have a computer, Internet access and, if so, whether dial-up or broadband connection.

Technorati Tags:
broadband, internet, wireless, FCC

Tonight marks the beginning of a new era in two ways.

First off, at sunset our offices close for Rosh Hashana, the start of the Jewish New Year, which begins tonight and runs through Wednesday evening. As such, this is an abbreviated week for blog posts.

Secondly, tomorrow will see the launch of operations for the national Do Not Call List.

Telemarketing in Canada will never be the same.

Will we see an end to those annoying automated announcements offering cruises or easy credit? How many prosecutions will we actually see? How will enforcement go after off-shore operators that use VoIP to complicate tracing calls?

It looks like it will again be a year filled with interesting times. May you be inscribed in the Book of Life for a year of health, happiness, prosperity and peace.

So what do you do when your hosting company has a run of bad luck?

Last Thursday, one of my hosting companies lost POP access to my mail server and following the fix of that problem [implemented late Thursday night] FTP services went down for the next two days, not returning to service until hardware was swapped out in the early hours Sunday morning.

So, I was operating on Thursday from my Blackberry and Friday’s blog post was available only to my RSS readers. That post finally appeared on the normal site late thanks to uploading files through the backdoor web-portal.

All the up-time guarantees in the world don’t ease the frustration when you are trying to work around problems. This was the first major outage in 4 years – but, it is somewhat surprising that the system was down for almost 72 hours.

How do you manage your services to minimize risk of outages? How do you manage your service providers?

Last week, I started to review the party platforms, looking at the official positions being set forth in Canada’s upcoming elections. On Sunday, the New Democratic Party set out its platform [pdf] and telecom policy plays a more prominent role than we saw from the Liberals or Green Party last week.

Like the Greens and Liberals, the NDP are promising to introduce new legislation “to prevent the publication or proliferation of child sexual abuse content on the Internet.” The NDP has joined the Green Party in promising to regulate the internet. The NDP go further than simply looking at regulating traffic; they plan to regulate prices as well.

Implement “net neutrality” to protect everyday Canadians’ right to freely access the internet content of their choice at a flat rate and with clear and transparent rules. We will end price gouging and “net throttling”, preventing a two-tiered internet in Canada.

The NDP are the first party to mention plans to improve access to broadband internet:

Invest in a pan-Canadian broadband strategy to bring high-speed internet to more communities in Canada.

The NDP also plan to combat identity theft, control online computer fraud, including spamming and “phishing,” working to implement new measures to fight cyber-crime. The party also addresses new media with a promise to strengthen the delivery of new internet-based media services from CBC and Radio Canada.

The NDP, through such members as MP Charlie Angus, has been active in raising the awareness of telecom issues in the most recent session of Parliament. Although I often disagree with their positions, I admire the focus in the coverage of telecommunications issues as evidenced in their platform document.