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more on Broadband in France
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2006 17:41:04 -0500
Begin forwarded message: From: Robert.Shaw () itu int Date: March 29, 2006 4:13:43 PM EST To: dave () farber net Subject: Re: Broadband in France Dave, Although I work in Switzerland, I live in France (only a few hundred meters across an open border) and I can confirm that cheap and fast broadband is widely available in France. I would currently characterize the French market as "hypercompetitive". Other countries such as the Netherlands (about to become world leader in broadband penetration), Korea and Japan also fall into this category. The WSJ-Europe article cited by Steve Bellovin makes a fundamental and common mistake. It says that "thanks to deregulation six years ago, French consumers have access to high-speed Internet service that is much faster and cheaper than in the U.S." Instead of the term "deregulation", the WSJ author should have used the term "liberalization". They aren't the same thing. Liberalization is facilitating market entry by competitors which can mean imposing regulation on facilities-based providers, not "deregulating". In the US particularly, it seems these terms are often confused. In a growing number of countries, it is an assumption that IP interconnect issues are seen just as a classical interconnect problem. And now writing to you from France, I'm one consumer who is happy that the French communications regulator ARCEP sees it exactly like that as it means I can buy cheap high-speed broadband from a competitive provider (instead of the higher priced offering from the incumbent). I suspect that many of the debates in the US about "network neutrality" are rooted in a fundamental conflict between whether we should mandate interconnection at a network level instead of mandating it at an application level. I also suspect that it is for this reason that the current US "network neutrality" debates are a complete non-issue in many countries where the former is already mandated. For example, here in France, if consumers don't like the service bundle (including tv, broadband, voice) from one competitive provider in France, they can move to another. When the first doesn't exist, it is only then you worry about the second or "network neutrality". In that regard, ITU just held a workshop last week on examining the policy and regulatory issues related to IP-enabled Next Generation Networks (NGNs). (NGN is a terminology which doesn't seem to have been widely adopted in the US but is widely used elsewhere by policy makers and regulators). You can find all the presentations and background papers at http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/ngn/presentations.html. cheers, RS -- Robert Shaw <robert.shaw () itu int> Deputy Head, ITU Strategy and Policy Unit ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as lists-ip () insecure org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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- more on Broadband in France David Farber (Mar 29)