more on Broadband in France

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

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


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