Victory for Net Neutrality in Europe

> Yes, I would rather have decisions made by people in Brussels that understand what they're doing.

Julia Reda is a MP inside the EU parliament. She was voted in their and is not some bureaucrat. The voter turnout in Great Britain was 36 % in 2014, so it is partly their own fault if the do not feel represented by their representatives.

Günther Oettinger however was rescued from an historic loss of the conservative CDU against the Greens in the state of Baden-Württemberg [0] where he was minister-president (governor in the US). It was the first time the Greens were the big partner in a coalition to govern a German state. Oettinger screwed up a big project to rebuild a train station followed by many protests, police scandals and so on [1]. His genius argument why Stuttgart should not have a terminal station, when Paris has one, is that there are no people living west of Paris. The CDU lost the election on the topic of nuclear energy and Oettinger was then of all places appointed to be Commissioner of Energy. People also ask themselves why Germany sends the one person with the worst English skills to an international parliament and make fun of it [2].

So yeah, you could definitely argue, that the commission could benefit from directly elected members. Although it is not undemocratic: The members are appointed by the governments. Great Britain also had nice, prestigious positions: Commissioner of Foreign Affairs (10-14) and Commissioner of Finances (today), while Germany only got energy and internet.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Baden-W%C3%BCrttem...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgart_21

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RrEQ8Ovw-Q

If everything is a human right, nothing is. At this point, what's the difference between a "human right" and a nice thing?

>Yes, I would rather have decisions made by people in Brussels that understand what they're doing.

The thing about centralized government is that it's great when you agree with what they're doing, but it's terrible when you don't. Ask yourself how happy you would be with European governance if they primarily didn't implement policies that you personally considered wise.

People have different ideas about what's fair. The hinge of democracy is the simplicity by which a people can make their will known and have that will executed, at least within their own region.

More local governance makes individual will much more important. Consider that a representative's attention is evenly divided by the quantity of his constituents, because each constituent has an equal quantity of votes. Thus, a smaller quantity of constituents means more individual influence in government. That's generally a positive thing. Therefore, jurisdictions should be broken into the smallest workable units, and the amount of power concentrated within a jurisdiction should be correlated with its localness.

The real kicker is that the regulator has actually defined acceptable minimum speeds.

Minimum speeds can be stated either as an average or a range. Acceptable averages are at least 50% of the advertised maximum speed measured during any 4 hour period. If stated as a range, 40% of the maximum speed as a lower bound at any time is acceptable.

The European vision of capitalism is where you can own, say, a cafe or mobile app, and do what you want with it. However, something like a telecoms network or search engine is too important to be kept in the hands of ruthless big business, and the state needs to step in to control who said businesses deal with.

They talk about preventing monopoly, but even with infrastructure, technological shifts mean any purported monopoly constantly faces real competition. (Witness how IBM lost out to Microsoft, which lost out to the internet companies).

Private investment and private innovation is the best way to build infrastructure, and if the state wants to control how the infrastructure is used (and prevents the owners from cutting special deals with their largest potential customers), investment money stays away.

This has happened with pharmaceuticals - one reason there's been so much investment in viagra and plastic surgery is that more useful medical patents tend to be seized by government. It's also happening in the case of European telecoms: the net neutrality rules provide a disincentive to invest in 5G.

http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/10/12139700/telecom-companies...

(That article is negatively slanted, but gives a decent overview). Here's the actual report by the telcos:

http://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/dae/document.cfm?action=display...

    Yes, I would rather have decisions made by people in Brussels that understand what they're doing.

"In this context we must highlight the danger of restrictive Net Neutrality rules, in the context of 5G technologies, business applications and beyond. 5G introduces the concept of “Network Slicing” to accommodate a wide-variety of industry verticals’ business models on a common platform, at scale and with services guarantees.

Automated driving, smart grid control, virtual reality and public safety services are examples of use- cases with distinguished characteristics which call for a flexible and elastic configuration of resources in networks and platforms, on a continuous basis, depending on demand, context and the nature of the service. According to the telecom industry, BEREC’s draft proposal of implementation rules is excessively prescriptive and could make telcos risk-averse thus hampering the exploitation of 5G, ignoring the fundamental agility and elastic nature of 5G Network Slicing to adapt in real time to changes in end-user / application and traffic demand. The 5G objective of creating new business opportunities and satisfying future end-user needs would be at risk, with a regulation not coherent with the market demand evolution.

It is paramount to ensure 5G monetisation to drive investments. Monetisation can take place across the entire value chain with end-users, service providers and industry verticals in order to ensure fair returns, speed up adoption by end-users and ensure consumers are not alone in picking up the bill for the innovation that will help the business cases of the service providers. Operators should also be free to mix and manage different technology generations, mobile or otherwise, that are enabling 5G mobile technology to serve their customers optimally."