That's what it seems like with what are probably two of the world's most advanced and sophisticated regulators impacting the communciations sector - the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the UK's Office of Communications (OFCOM).

I commented before in this Blog on the vital relationship between "INTERnet" neutrality (or openness) and LOCALnet neutrality (or openness) and how the world's citizens are screaming to maintain the former and 'win' the latter and how the telecoms and cable cartel are hell-bent on preventing it.

First to the USA where the 'net neutrality' debate is raging and the FTC has formed an Internet Access Task Force to take a look at the issues at stake.   Earlier this week, FTC chairman Deborah Platt Majoras told a meeting of the Progress & Freedom Foundation that she has formed this task force to examine issues being raised by converging technologies and regulatory developments. "I also have asked the Internet Access Task Force to address what is likely the most hotly debated issue in communications, so-called 'network neutrality,'" she said.  "I urge caution in proceeding on the issue. I question the starting assumption that government regulation, rather than the market itself under existing laws, will provide the best solution to a problem," Majoras said.

Apparently the FTC lives in an upside-down world (or has it just been listening to keenly to the special pleading of the telco-cable vested interests?).  Anyway, it expressed caution in its approach, warning that broad regulatory mandates that employ a 'one size fits all' philosophy always have unintended consequences.  In this case, the authority questions whether net neutrality or similar legislation could have the effect of entrenching existing broadband platforms and market positions, as well as adversely affecting the levels of future innovation and investment.   Eh?

The end result could be a diminution, rather than an increase, in competition, to the detriment of consumers, Majoras said.   "While I am sounding cautionary notes about new legislation, let me make clear that if broadband providers engage in anticompetitive conduct, we will not hesitate to act using our existing authority. But I have to say, thus far, proponents of net neutrality regulation have not come to us to explain where the market is failing or what anticompetitive conduct we should challenge; we are open to hearing from them," she said.

So in the USA, the telecoms lobby is arguing strongly that there should be no new legislation to permit it from destroying the internet's neutrality (openness) - leave the  market alone!

Meanwhile, across the pond in the UK - the cable and telco lobby is doing quite the opposite - invoking regulatory and legal intervention to deter end users from using Skype and other forms of VoIP - because of all sorts of dangers.   OFCOM actually spell's out what it is thinking about doing to protect the poor end user including:   1.  Establishing a legal code of practice to ensure VoIP providers  alert consumers to possible 'deficiencies' in the service  2.  Insisting on labels on VoIP kit warning of possible problems, e.g. that loss of electric power will kill the phone line - at a cost of about £1 (US $1.89) per customer and 3.  Forcing VoIP providers to warn consumers about the lack of facilities 'which they have come to expect from telephone service', e.g. lack of answering machine facility.  Of course, there are some dangers with VoIP that OFCOM do not spell out - like it causing havoc with the financial stability of the very entities that they exist to regulate - and hence, potentially risks the very need for an OFCOM at all - but we woudn't expect them to take such a self-interested line.

Fortunately, the likes of Skype and Yahoo have stepped up to the plate and responded in a very robust manner.

Clearly, the 120 milion registered user of Skype together with a growing number of the rest of the world is beginning to wake up to the fact that for far too long, it has remained in the grip of the most powerful global cartel of all time – the international telecoms sector.  This consumer servitude is in no small measure due to the mountain of sector-specific public policy and regulation which the industry has skilfully managed to bring into being over the past two decades.  So when Skype says in its latest statement that Ofcom appears to be ‘in favour of the status quo’ you bet they are!   The ‘regulated’ relies on the ‘regulator’ for survival just as much as the other way round.  

In any earlier age, disruptive technologies, such as the digital technologies of abundance which underpin innovative applications like Skype (viz the silicon chip, optical fibre and software con-trolled radio) would have been free to prosper or otherwise at the hands of end users in an open and free marketplace.  Not so in the heavily regulated telecoms sector which has been carefully fashioned over the decades with public policy complexity aimed at prolonging an industry based upon a business model (based on charging for scarcity) which, left to market forces, would long since have withered.

Skype is the biggest money making telecoms opportunity since Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone.  Only this time we ALL make money - shed-loads of it by keeping it in our pockets and out of the hands of the telcos.  A huge proportion of the $1,600bn which the world currently shells out each year to the conventional telecoms industry, could remain within our economies to lower business operating costs and improve public sector services – not to mention encourage more and richer interpersonal, multimedia ‘conversation’.  As our recent study for The World Bank clearly indicates, the world is at last waking up to this fact and there is no turning back.

But the dead horses (...any of you have heard me speak will know what I am referring to) are clearly twitching as they face in opposite directions!   More Luddite appeals for, "Market intervention and regulation please" on this side of the Atlantic and "Get off our back" on the other side.    "We don't know where we are going - but we are on our way!"