Steelie Neelie: Crack down on wicked ISPs so we can Skype

There are idiots in Europe

But Kroes isn't one one of them. Her proposals are pretty consistent in trying to protect the consumer.

If Outfits like Comreg and Ofcom were not simply revenue raising arms of Treasury and mostly supportive of the Status Quo of BT, Sky, Eircom and the Mobile operators and did real protection of Spectrum and Consumer then there would be no need.

Mobile (none is Broadband) and Fixed Broadband is dishonestly marketed by almost all sellers and some don't get it that an ISP just provides a connection.

Of course a lease line or Data Centre connection isn't the same as a Domestic cable connection. The ISPs should be honest about availability, Contention, typical and minimum speeds at peak and off peak times. They should not Block or throttle any Public Internet Traffic.

They are entitled to sell EXTRA services (their own VOIP, Switched Video, Broadcast Video, Hosting, IPTV etc) but any QOS on that should only affect the person subscribing and be made clear before sign-up (i.e. your connection is up to 12Mbps with priority for your IPTV subscription, this is subtracted from your 50Mbps down and 2Mbps up 20:1 contended package with typical minimum speeds of 15Mbps at peak times and 45Mbps at off peak, you might only see 50Mbps at 3AM in the morning if not watching IPTV)

The ASA and ASAI are also complicit in the lies peddled to Consumers. Lets to start with make it illegal to call Mobile Internet, Mobile Broadband.

Broadband: Minimum of 512K (or 2M depending on Jurisdiction) and "always on" (perhaps brief reconnection on DSL once a day). Mobile 21Mbps total sector speed within 250m of mast, Minimum is 120k or no connection. It can refuse to connect or drop connections with as few as 10 users. With 5 users simultaneously streaming per user speed can be under 1Mbps.

Broadband, low latency, low packet loss to ISP router: Mobile is extremely variable up to 1000ms, can be 50% packet loss to ISP router!

Mobile is often Proxied to save Public IPs and for easier control. Broadband you have no proxy and can run low bandwidth personal services without annoying ISP (i.e. a Public Web Server is usually not allowed or sensible), Mobile typically you can't run ANY services, not even remotely turning the oven on.