Digital access surveys do not cover barriers experienced by limited users making them ineffective to capture and respond to their needs.
News and Research articles on Internet access
Mustafa Akgül of Bilkent University passed away on 13 December 2017 after a long battle with cancer. Commonly regarded as the "father of the internet in Turkey," he was one of the most important figures in establishing the first internet connection in Turkey on 12 April 1993.
Openness, inclusion and empowerment – how do these buzzwords determine the directions of access policy?
Facebook announced a first zero-service in 2010, but at this year's Internet Governance Forum in Istanbul, it was Wikipedia who had to defend itself against network neutrality advocates.
For less than a week now, German internet access providers have completed filing their requests for reservations of vectoring locations - in which they can offer vectoring enhanced internet access to customers. Vectoring technology allows to push broadband speed of old DSL subscriber lines to 100 Mbit/s by removing what the experts call 'crosstalk', an interference in the copper bundles resulting from putting more and more data onto them.
At the end of the week the EU Telecom Council will address net neutrality and the Connected Continent Regulation. Member states are disagreeing over net neutrality and the opponents of stricter protection might point now to the recent FCC vote favouring specialised services alongside standard internet access.
Internet consumer protections were recently beefed-up in Croatia. Among other, the authorities streamlined the complaint procedures when it comes to poor internet connectivity. This week, the European parliament takes up the question of quality of internet services. Expect Croatia's policy to be discussed.
After a first on Slovenia, here is our second in our series on internet policy innovation in small European countries. Finns are moving fast and experimenting with crowdsourced legislation.
Access to the net, while a core topic of the Internet Governance Forum, has seen more reporting than big visionary pictures. Universal access remains a huge challenge.