According to the authors of this report, many of these households that aren't currently served by broadband connections would probably move directly to higher tier, 'super-fast' broadband services up to 40Mbps. The government will remain technology neutral under this scheme and look for the most cost effective means of providing availability, while also encouraging competition between different vendors and ISPs.

Next Generation Internet

Besides its direct focus on consumers, the report also argues that Britain's communications infrastructure for mobile and fixed broadband still compares favorably to the rest of the world. But is starting to show strains, as companies and the government haven't invested enough in the backhaul infrastructure (also known as the 'middle mile') in recent years.

The report also argues for the establishment of a fund to invest in creating the next generation of broadband access and services. The authors argue that in twenty years' time, countries where consumers are only connected over 3.3Mbps lines will be woefully left behind.  We have no idea where the author's got the number of 3.3Mbps from, but we would argue that 3.3Mbps will probably seem inadequate within just a few years from now.

Of course, even today, 2Mbps can barely be considered high-speed access anymore, though it is definitely a good baseline, as it will allow users to play back most of video content on the net without major inconveniences.

ISP Forced to Cut Back on Illegal P2P File Sharing

As the Guardian's Charles Arthur reports, however, British ISPs will also be required to cut illegal file sharing by 70%, and Ofcom, the "independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries" will be charged with getting ISPs to comply with this. Chapter 4 of the report also claims that P2P file sharing currently costs the UK music industry around £180 million per year, and that the TV and film industry is loosing about £152 per year. Those numbers always have to be taken with a grain of salt (not every copy represents a lost sale, after all), but if Ofcom doesn't see a 70% reduction in file sharing within a year, it will have the power to force ISPs to block specific sites and protocols (like Bittorrent, for example).

The Music Ally blog features a more detailed breakdown of the proposed anti-piracy measures.

Only about half of all respondents between 18 and 24 thought that websites were likely to collect non-personally identifiable information, and only a third of 18 to 24 year olds thought that websites were likely to collect personally identifiable data.

70% of older respondent over 55, on the other hand, thought that websites tracked non-personally identifiably information. The study did not find a major differences between how men and women responded to this question.

Exchanging Privacy for Targeted Ads

Burst Media also looked at people's sentiments about targeted advertising. Only about 23% of all users were willing to give up non-personally identifiable information in return for ads that were better targeted at them. Women (26.7%) were clearly more concerned about this than men (19.9%), and older respondents were more likely to disapprove of websites collecting non-identifiable information in return for more relevant ads.

Internet users regularly push back against behavioral advertising, be it Facebook's Beacon, Phorm's deep packet inspection, or the constant undercurrent of concerns about all the personal data that Google now stores in its data centers. Tim Berners-Lee, the 'father of the Internet,' expressed his concerns over this in an interview with the BBC last year. Talking about his data and web history, he said: "It's mine - you can't have it. If you want to use it for something, then you have to negotiate with me." A lot of users clearly share this sentiment, though far too many younger users still seem to be quite unconcerned about it.

Check Your Own Connection

For now, Google has made three tools available to users that are running on the company's servers in Mountain View. A basic networks diagnostic tool lets you test your connection speed, while the aptly named Glasnost checks if your BitTorrent transfers are being blocked or throttled. A network path and application diagnosis tool allows you to run some basic, low-level diagnostics on your broadband connections.

Google will also soon host DiffProbe and NANO, two tools that are especially geared towards examining whether an ISP is selectively degrading performance for a subset of users or a certain application. DiffProbe can also examine whether an ISP is giving priority to certain kinds of traffic.

The data gathered by Measurement Lab initiative will be made public.

Google and Net Neutrality

These tools, of course, are not new (Google is just hosting them for the researchers), but it is interesting that Google is putting its weight behind these efforts through the Measurement Lab. In the announcement, Google doesn't directly take sides on the net neutrality issue, but instead, the announcement refers to the importance of keeping Internet users "well-informed about what they're getting when they sign up for broadband." It is also interesting to note that the announcement on the Google Blog was coauthored by Vint Cerf, the "father of the Internet" and Google's Chief Internet Evangelist, which puts even more weight behind the importance of this initiative for Google and the message the company wants to send by supporting this project.

For the first time in three years, net neutrality will once again be discussed by the U.S. House of Representatives today, so it seems safe to assume that this announcement was timed to coincide with this.