The OFE Summit 2009 is now over, and some 150 invited delegates were able to join us for what was a quite exceptional set of keynotes and panel discussions. The feedback so far has been excellent and we (OFE) are keen to maintain the momentum and enthusiasm generated.

For those who were not able to attend – sorry, you missed a treat. For those who were then they had the benefit of four top keynote speakers – Prof Ziga Turk from the Reflection Group, Vint Cerf from Google, Anthony Williams co-author of Wikinomics, and Urban Funered from the Swedish Government. The panellists were no less inspiring. The first panel on the future of the Internet was chaired by Susanne Zuehlke of Latham and Watkins, and brought us Daniel Dardailler of W3C, Sten Tamkivi of Skype, Dr Bob Stillman of CRAI, Håkon Lie of Opera and Mitchell Baker from Mozilla. The second on openness for competition and choice, led by Trond Undheim (Oracle/OFE) matched Adam Jollans of IBM, Matt Asay from Alfresco, with Prof Luc Soete of UNU MERIT, James Love from KEI/TACD, Sebastiano Toffaletti of PIN-SME, and Aslam Raffee from South Africa.

All the presentations are now up on the Summit website, together with audio/videos of the keynotes.

The evening before Commissioner Viviane Reding gave a short speech at a Dinner for speakers and as Conference chair she asked me to pass on her welcome to the delegates at the Summit and agreed that her speech could be quoted from within my introduction. Extracts from her speech are available here. A couple of quotes:

“Next to open standards for devices and software and to open application markets, a key point is obviously the one on an open internet, usually defined as the net neutrality debate. The Commission's position is to make sure that openness in terms of transparency is respected in the broadband access market and that the consumer is made fully aware of any restriction of a service, restriction which should not go below a minimum quality of service.”

“However, I strongly defend the preservation of the fundamental principle of end-to-end connectivity and openness of the net as lack of transparency in the broadband market would limit the upstream market and the entire Internet economy pursued the same approach in the context of the telecom reform package: When competitive forces alone are not enough to safeguard the openness of the Internet, national regulators should be able to intervene by setting minimum quality of service. This will be supported by new transparency requirements vis-à-vis consumers.”

But the final quote comes from Vint Cerf “If it's not open it's not the internet”.

Graham Taylor