Last Friday I was thinking about nostalgic, virtual time zones.  I'm pleased to report that although next week I'm moving (for the term) to Ann Arbor, Michigan, it's the same time there that it is in New York and Washington.  So don't think that I'm a few hours ahead or behind -- I'll still be in the same relative position.  Plus, so much of communication is supposed to be asynchronous that it really shouldn't matter.  I'm looking forward to the move, but this was a good piece of time-news.

It looks as if the European Union is much further ahead of us than a mere 6-9 hours when it comes to separating transport from content.  (I'm not saying that everything that happens on the EU level is a good idea.  Take data retention, please.)  There was a recent piece in the Times about Viviane Reding's continuing crusade to effect change:

According to a person in Brussels who has direct knowledge of the plan, the European commissioner for telecommunications, Viviane Reding, wants to create a European Union agency called the European Telecom Market Authority, with power to override national regulators and pry open domestic markets.

One of the most potent weapons wielded by the agency, which would consist of the directors of 27 European national telecommunications agencies, would be the ability to force former monopolies to separate legally from their transmission networks to give competitors equal access.

This will be very, very hard, and perhaps impossible, to implement.  But regulation requiring openness, or unbundling, hasn't been enforceable.  (This happened to us here in the U.S. after passage of the 1996 Act.)  So why not try something else?  European carriers, predictably, think functional separation is a terrible idea.  European national regulators give slow treatment to Brussels-imposed rules. European consumers probably don't know or understand why this kind of separation would ultimately help them.  So it's a lonely crusade, but a forward-thinking, ahead-of-our-time approach.

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Monday:  E911.  It goes with CALEA (plug for The Ambulance, The Squad Car, and The Internet), and the Commission is thinking about mandatory disclosure of here-I-am location.  All your devices will be informing on you, all the time.  Still feel fondly towards your phone?