The DBCDE has announced a list of 6 ISPs that will be participating in the second round prototyping of the ISP censoring scheme.

The list includes Primus Telecommunications, Tech 2U, Webshield, OMNIconnect, Netforce and Highway 1.

So, what are the trial conditions for Senator Conroy’s ‘evidence based approach’ so far?

Primus has been jumping up and down to be a part of this trial since it was announced. While they are a tier 1 ISP and have to deal with considerable traffic, they are also one of the smaller tier 1 ISPs and have a predominantly SME focused consumer base, meaning that the traffic they deal with will be significantly removed from the kind of misuse that the DBCDE is so fond of overplaying.

The remainder of the ISPs range from small businesses catering for small business to operations the size of a local 7-11.

Tech2U – Was founded in 1995 and, as you can see from their website, promptly dropped into a time warp and remains firmly stuck in the internet of 1995. Tech2U is also a business focused ISP and so wouldn’t encounter a great deal of target traffic. In terms of ISPs, Tech2U is a soccer ball to iiNet’s Jupiter.

Webshield – Webshield already runs a filter on its service. Why are they testing these guys? The filtering system they are using works more like a PC based filter so expect their filtering solution to have intense overblock and serious performance issues at higher cost to consumer.

Omniconnect, Netforce and Highway 1 – OmniConnect is a cookie cutter small business run by a few guys out of a small office catering mainly to, yet again, business clients. Netforce is slightly more sophisticated but is still nowhere near being a tier 1 ISP and only supplies to businesses. Highway 1 only supplies businesses and even then only 3000 nationwide.

I fail to see how trialling with business focused ISPs is going to in any way protect children.

I know there are still some ISPs to be announced, but unless there are more than equal this many household focused ISPs, this trial is a sham.

If this were really a live trial, they’d be testing the filter on ISPs that are used by the average Australian family. So far the ISPs that serve the average household do not seem keen to be part of this live trial, what does this tell the DBCDE about the public’s interest in this scheme? Apparently nothing.