Initial phase of rolling out “family friendly filtering” is complete. The next phase, to be completed by the end of the year, will target existing customers.
UNITED KINGDOM—Judging from yesterday’s official release of UK regulator Ofcom’s second of three reports on the rollout of the nation’s “family-friendly network level filtering service,” the government has overestimated the interest new ISP subscribers would have in the filtering scheme agreed to by the country’s ISPs as part of Prime Minister David Cameron’s promise to protect the nation’s children from internet porn.
It turns out that the percentage of new subscribers opting in for the porn filter hovers in the single digits for all but one of the four large fixed line internet service providers—BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media— assessed by the report. TalkTalk, which rolled its filter out the earliest (May 2011), reported an adoption rate of 36 percent. BT, which started its filter in December 2013, reported that 9 percent of new subscribers opted to filter, Sky (Nov. 2013) reported 8 percent adoption, and Virgin Media, whose filter was not implemented until Feb. 2014, after the government deadline, reported that only 4 percent of new subscribers chose to filter at the network level.
The Ofcom report can be read here.
[…] It turns out that the percentage of new subscribers opting in for the porn filter hovers in the single digits for all but one of the four large fixed line internet service providers—BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media— assessed by the report. TalkTalk, which rolled its filter out the earliest (May 2011), reported an adoption rate of 36 percent. BT, which started its filter in December 2013, reported that 9 percent of new subscribers opted to filter, Sky (Nov. 2013) reported 8 percent adoption, and Virgin Media, whose filter was not implemented until Feb. 2014, after the government deadline,… Read more »
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