EU Adopts ‘Net Neutrality’ Rules, Keeps Loopholes Open

[HardOCP News]

Widespread throttling and paid prioritization? What's not to love about that?

The European Parliament adopted Europe's first net neutrality rules today, as part of the new telecoms package. However, many net neutrality proponents see the new regulation as a loss rather than a win, as it leaves the door open for widespread throttling and paid prioritization.

 

[Gorankar]

Money talks in the EU same as the US perhaps?, or is it instead, Politicians in the EU are stupid, just like the ones in the US?. Meh, 6 of one half dozen the other I think.
As a result, they now have net neutrality law that isn't net neutrality by any definition of the phrase. What is worse, is that this will supersede a few half way decent laws some of the member nations already have in place. A+ guys, A+.....

 

[Wierdo]

Oh dear, prepare for the Americanization of EU's internet lol. Hey, gives us a chance to catch up at least, but I feel for the folks there, this sucks.

We'll see how this plays out in that market though, unlike down here you usually have a choice between a hundred providers in many areas so it's hard to go overboard when there's so many options to choose from.

 

[kbrickley]

I always thought the approaches to Net Neutrality were fixing the wrong problem. In a truly free capitalist system we should allow competition between the providers to sort this out. It is because of our lack of competition on the provider front that we have an issue. If anti-trust rules were enforced and there are multiple providers available then there should be no problems here. I don't believe a government mandated standard speed helps the competitive landscape. They could specify a minimum speed but the maximum should be up to the market to decide based on who is willing to pay for what. That's kind of how capitalism works.

 

[Armenius]

Just saw this from Telekom.
http://www.telekom.com/media/management-to-the-point/291728

Why are these special services needed on the net? ...All these services have different, in some cases more demanding quality requirements than simple surfing or e-mails that can arrive a few milliseconds later. A video conference should, for instance, not experience time lags during peak Internet periods. As such, there needs to be the option of giving priority to data associated with sensitive services if the network is congested.

Quality differentiation on the Internet has long been common practice. Users can decide for themselves the level of service they want, and what this service is worth to them: additional storage space for e-mails, for instance, costs extra, just as do enhanced search functions on Xing and LinkedIn, or videos in HD instead of SD quality. In future there will also be the option of booking a service with assured quality in exchange for a few more euros. Quality differentiation is by no means a revolution on the Internet, but natural development.

As such, the EU and Europe's politicians have succeeded in finding a balance of interests. That is good for Europe. And good for the global Internet.

Ah, yes. It's for the greater good .

 

[kbrickley]

Just saw this from Telekom.
http://www.telekom.com/media/management-to-the-point/291728





Ah, yes. It's for the greater good .

Actually they are right it is, and those are all valid arguments ... if there are a sufficient number of competitors then competition sorts out Net Neutrality adequately as long as existing Anti-Trust laws are enforced ... the EU has more competition between ISPs than the USA so they should be okay ... if the USA had at least 3-5 high speed and 3 or more mid speed ISPs for the major consumption areas then we wouldn't have a problem either

 

[Wierdo]

Actually they are right it is, and those are all valid arguments ... if there are a sufficient number of competitors then competition sorts out Net Neutrality adequately as long as existing Anti-Trust laws are enforced ... the EU has more competition between ISPs than the USA so they should be okay ... if the USA had at least 3-5 high speed and 3 or more mid speed ISPs for the major consumption areas then we wouldn't have a problem either

Yup, we need net neutrality because, unlike the DSL days, we decided to give broadband providers monopolies over our internet, that's why consumers don't have many choices today and have to pay more for less.

Net neutrality is a patch on a gash, fixing a major mess caused by changing post-DSL market conditions to cater to the Comcraps. Europe's market is a relatively health open market where you generally can choose from a hundred options, so net neutrality is not even needed because they planned properly early on and mandated stuff like line sharing etc, so no one company could own a location, the barrier to entry is much easier for the competition.