Netherlands Cements Net Neutrality In Law

Fluffeh writes "A while back, Dutch Telcos started to sing the 'We are losing money due to internet services!' song and floated new plans that would make consumers pay extra for data used by apps that conflicted with their own services — apps like Skype, for example. The politicians stepped in, however, and wrote laws forbidding this. Now, the legislation has finally passed through the Senate and the Netherlands is an officially Net Neutral country, the second in the world — Chile did this a while back."

Comments

Too bad

[meerling]

Too bad our politicians probably won't take the hint.

Re:Too bad

[interkin3tic]

Our internet is half their speed, and I'm guessing that we have, proportionally, less than half the options for internet providers that they do.

Someone remind me of the specifics of when we gave telecos a bunch of taxpayer money to speed up our internet, and they, naturally, gave it to their CEOs and investors, and are now complaining they don't have the infrastructure to not throttle and cap and can't possibly afford to upgrade?

The dutch probably didn't do that. Just a wild guess.

Re:Too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, we had cheap unlimited mobile internet up to about a year ago (E 9.99 for the internet add-on). Now that the customers have discovered the mobile web, mobile providers have doubled their rates three times (all in unison, fixed pricing anyone?) and adding ridiculously low data caps on their cheaper plans (100mbs a month, seriously??). Moreover, they tied the data allowance to the minutes in a plan, so if you want a 2gb cap, you'll also have to buy a ridiculous amount of minutes. Only last month some virtual providers started offering mix 'n match packages where you are free to select separate internet, voice and text packages.

Also, most non-mobile internet providers are formerly state-owned, so they didn't have to build their own networks. And if you want cable internet (triple play packages) there is absolutely no consumer choice as the Netherlands is divided between two large cable providers and a bunch of small ones, with their networks having NO overlap. Where you live decides your ISP. The only competition the cable companies have is ADSL through KPN (and a few virtual providers) and (in a few larger cities) Fiber.

Then again, we're not as screwed as Belgium where data caps are very normal (even on non-mobile) and competition is also absent.

Re:Too bad

[Eraesr]

Too bad our (as in: the Dutch) judges don't take a hint. Yesterday a judge ruled that a bunch of additional Dutch telcos needed to block access to The Pirate Bay. A few months back that very same judge already ruled that two telcos (XS4ALL and Ziggo) needed to block access to TPB. Not that it matters, research by an independent company has indicated that usage of TPB by XS4ALL and Ziggo customers hasn't decreased the slightest bit.

Re:Too bad

[Cryacin]

Fed the troll. Check. Now for the chickens.

Re:Too bad

[dingen]

Finland is huge and has mountains. Super fast internet for everyone over there.

Re:Too bad

[JosephTX]

Mobile service is irrelevant. Nobody actually WORKS from their phone or tablet.

And bandwidth caps in most countries are still higher than what most people in America could get by downloading movies for most of the month. One of Japan's largest ISP's (NTT), for example, received alot of bad publicity when they started a policy to slow down service to anyone downloading 30GB a day. That's almost 1TB a month. Australia, one of the most notorious countries for bandwidth restrictions, has ISP's that charge anywhere from $60 (unlimited DSL) to $130 (1TB monthly).

And the US has almost no overlap in high-speed internet networks, either. In fact, 98% of Americans have only ONE choice for broadband speeds. Everything you just complained about with the Netherlands applies to the US as well. The funny thing is that, while AT&T and Comcast both call it socialist when anyone says we should take the infrastructure back and let ISP's compete over it, they campaigned FOR that very thing in the UK because THEY were the small ISP's there.

Re:Too bad

[Caesar Tjalbo]

Mobile service is irrelevant.

Mobile was the reason the Dutch netneutrality legislation was drafted. Carriers used to selling (mobile) phone by the minute and text messages per piece wanted to apply the same ideas to data: such as Skype per minute or pay-per-video Youtube, all to be monitored through DPI.

Re:Too bad

[dingen]

Of course Finland is small when compared to the US. So lets compare the EU to the US. Why is the internet faster in the entire Eurozone, with all their different countries, cultures and languages, than in the US?

Someone has to say it

[Anonymous Coward]

Net neutrality?? What were they smoking??

Gigity :)

Didn't stop net censorship.

[lxs]

Net neutrality is a great step, but on the same day a judge ordered all ISPs in the Netherlands to block the Pirate Bay. You win some you lose some.

Re:Still charging high prices for data though

[SuricouRaven]

Android means Droidwall. You can block access to 3g, wifi or both on a per-app level with that.

... and block websites.

[DerPflanz]

And, in other news, a Dutch judge approved blocking of the piratebay, as requested by a private party Brein (dutch RIAA).

The net neutrality law actually allows blocking of sites through court orders.

Re:Still charging high prices for data though

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a bit of a "fandroid", but even I have to point out that you can only use Droidwall if you root your device. Rooting your device is similar to jailbreaking an iPhone (in a lot of cases, but not all as some manufacturers will allow you to [rom] unlock their phones).

If you jailbreak your iPhone, you can install Firewall iP which afaik will give you the same results.

Which means absolutely nothing..

[Anonymous Coward]

..because all you need is a judge to agree otherwise. The law specifically includes an exception to allow the Dutch court to deviate from neutrality.

Gettings a judge to agree in the Netherlands is not that hard as some recent court cases show.

Re:Which means absolutely nothing..

[JaredOfEuropa]

I think you misunderstand the reasons for the creation of this law. It is not to safeguard us from censorship, or to protect providers from having to censor certain sites. It is to protect us consumer from those providers, preventing them from blocking certain traffic selectively and ask for a premium to have that block removed, and to prevent them from throttling bandwidth to services that compete with premium services they offer themselves. Since the providers were poised to do exactly that, this law is far from meaningless.

There is another exception, by the way: providers are still allowed to block certain sites at the request of the subscriber. There is a Dutch provider (Kliksafe) which offers pre-filtered Internet connections that are deemed safe for members of the Dutch Reformed church, whatever that means (maybe they shut off on Sunday...)

Re:incomplete article.

[sFurbo]

I don't see how blocking TPB is not related to net neutrality. Net neutrality can be boiled down to "treat all package the same", which includes packages to and from TPB. The mechanism of package discrimination are different (pay us more or we won't allow this package to come through vs. we won't allow this package to come thorugh), but they are both examples of package discrimination, and thus breaks net neutrality (as I see it, at least). Of course, there is an immense differnce between an ISP deciding to do it themselves versus an ISP being ordered by a court, so they aren't equivalent in all respects.

The religious nutjobs, I have no idea how they fits in.

This is challenged

[thrill12]

There are already voices in the Dutch parliament calling for an investigation into copyright law, and whether censoring sites for commercial purposes/civil law is allowed : this would then only allow the blocking of sites illegal under criminal law. This story has not ended by far, and a similar thing as what happened to KPN (calling netneutrality into question) could happen to Brein (our "MPAA", using censorship for commercial purposes).

Which hint? The blokking of TPB?

[SmallFurryCreature]

I am dutch, our politicians are taking the hint and have sold out en-mass to big media by ordering the blocking of The Pirate Bay despite wasting millions on a free internet project.

This means nothing, it is just a load of drivel enacted by politician who have spend the last 2 years one enacting and revoking a 130km/h speed increase, a ban on burka's now canceled again and the privatization off the rail roads now to be reversed and the admittance that the privatization of the post office was a mistake...

It is not like the economy is down the crapper, un-employment is rising and the Euro/EU is a stinking pile of crap or anything.

Be very careful what you wish for when looking at other countries, KPN, which set of the rush for this law is the company that wanted to charge extra for whatsapp recently announced with other mobile operators that they would introduce a limited business only roll out of LTE, just enough to satisfy the license demands so if you pay a premium, own a business and are in the right street, you can have modern tech before the end of the decade. The rest? Get stuffed, we are making to many millions of 3G still.