European Government Agrees On Net Neutrality Rules, With Exemptions

An anonymous reader writes: The European Union's three main legislative bodies, the European Council, the European Parliment, and the European Commision, have reached an agreement on "Open Internet" rules that establish principles similar to Net Neutrality in the EU. The rules require that all internet traffic and users be treated equally, forbidding paid-for prioritisation of traffic. However, exemptions are permitted for particular "specialised services" where the service is not possible under the open network's normal conditions, provided that the customer using the service pays for the privilege. (The examples given are IPTV, teleconferencing, and telepresence surgery.) Zero-rating — exempting particular data from traffic caps — is also permitted, but will be subject to oversight. Notably, this means (if all goes as promised) the elimination of cellphone roaming fees within the EU; however, that's been promised and delayed before.

Comments

Re:That will end well

[One With Whisp]

The network's normal conditions are insufficient for specialized services such as video streaming, online video games, voice calls, and other such fringe usages of the internet. Therefore, we can apply special rules to those usages, and then throttle everything else down to nothing.

Now that's what I call neutral.

Really?

[MozeeToby]

Am I the only one that reads that list of exemptions and thinks that this is... not very neutral? QOS is fine but paying for QOS on a protocol by protocol basis? Not counting paid partner's data towards datacaps? This is net neutrality in name only IMO.

Re:Really?

[Mr D from 63]

The datacap thing is more worrying. It is supposed to work like "all streaming music is exempt", not "just our streaming music service is exempt", but that has to be enforced by regulators. It's hard to see how they would exempt all streaming music services anywhere in the world, from a technical point of view.

They may have to limit these exceptions to things that require very high bandwidth (HD IPTV) and/or very low latency (Videoconferencing). Then music streaming would not be considered an exception. I agree that how (and how much) they keep those exception lanes open to competitors is the tough question.

Interesting

[Peter H.S.]

At first glance the new net neutrality rules looks very good. The "non-blocking" rules seems to make default and opt-out ISP porn-filtering illegal. If a site/service isn't illegal in one way or another, the ISP must not block it.

Sure, the ISP can offer various content filters as an opt in solution, leaving any such decisions to the individual where such decisions belongs, but the ISP can't "opt in" everybody, nor can any member state make any such filters mandatory.

From a free speech perspective that is a huge win on top of the network traffic net-neutrality rules.

I can't see anywhere if these rules are only binding within the EU, or if it is legal to block/throttle non-illegal sites and traffic from sites outside the EU. Does anybody know?

 

Private networks, HBO and dsl

[goombah99]

I suspect that for conventional services that the easy to apply rule is that if a competing ISP can deliver a service without exemptions then woe to the ISP trying to claim exemption. It's smart to keep it end-user-pays to keep the com casts from ransoming the net flixes,

Even so it's hard to see how this works automatically even under U.S. Rules. Let's assume that in a neutral world there is some advantage to be had for a better stream. Would not a Netflix competitor want to gain that? And the way they can do that is by offering to pay the consumers bill for a them to get a better connection over a private network backbone.

In a related note I just had a surprising experience with HBO Now. The picture quality and startup buffering time were massively better than I'm used to from amazon or Netflix. I'm puzzled why. In doubtful that HBO has figured out some superior codec all on their own. So this means either they are getting some privileged delivery channel or that what I get from amazon or Netflix is less than the best because they are trying to save money with lower data rates or more overloaded servers.

I should mention I have only a 6mbs Comcast connection. This it's not like Netflix and amazon are trying to serve the lowest common denominator. That connection is the lowest Comcast teir.

Finally I want to dump the odious Comcast and go to DSL but I have to sign up for a year and I'm afraid DSL might suck. Any opinions?

It's not Net Neutrality

[Aleph-G]

Yes, it's not Net Neutrality.

The news's title is poorly chosen and should be changed. Right now it's just Europa propaganda. I'm a little sad to see Slashdot spread this false information.

Here is the reaction of the Quadrature du Net, a French association fighting for net freedom:
https://www.laquadrature.net/e...

Why roaming will stop, for Europe's sake

[kanweg]

"Notably, this means (if all goes as promised) the elimination of cellphone roaming fees within the EU; however, that's been promised and delayed before."

It will work. First of all, Marietje Schaake rules and will not let go; she is on top of it for years now. Second of all, "Europe/Brussels" has something to prove to European citizens, that it does useful things for them. This is one topic that is highly visible to the common people, so it is hard to ignore by the powers that be.

Bert

Re:That will end well

[jopsen]

Cue a bunch of ISPs playing games with the definition of "normal conditions".

Then they'll get sued... and if that doesn't work politicians will make new law clarifying the intend.

Many EU member countries are good at not letting companies play word games..