

Netherlands first country in Europe with net neutrality - slasaus
https://www.bof.nl/2012/05/08/netherlands-first-country-in-europe-with-net-neutrality/

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speleding
It's interesting to note that this legislation was prompted because the
incumbent telco (KPN) overplayed its hand. They publicly suggested that they
would price traffic from WhatsApp higher to offset their loss in SMS revenue.
A public outcry ensued, law makers got involved and this is the result.

Democracy doesn't always work, but when it does it's a beautiful thing.

~~~
bonjourmr
Not sure how long telcos thought they could get away with charging so much for
SMS ([http://www.nickloper.com/2011/02/how-much-does-a-text-
messag...](http://www.nickloper.com/2011/02/how-much-does-a-text-message-
really-cost/)) but now that things have changed it looks as though they
thought they had other ways of making incredible profits from message
transmission. Ha!

~~~
stingraycharles
The problem is, the money still has to come from somewhere. When income drops
in one area (SMS), and costs do not go down, they'll likely have to increase
pricing in another area.

~~~
sjaakkkkk
True, these are only my individual observations, but after the legislation the
prices for mobile subscriptions seem to have increased. Now almost every
subscription has 'unlimited SMS' but the internet bundles are priced higher
for what you get than before the regulations.

However, this increase of course would also have been the case without the new
laws (as you say, as people move from SMS to Whatsapp, they have to
compensate). The only difference is that they now can't differentiate between
different uses of the internet, but only on the amount of data you get.

I don't think the net neutrality isn't such a bad thing price/economic wise.
I'd rather have this clear system which might mean slightly higher prices for
the average consumer than a system in which different prices for different
uses of internet make calculating your actual costs more difficult. In my
opinion, that would only give more opportunities to telecom providers to screw
you over with little details, rules and clauses in their contracts --
something which history has shown they don't shy away from (rounding up every
call duration to a full minute etc.).

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Prophasi
In the broadest sense, net neutrality's an abrogation of companies' rights to
set terms for their products and allow consumers to agree or disagree. It
limits the pricing and service dynamic.

Specifically for the net, it's a concession that we need gov't to wield the
ultimate authority over detailed aspects of the Internet and step into many
disputes between private parties if the specter of non-neutrality is raised
(and of course it will be). You might think it's in your immediate favor, but
voting for net neutrality isn't really voting for equal packet treatment: it's
voting for government control over packet treatment, which will be turned
against you in ways you haven't foreseen.

Net neutrality is like saying I can't open a store w/out handicap access, even
though handicapped folks have the option of a) passing by my store to another;
or b) finding a way to shop at mine because it's closer and has lower prices.
"Shop neutrality" would dictate that if I won't treat everyone equally -
although it's clear in my terms - I just shouldn't exist. There are those who
agree with this analogy, too, of course.

You suppose the government should be the ultimate arbiter of what options
should be on offer, rather than the entrepreneur and the market of free
people? A dangerous way to look at it, I think.

No, the telecoms aren't by any stretch unregulated as it is. But if that's
your complaint, tackle it from that direction, not by badly regulating bad
regulations.

~~~
jordanb
It's not regulation that causes there to be few choices among telecoms. It's
the extremely high barrier to entry which is created by numerous factors, many
natural.

Personally I sorta agree with you though, that I would rather have regulations
that seek to break down the barriers to entry. For instance, require telcom
companies to connect homes to a fiber network for a flat connection/service
fee, and then allow any ISP to sell those customers internet access.

This is functionally like the network we had during the dial-up days. And the
result was thousands of ISPs giving the typical customer dozens of choices.
There was no need for government or anyone else to protect network neutrality
because the market was functional, as is demonstrated by AOL finding it
increasingly necessary to dismantle their walled-garden service to compete
with the independent guys.

There were some halfhearted attempts to give ISPs access to the COs to offer
DSL service beside the local telcom, but telcoms have been successful in
sabotaging it.

~~~
Prophasi
The infrastructural barriers to entry are nontrivial, to be sure.

Further restrictions -- for example, kneecapping pricing structures that
companies can use to differentiate themselves -- will only exacerbate that,
though.

Another thought is that with the right market dynamic, I have more variety
than it seems at first blush: cable, DSL, fiber, dial-up, satellite, WiMax,
3G, power lines, and possibly others. There's a variegation of technical
specialty there that lends itself to horizontal competition by many companies.
For heavy usage, several of these are currently poor... but looking at our
present options and determining that only cable and fiber matter, for
instance, is selling innovation short. It's surprising what can crop up out of
nowhere when someone sees an unexploited opportunity.

The reason there hasn't been a mass flight from the standard telcos yet, I
think, is that packet profiling has largely taken the form of capping torrents
for heavy users, which is a small minority of the market -- and they're
arguably being capped for the benefit of the majority. If the telcos make a
gamble on harming access or speeds for the majority, there will be a scramble
for alternatives, and they will present themselves.

Legislation is too often proposed with the deeply flawed assumption of an
inelastic economic model.

------
woodpanel
I've always struggled a bit with the concept of net neutrality. Leigislation
should improve/secure freedom of choice. If it is about keeping providers from
throttling traffic based on the traffic-source ( = prohibition of choices) I'm
all for it.

But what about my freedom to choose a slower connection? Or one without video
chat capacities? I propably would be ok with paying half the price if my
traffic has not the highest priority.

When I had less income, an internet connection might have been more affordable
if I wasn't forced to buy traffic capacities I didn't need. I have a couple of
friends who still struggle to afford internet (sadly, the more time passes
without internet access, the harder it'll get for them to ever improve on
their income).

Does the "net neutrality" concept differentiate between "intent of usage" and
"interest of usage"? The first to me seems more important to be kept neutral.

(What I mean by the latter might be better expalined with the 19th century
rail-pricing systems where you had 1st, 2nd and 3rd class passengers. 3rd
class was dirty, packed and propably pathoenic. But more importantly, the "3rd
class" could afford the ride. )

~~~
KoulMomo
My understanding, and what I mean by Net Neutrality is that ISPs should treat
packets that I access equally. This does not prevent ISPs from providing
tiered services or instituting network caps.

For example, if I get a plan that promises: 1) 5 mbs download 2) 1 mbs upload
3) 15 GB usage cap

The ISP is well within it's rights to provide me with such a slow connection,
as long as the packets I access on that slower connection are treated equally.

Net Neutrality is not concerned with providing everyone the same internet
speeds, but rather that packets are treated equally (ie throttle all packets
equally, instead of discriminating against certain packets).

~~~
woodpanel
Thanks for making that a bit clearer to me.

I'm still confused why/if an ISP shouldn't be able to go further with offering
me a "Non-You-Tube/Grooveshark-Plan" if it would be cheaper. I guess one
critical point is that my data packages should not be looked into for privacy
issues. But considering your mentioned plan: You could be rewarded for not
using the 5mbs bandwith constantly.

So instead of looking into the data packages, using the "length of a data
stream" to penalize heavy-users shouldn't be at odds with net neutrality.
Right?

~~~
KoulMomo
That's right, penalizing heavy users is not against net neutrality, although
depending on how a company goes about doing this it could yield some pretty
bad PR (see: AT&T throttling of users that have Unlimited plans).

As to why an ISP should not be able to go further with offering you a "Non-
You-Tube/Grooveshark-Plan", that is actually the main thing that Net
Neutrality was created to stop. ISPs filtering traffic and access to websites
based on content.

The greatest fear that proponents of Net Neutrality have is that ISPs will
begin walling off the Internet and restricting access to sites in an effort to
increase profits.

Currently, the internet is the closest thing that society has to pure
competition and freedom of expression.

Imagine if when Facebook first started, MySpace had spent millions paying ISPs
to slow down all traffic to Facebook.com, they would have effectively killed
it.

Or imagine if a rich billionaire on the Right (or the Left) did not like what
a certain website was saying about him and/or his ideology, he would be able
to pay ISPs to slow down all traffic to those sites (thus providing a chilling
effect on free speech and expression).

And anyway, if your aim is to reduce the cost of an internet connection, the
best thing to do would be to increase competition among ISPs. Without
competition, even if the costs of ISPs go down, they have no incentive to
decrease prices (unless doing so could increase their bottom line), in fact,
they may even increase prices if the choice to consumers is either pay more
for internet or have NO internet at all.

A large problem with the high cost of the Internet is that many ISPs either
through the government become the only company that can legally provide
Internet service in an area (government supported monopoly), OR like it is
where I live (Montreal, Canada) there is a small number of ISPs and they have
carved out regions that they have decided NOT to compete.

------
benwerd
I'm proud of them, but the Internet is international - without broad
acceptance, we run the risk of effectively having distinct National Internets
with different rules and regulations. That scares me a bit, because the
potential is still to have unhindered communications between anyone, anywhere.

Net neutrality should be built into the fabric of the Internet through better
technology - legislation clearly isn't working.

~~~
bad_user
There are already "national Internets". This is just the nature of the beast,
the Internet being mostly decentralized.

And btw, when it comes to net neutrality, I don't think it's such a good idea,
because I'm a firm believer in a free market and government regulations only
hinder competition.

Net neutrality may be a solution in the U.S. where monopolies are a bigger
issue and where you don't have much choice in regards to your net provider
depending on location, but in Europe the competition is pretty tough.

For instance people criticized the net neutrality proposal pushed by Google
because it exempts mobile providers, however in my country there are 3 major
carriers (plus a couple of smaller ones), each of them with mostly the same
network coverage, each of them with 3G data plans, each of them operating on
the same standards and compatible frequencies. Also under our law, you can
always interrupt a contract, the only penalty being that you have to give back
the subsidized amount for the remaining period (e.g. the price of the phone
minus the initial price, divided by 24 and multiplied by the number of
remaining months), but if you have a contract with no subsidy, there are no
penalties involved. And since you can also move your number from one carrier
to another, there is absolutely no lock-in effect, other than the bureaucracy
involved. Also, for locked phones, the carrier must unlock it for free once
the subsidy is paid.

The competition is pretty though, and the PrePay plans here would make you
jealous ;-) And in my area I also have not less than 3 major broadband
providers which are national, so the same arguments hold for landlines.

In this light, in the context of cut-throat competition, yet another
government regulation simply does not make sense.

~~~
benwerd
This is getting off-topic for Hacker News, but you need some legislation to
maintain the parameters of a free market. Net neutrality is the fair basis of
an online market.

~~~
bad_user
Legislation is useful as long as it promotes consumer choice.

But if you pay close attention, legislation in the U.S. is also the reason for
why there is a lack of choice for consumers in regards to Internet providers.
I invite you to read this article:

<http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cjv14n2-6.html>

~~~
benwerd
It's also why the phone system works at all, not to mention the Internet
itself. But I agree that the extent of the Bell model was too far.

------
smutticus
Then why is BREIN allowed to force Ziggo to block access to TPB?

I'm glad Dutch ISPs are not allowed to throttle my traffic to specific
websites. But apparently blackholing it is still allowed.

~~~
pgeorgi
Blackholing because the ISP made a contract with BREIN to do so is probably a
net neutrality violation.

Blackholing because a judge ordered to is not. When disagreeing with the
judge, give him better guidelines to work with (ie. change the law)

------
antithesis
> The net neutrality law prohibits internet providers from interfering with
> the traffic of their users.

Censoring The Pirate Bay is interfering the with the users' traffic. Does that
mean the court ruling of Ziggo and Xs4all being forces to censor that site,
contradicts this legislation?

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spurgu
My VPS located in Netherlands just got more valuable!

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generateui
After it became apparent by parlement representitives they probably had to pay
"chatheffing" - chattax, this law was reality quite fast.

It's pretty hopefull the law passed senate _unanimously_.

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septnuits
This is great step towards a global untapped internet where people can have
their freedom of speech without the need of fear of being spied upon. I hope
more countries follows this example; The Netherlands proves once again that
they are one step ahead in integrity-politics.

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blackman
actually the third country after chile and norway

[http://translate.google.com.au/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&#...</a>

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gench
That is something. I wonder if there is a similar law to protect my Internet
privacy from my boss in the Netherlands.

~~~
digitalengineer
Your "internet privacy" is protected just fine _as long as you don't use the
company's network, e-mail, and laptop_. And as long as you don't go sharing
all your things to everybody (twitter, f-book).

~~~
_delirium
In a number of countries, companies don't have full rights to snoop on
employees' network communications, even at work. In Denmark, I believe email
is considered quasi-private. A boss can read an employee's mail, but must go
through a process where the reason they need to do so is formally documented.

The situation is not entirely clear even in the US:
<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125859862658454923.html>

~~~
digitalengineer
Thanks for the info!

"Now, courts are increasingly taking into account whether employers have
explicitly described how email is monitored to their employees. "

Yes this is why all contracts have been updated. It's in most new contracts.
(The 'fine print'). Best thing to do is not use the company e-mail privately
(if you value your privacy that is).

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SjuulJanssen
bof(fen) wij toch ff :)

~~~
tripzilch
Yeah but what has BOF really been _doing_ lately?

They're just reporting this, it's not like we have them to thank for it.

And in the mean time BREIN manages to sue Dutch ISPs into blackholing TPB.

I really wonder whether my monthly donation is doing much good. I'll keep
donating, but it'd be nice to see some ( _recent_ ) successes.

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thespin
How do people in the Netherlands feel about the notion of "common carrier"?

<http://www.columbia.edu/dlc/wp/citi/citinoam11.html>

Is common carrier a useful concept for society?

What do you think?

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phatbyte
I just love European nordic countries, their mentality is like 30 years ahead
of rest of the world. Plus they have awesome metal bands.

~~~
JCB_K
That's great, but let's get back on the topic of West-European countries,
shall we? The Netherlands isn't Nordic by any stretch. Nor do they have
awesome metal bands by the way.

~~~
phatbyte
My bad, I meant north european countries. But regarding the metal bands I
still stick with the nordic countries like sweden and finland ;)

~~~
micheljansen
It's also not North European. Unless you consider Germany, England, Poland and
Belgium to be North European, in which case half of Europe is North Europe.

