14 DAY TRIAL // Europe is going ahead with an ambitious plan to get mobile carriers and ISPs to play nice and open up the pan-European market.
Specifically, the European Commission wants to abolish roaming charges altogether and impose net neutrality rules that would make it illegal for companies to discriminate against traffic from competitors or of a certain type.
The proposals have been met with plenty of criticism, understandably, from the companies targeted and the lobbyists that support them, but the EC seems determined to forge ahead.
A draft legislation has now been published, outlining some of the changes that will have to be implemented if the law gets ratified in all 28 member states.
"I'd like to announce that, today, we will formally adopt a proposal that gives a push towards a single market for telecoms. Citizens know that Europe has dramatically brought down their costs for roaming," EC President José Manuel Barroso, said in his State of the Union address.
"Isn't it a paradox that we have an internal market for goods but when it comes to digital market we have 28 national markets? How can we grab all the opportunities of the future that are opened by the digital economy if we don't conclude this internal market?," he asked.
On the mobile front, roaming charges of any kind will be abolished; calls, texts and, importantly, Internet data will cost the same in any European country. This alone should have a big effect on Internet usage, but it gets better for consumers as Internet access will also have to be unrestricted.
Specifically, ISPs won't be able to slow down certain types of traffic, for example peer-to-peer file sharing traffic, or particular sites like YouTube and services like Skype.
What's more, if you feel you're getting shortchanged by your broadband provider, you can drop the contract at once without any type of penalties. This doesn't change the fact that most markets are dominated by a few players operating under "non-aggression" pact, meaning customers don't really have a choice.