14 DAY TRIAL // Net neutrality has become a rather hot topic in recent months, especially after an American court ruled against the FTC, saying that the organization had no power to legally compel Internet service providers to comply with rules of net neutrality.
Now, the focus has moved onto Europe, where the Union’s 28 member countries are preparing to vote on new digital policy legislation. The package contains key laws regarding net neutrality.
Since companies would no longer be allowed to discriminate against traffic from competitors or of a certain type, the world’s giants aren’t too pleased with the European Union, with telcos being the unhappy ones.
Carriers want to be able to charge Google higher rates for high-speed access to the Internet for services such as YouTube. In fact, the situation is quite similar to the one in the United States, where Netflix was basically bullied into signing a special treatment agreement with Comcast after months of bad connections being reported by users. In fact, Netflix will probably end up doing the same thing with other ISPs as well, so that all its users can get quality access to content.
As it stands, ISPs are more than happy to charge both customers and a company such as Netflix a hefty price for a high-quality connection so that the content is transmitted through the broadband highway, rather than the side roads full of potholes. This means that ISPs take money from both sides for the same purpose – decent Internet speeds for all services.
The issue, of course, is much larger than this. Netflix has grown into a giant company in the past few years and while it can pay for special treatment just as well as Google can, it’s a matter of principle. If no measures are taken, smaller companies are surely to get pressured into paying the same prices or being left behind; and their pockets aren’t nearly as deep.
The debate on net neutrality has evolved into one about whether the Internet has become a public utility. In fact, this is one of the reasons that consumer advocacy groups in Europe are showing concern about whether the new rules would make Internet access unaffordable for many Europeans.
The new package of laws that the European Union will be voting this Thursday also includes the nixing of roaming charges of any kind. This means that calls, texts and Internet data is to cost the same no matter where you travel inside the European Union.