UK ISPs Can Slow Down Any Traffic but They Have to Tell You About It

The net neutrality debate is not one that will die down soon. In the UK though, local regulator Ofcom has said that ISPs can pretty much do as they please, slow down or exclude any service at will.

However, they will have to provide accurate and detailed data on the service they do provide, actual speeds, filters and other particularities they employ, and so on.

This greater transparency means that ISPs in the UK will soon have to come clean on all of their practices.

They'll no longer be able to advertise peak, ideal speeds and have to provide numbers that match what users will actually be getting in practice, on average.

ISPs also have to disclose if they slow down or limit any type of protocol, or traffic, like BitTorrent for example, or if certain sites get preferential treatment.

Other things like traffic caps must also be disclosed, for example, if a user's connection is slowed down after a certain amount of data has been transmitted in a month.

Overall, Ofcom is asking ISPs to provide the details that ISPs ought to be revealing on their own. For now, Ofcom is asking nicely, ISPs are to do this on their own.

But the regulator has said that if it doesn't see any voluntary action, it will move to make it mandatory.

Proponents of net neutrality are seeing the decision as a major setback. After all, transparency only helps so much. If there is competition in the market, users will go to the ISP with the fairest terms.

But people don't really have a choice in many places, they have access to one maybe two ISPs. Knowing they're getting a poor deal won't really matter all that much to them.

What's interesting though is that this transparency is actually European law that the European Commission has been trying to get countries to adopt.

Yet, despite the deadline having been passed six months ago, only eleven countries have adopted the new telecom legislation, which includes mandatory transparency. The EC is now urging the remaining 16 countries to fall in line.