The proof of the pudding is in the eating: Net neutrality in practice, the Dutch example
The Netherlands is among the few countries that have put specific net neutrality standards in place. It was the first country to do so in the European Union. Contrary to the original European Union approach, which lacks a material implementation of net neutrality principles, the Dutch parliament decided to take a firmer position and introduced a quite detailed regimen on net neutrality. Providers of public electronic communications networks via which Internet access services are delivered and providers of Internet access services shall not hinder or slow down applications or services on the In... Mehr ...
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Dokumenttyp: | conference contribution |
Erscheinungsdatum: | 2014 |
Verlag/Hrsg.: |
TPRC
Arlington VA |
Sprache: | Englisch |
Permalink: | https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-27061356 |
Datenquelle: | BASE; Originalkatalog |
Powered By: | BASE |
Link(s) : | http://hdl.handle.net/11245/1.446281 |
The Netherlands is among the few countries that have put specific net neutrality standards in place. It was the first country to do so in the European Union. Contrary to the original European Union approach, which lacks a material implementation of net neutrality principles, the Dutch parliament decided to take a firmer position and introduced a quite detailed regimen on net neutrality. Providers of public electronic communications networks via which Internet access services are delivered and providers of Internet access services shall not hinder or slow down applications or services on the Internet. There is a limited group of exceptions to this rule. Hindering and slowing down Internet traffic is allowed a) to minimise the effects of congestion, whereby equal types of traffic must be treated equally, b) to preserve the integrity and security of the network and service of the provider in question or the end-user’s terminal, c) to restrict the transmission of unsolicited communication (spam) to end-users, provided that the end-users have given their prior consent for this to be done, and d) to implement a legislative provision or court order. Another very important net neutrality principle was based on incidents of blocked applications such as Skype and WhatsApp on the announcement by mobile operators that they would start charging for applications. The Dutch net neutrality article also forbids providers of Internet access services to charge for Internet access services dependent on the services and applications which are offered or used via these services. The newly proposed European rules on net neutrality (as part of the new regulatory package) have borrowed heavily from the Dutch example. However, are the Dutch rules a success? The no-blocking/no-charging restriction had an immediate effect on the market, in particular on the mobile one. Originally, the mobile providers intended to block or to charge for specific services (Skype, WhatsApp), but they had to abandon the idea due to the new net neutrality ...