“On 22 June, the Dutch Parliament passed a law stopping mobile operators from blocking or charging extra for voice calling done via the net,” BBC News reports. “The bill must now pass through the Dutch senate, but its passage is expected to be a formality.”
“The idea it enshrines is that all internet traffic should be treated equally, regardless of its type – be it video, audio, e-mail, or the text of a web page,” The Beeb reports. “However, ISPs said they need to discriminate because unchecked traffic from some applications, such as games or file-sharing programs, can slow down their entire network for all customers. As a result many ISPs throttle, block or charge extra for many bandwidth hungry applications and content.”
The Beeb reports, “While advocates of net neutrality idea praised the Dutch government for the move, the country’s telecommunications companies were disappointed. All major mobile network providers, including Vodafone, T-Mobile and the former Dutch state telecom Royal KPN NV, had lobbied against the bill, warning that they may raise subscription prices if the law was passed.”
“Vodafone said the law would inevitably ‘lead to a large increase in prices for mobile internet for a large group of consumers’ as it could no longer single out heavy users for higher charges,” The Beeb reports. ‘In a statement, KPN said that it regretted “that parliament didn’t take more time for this legislation.'”
Read more in the full article here.
Enjoy your large price increases across the board, Dutch dummies.
This is about more than just what gets charged, this is actually about what gets online. Me dummy->you ignorant
totally agree!!
Ditto.
Hmm, doesn’t it seem a little silly to need more laws just to avoid the fairest scheme of all for data access:
Pay by the byte!
I’d much prefer to pay for my actual usage, than have all these convoluted ‘neutrality’ laws.
@heathen:
The law is intended to protect the free access to information for everybody. The fact that it gets a lot of attention also from a commercial perspective is a valid point, for larger telecom providers (they are NOT the main internet source in terms of data) are afraid they will loose money because communications are going to be cheap. When you use FaceTime instead of making a call and WhatsApp instead of SMS for a flat mobile fee, they only get to charge for mobile internet and not for all the regular items they have based their entire business model on. It is a reach, but you might compare it to the music industry that complained about losing money and Apple stepping in rather than complain.
The main source of internet is still fast internet access at work or at home. Most people have a high speed connection that they use for “surfing” and a mobile connection to use for less data intensive things. The law is on ALL internet, the complaints only on mobile internet.
Now that everybody can read what this really is about, they can comment.
Let’s see you get the cable companies to do that.
Only pay for the channels you watch.
Correct. There are 2 aspects to net neutrality – what is discussed in the clip of the article above and a ban on discriminating against the source of data, which is far more important. Without the second provision, Comcast, for example, could slow down your internet connection anytime they detected a movie being streamed from iTunes or Netflix. I don’t know why our Congress can’t separate out the two concepts in their preposed legislation.
Keeping the conflated is what Congress’ customer has requested.
Thats fine, the skeleton has now come out of the closet.
By no means do telecom companies explain to their customer that certain sites are filtered or slowed at a certain rate after a stupid threshhold…
So this goes to show that Vodafail has always slowed our connection down for more expensive downloads without telling me about it before signing up to their 2yr plan.
Your assumption is mere conjecture at this point, F10T12. (…and the Then 2012 part does not look very promising at this point).
There is a difference between rate and throughput. There is no reason to throttle rate if people are charged based upon both rate and throughput. You pay more for a higher rate (say 12Mbps rather than 6Mbps), and then you pay for the throughput (say 250GB per month). If you want to consume that in the first 5 days of the month (from whatever source), then fine. You should get the content unthrottled at the rate that you paid for. When you exceed your bandwidth cap then the legitimate options include additional charges for more bandwidth or throttling back your rate across the board. But arbitrary throttling should not be left up to the providers. I trust them even less than I trust you.
2012… Someday please tell us about your fiscal success and philanthropic largess lest we think of you as some unemployed, under educated doublewide dweller dining on prescription meds paid for by a state program that you loath.
Coming to a country near you!
Hope and Change at its finest!
I agree.
Yep, this means the operators are already looking for other ways to make up for their investments in infrastructure here in The Netherlands. Probably they will increase the prices of data plans. Now I’m paying a lousy € 2,50 a month for unlimited high speed mobile internet for my iPhone. This must go up now, I fear.
Poor Baby! My bill from Rgers is $140 per month for two iPhones.
And I don’t think anybody is telling you you have to have an iPhone when there are cheaper alternatives. Love it when people complain because they are prisoners of their buying habits.
Sure you could have a cheaper phone, but you’ll still be paying the same data tariff, unless you’re a real cheapskate who only buys crappy feature phones. But why settle for second-best anyway?
This has nothing to do with iPhones or their alternatives. Geez, get some comprehension skills.
Well, the total costs are higher of course. For voice I pay € 32,50 a month and that’s without the cost of the iPhone which I bought for € 800 (about € 33,00 a month over a time period of two years) So my monthly costs for my iPhone are in fact € 68,00 a month. I’m just saying the price for the data component will go up, voice probably/hopefully will be somewhat cheaper.
This is how it should be, even if it makes the network more hungry.
The laws of physics and economics will prevail. Watch and learn.
The law of physics will reveal how data speeds will double and double and double while costs per megabit will fall and fall and fall. Throughput will increase and cost of transporting the data will fall.
These carriers KNOW THIS. However they want you to think that the throughput is SET constant and the use of this data is ever increasing. Leading the average user to think that they should be paying more and more for an ever precious resource. The carriers KNOW that you will be wanting more in the future, …what with video downloads becoming the norm. Once you accept their mantra they then have you under their thumb and will charge more and more. In reality the laws of Physics will make it easier (hence cheaper) for them to deliver data but they will lock in the higher rates.
So says the conspiracy theorist. Exactly how long does it take to double capacity for a provider? How do they keep doubling speed? Do they employ the same people to handle these migrations? Do they outlay the same each year for upgrades to existing hardware? Or are you just another idiot trying to disguise your begging with outrage?
Where have you been for the last ten years? In 2002 people were frothing at the mouth for 56Kb connection speeds. Today I get 15Mb. Have you seen what happened to memory sizes, or processor speeds maybe. OK, so you either work for a carrier or you are just the idiot you try to call others.
Heathen, it does not take a “conspiracy” to reasonably extrapolate the beneficial impacts of new technology. For instance, advanced fiber optics, higher speed switching, and new lasers that can transmit multiple channels of data simultaneously.
The darn labels that you and your ilk love to use are really starting to irritate me.
Well of course some businesses wouldn’t like it. The internet has disrupted all communications as we know it. Some are just feeling the pinch, other are starting to hurt. The internet has in effect ended some monopolies. It loosed the grip of cable subscriptions, voice carriers, television, everything.
It puts every one on the same footing. If bills like this pass around the globe we will continue to see the explosion of innovation. New players will continue to see opportunity.
Without the big players keep control.
The only difference you will see is your ISP bill increasing. Try Economics 101, before posting again.
Please, of course they will want and probably get to charge more for my ISP, but better that than a monopoly regulated internet.
uh… why is that?
You will NOT EVER see an “explosion of innovation” under the yoke of excessive government regulation/control/diktat
Oddly, lots of innovation and value generation going on in the liberal states. I wonder if the Neanderthals blamed the government as they were slowly sucked down the drain of history.
This should be interesting to see what happens. Will there be net neutrality or will government’s well intention meanings be overshadowed by their lack of understanding of yet another business the politicians know-nothing about?
Like Obamacare, I wonder how many “waivers” will be issued to compensate for another government intrusion and debacle.
Valid point. But it will all work out. Remember, legislation almost always comes “after the fact”, like anti-virus (the thing that Windows sufferers are subjected to, you may have heard of it 😉 ) always comes after a new exploit is discovered.
PS: Please please please, do not use this example to start a useless discussion about WIndows-Mac or virusses on a Mac.
The road to hell is paved by ignorant lawmakers.
No, the road to hell is paved by ignorant voters.
+1
I’m Dutch, and this is an excellent law that was badly needed to force the mobile operators here to stop them for severly overcharging certain internet traffic just because it is popular, while at the same time avoiding investing anything into actual better infrastructure and services.
For years mobile operators here (as in the rest of europe) have scandously milked their customers for SMS text services, raking in enormous profits while doing next to nothing on better infrastructure (mobile coverage). Resulting that even in a tiny country as ours, there isn’t a single mobile operator with 100% coverage.
But that’s what you get when an entire business sector is in on screwing the customers over, and customers have no alternatives as all mobile operators are in on the scheme.
Thanks to the advent of smartphones, the SMS milking scheme is on its way out, and so these vultures are looking for new milk targets, to continu raking in large profits and bonusses, and avoiding investments as much as possible.
And no, it has nothing to do with usage of bandwith by the customer. That’s just a smokescreen. They want to charge more for ‘popular’, which isnt quite the same.
You’d end up paying more for just going to Youtube instead of a less popular video site, or having an iPhone, not because you actually used more bandwith. Say you use not much bandwith at all, but do go to Youtube once a week, then your bill would have gone up all of a sudden. Or you changed to a phone that just is more popular (IPhone!), you’d also pay more all of a sudden. They also wanted to somehow get money directly from companies like Apple and Youtube themselves, can you imagine…
Government stepped in thanks heavens. What triggered this intervention – and this is good to know for those against net neutrality – is the public outrage that occured when these mobile operators started using DPI (Deep Pocket Inspection) to spy on what their customers where actually doing in the internet, what sites they visited and how much and so. Privacy breach of the severest sort, but unavoidable ofcourse in a non-neutral internet setting.
Parliament said that it was none of the mobile operators business to track what people were actually doing on the internet and what sites they visit, and also said that it was not in the common interest that mobile operators would ‘tax’ as it were succesfull internet entrepeneurs and thus slow down progress and innovation. The operators are there just as datapipes and nothing else. Obviously they can charge customers for actual bandwith usage, but what a customers given usage consists of is not their business.
When an entire business sector is corrupt and misbehaving, yes government needs to step in. And when it’s not needed, they won;t. A good example is the cable sector here for instance. They just doubled my download speed fom 20mbps to 40, for the same price. They did so as a proper investment by themselves (!) as to offer new future services that would compel new customers and bind the existing ones to them even further. That;s proper business practise that mobile operators can take example off.
The net neutrality here is a good thing.
Panda,
Thanks for sharing and putting details into your long comment. Totally agree with you.
I wonder why these tactics by the carriers are not so obvious to those that argue differently. The carriers want to be able to bundle ‘this and that’ based on popularity alone. Yes, charging for texting, something that takes up almost no bandwidth is certainly an example of what the carriers can do if net neutrality is not upheld.
Congratulations on having politicians that can see through the carriers intentions.
Those who argue differently are often motivated by an ideology that says Government = bad and Business = good, in ALL circumstances.
Idiocy, but very widespread in certain circles.
One Danger Created By Losing Net Neutrality:
Like it or not kids, Net Neutrality is good for business, is good for consumers. It FORCES the incentive to invest in MORE bandwidth.
Whereas, when the Corporate Oligarchy gets its sleazy way, it can sit on limited bandwidth without a care, merely creating bottlenecks at will and gouging customers with fees for higher bandwidth use, which all adds up to the customer being screwed over and lots of $money$ for the corporations.
The fact is that We The People OWN the Internet, not ANY member of the Corporate Oligarchy. Of course the industrialists are upset with Net Neutrality! They HATE IT because it keeps the OWNERS of the Internet remain IN CONTROL of the Internet, which is exactly the way it SHOULD be and MUST be.
There is nothing good, important, useful or benevolent about industrial OR governmental control over the Internet. Both entities server the people, never vice versa.
Apologies for losing a /b somewhere above. I’m a lousy coder.
Yes!
I’m not sure what is fair and proper but the telecoms (soon to be 2) have all the money and lobbyists. That’s the end of the story. They will win. It’s as simple as that. Just like AAPL,MSFT,GOOG,INTC,YHOO and all the rest ; they are huge money making machines. They ALL care about one thing, the bottom line. They are not our pals. Ya want a pal get a dog. Life isn’t fair!
I am going to quote something
““However, ISPs said they need to discriminate because unchecked traffic from some applications, such as games or file-sharing programs, can slow down their entire network for all customers. As a result many ISPs throttle, block or charge extra for many bandwidth hungry applications and content.”
How does this make any sense. My provider(none specific) says
for 40 dollars a month you get 25 megs download speed and 7.5 megs up. Additionally the recently state that I get 100 gigs down a month. Why do they have filter for any particular type traffic after all I pay for 25 down and 7.5 up. In the end why does the type of traffic matter other then perhaps some stuff I am using or downloading is conflicting with what that provider sells. They have already capped my speeds.
Now they are capping my downloads per month unless I pay more in some form. Either a higher download package or put in a second connection.
What we need is someone that does sell internet and internet alone with fair packages. Not companys that do internet, phones, and TV
just my two cents
I love it when someone says that some new legislation is going to ruin a business, please show some examples of this happening.
Remember when the banned smoking in your local bar/pub? I bet you can still go to your favorite spot and reminisce with the bartender about the panic that caused, with every owner that you saw on the news talking about the new law was certain they would be out of business with in the year. But now, the bar still has it’s regular clientele and the folks that wouldn’t go there because of the smoke are there now too.
More of the same.
I pay my ISP for high speed access to the entire internet, not just sites that don’t compete with the ISP’s interests. And when all is said and done the old business model everyone is so desperate to defend will fade away (as it naturally should) and it will be replace by something more appropriate to the times. I love the Netherlands.
@ First 2010, Then 2012:
I thought you would favor of price increases. Your moniker seems to indicate your republican tendencies, which of late has equated to being a corporatist hack that demands less taxation for friendly job-exporting corporate entities, whilst filibustering all proposals not written by your corporate handlers and of course publicly blaming budget and trade balance on “the other side of the aisle”. But don’t decrease defense spending or the agricultural lobby!!! Those are sacred parts of the American Dream!