European Net Neutrality Coverage?

As a leading broadband site shouldn't there be substantial news coverage of the current tussle in Brussels over net neutrality?

Here is a pro net neutrality for Europe campaign site - https://www.savetheinternet.eu/en/ to get you started, supported by some familiar organisations.

Edited by Spud2003 (Thu 11-Jun-15 07:48:01)

Most people don't appear interested. The UK is different to many countries for the amount of competition at the retail level.

Net Neutrality some say will mean higher prices, and others say no Net Neutrality may increase prices.

Parental Controls, parents can turn off the network level ones on any UK ISP and then choose they own packages if the provider ones do not suit purposes.

IPTV is an interesting one particularly where they use QoS over the backhaul network and it is not served from the public Internet.

Personally I believe bad things can happen if the public take their eyes off their politicians and commercial special interests so, just like taking cod liver oil, the public should be informed for their own good.

"all data packets are treated equally" is of no interest to me.

Enough isps already treat all packets the same. So it may increase the price for those that dont, but for those that already do cant see what difference it will make

In reply to a post by Spud2003:

Personally I believe bad things can happen if the public take their eyes off their politicians and commercial special interests so, just like taking cod liver oil, the public should be informed for their own good.

Especially with a government like the one we currently have trying to dictate what we should and should not see

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Most people don't appear interested. The UK is different to many countries for the amount of competition at the retail level.

Net Neutrality some say will mean higher prices, and others say no Net Neutrality may increase prices.

Parental Controls, parents can turn off the network level ones on any UK ISP and then choose they own packages if the provider ones do not suit purposes.

IPTV is an interesting one particularly where they use QoS over the backhaul network and it is not served from the public Internet.

because most are sleep walking, and have a misplaced trust in what government do or try and do they take at face value and shouldn't do

"all data packets are treated equally"

It's also highly misleading as to the nature of the issue, even though it's often presented as a packet prioritisation issue. What is of at least as much importance is the topology of how the ISP connects to the Internet. Many people have the simple view that the Internet is some sort of great big network cloud and ISPs just lease connections into this core. For the large ISPs this is far from the case. There will be a number of different peering arrangements, especially to content delivery networks. It would be something of a disaster if all those media streams crossed over core interconnects.

There is not only the issue of content delivery networks, but some big content providers (reputedly) provide content caching capabilities to be installed into the networks of large ISPs (this is more cost effective for both). Of course, small ISPs and minor content providers have trouble competing with this, unless subscribed to some specialise networks (like those content delivery networks).

Just what net neutrality means in all this world, I don't know. A lot of the controversy in the US has been some ISPs refusing to pay the whole costs of peering to the CDCs of some content providers. The content providers are not happy about having to "buy" such links to ISPs themselves.

So, all this characterisation of net neutrality just being about "treating all packets equally" on the ISP's network is highly misleading. This latter is becoming less relevant as ISPs upgrade their backhaul networks. The interconnect issue will remain.

*** edit ***

I've attached a link to a very informative article on how the Internet is actually working and what the net neutrality issues mean in practice. The simplistic "cloud" model of the Internet and those who think it's about "treating all packets equally" ought to read this stuff as, frankly, most of them don't seem to have a clue about modern networks.

http://www.wired.com/2014/06/net_neutrality_missing/

Edited by deleted (Sat 13-Jun-15 19:40:29)

In reply to a post by yarwell:

"all data packets are treated equally" is of no interest to me.

How do you respond to three basic issues the campaign site raises -

You could Pay More for Less Internet

The European Commission and Council want to adopt a regulation that would allow internet service providers (ISPs) to discriminate among customers and charge extra for different types of online services. Only those who pay more will have easy access to an audience online � killing the openness that drives the internet's social and economic success.

The internet as we know it today gives everyone the same freedoms and chance to succeed, but without net neutrality internet providers become gatekeepers that offer a premium fast lane internet for those can pay, and the slow lane for the rest of us.

404 � Content not found

ISPs would be empowered to block and filter content without judicial oversight. They can decide what you can and cannot do online.

Such power in hands of private companies would greatly damage our freedom of expression online.

"I am taking care of your children now"

Member States are willing to allow ISPs to install "parental control" filters in the network, forced onto you without consent. Only parents can assess the needs of their children, but these filters give no control to parents. They are a "one size-fits-all" solution by ISPs.

Child rights organisations, such as the UK's Child Rights Information Network (CRIN), have raised concerns on this approach. Parents should be able to make the choice for themselves on what kind of online content is appropriate for their children, rather than ISPs choosing in their place. Youth of all ages will be treated exactly the same way, which could undermine children's protection, education, and personal development.

The first obvious one is the last. Net neutrality is a different issue to censorship and parental control. As far as parental controls are concerned, whether those are switched on or not is under parental control (as far as I'm aware for all UK ISPs where it's implemented). Whilst it's also true that major ISPs also have filtering for illegal content, I'm rather grateful for it as I don't want to stumble across the stuff. For those intent on bypassing all this stuff, it's possible using off-shore proxies and VPNs.

There may be some dangers of censorship getting out of hand, but from what I see, the content that is available is still somewhat strong.

It's also worth pointing out that some judicial decisions made in Europe have limited access on the Internet, or at least made it more difficult. Most obviously, the "right to be forgotten" decisions that have been made which means Google censors its results in EU countries. Again, censorship is not (in itself) the same issue as Net Neutrality.

There are similar (judicial) rulings on protection of IPRs. Again, I can't see any Net Neutrality rulings changing that.

In any event, as long as ISPs publish what censorship processes they follow, then this is a matter of competition. People can vote with their feet.