News - Net neutrality law passed by the European Parliament

[HEXUS]

ISPs will be forced to treat all traffic the same, regardless of its source.

Read more.

[anselhelm]

So amazing when the EU actually does not only one thing right, but two!

Unbelieveable.

[McEwin]

I'm sorry, what did you say the disadvantage was again?

I must of missed it through all that generic meaningless waffle.

[Spud1]

hmm not sure on this - I can see the benefits in terms of removing commercial bias etc, but does this extend down to a consumer level i.e. removing traffic shaping?

Many ISPs traffic shape Bit Torrent/Usenet for example during peak times - for very good reasons. It would be a very, very bad move to remove their ability to do this imo, the internet is often slow enough at peak times, allowing people to go crazy on BT etc would just make it worse

Curious if it extends that far down or not really.

[CK_1985]

This is fantastic news - and contrary to what the industry spokesperson says this encourages innovation. If you let ISPs start charging for bandwidth then if someone comes up with a new idea for a video or music service that's goign to use a lot of bandwidth it's never going to get off the ground because they wouldn't have the money to pay for the necessary bandwidth.

Well done the EU. Don't say that every day...

[MaddogPepper]

This is fundamental and excellent news for all consumers!

[Noxvayl]

Good to see some legislation that is beneficial for the consumer. For me this legislation does 2 things: the first is prevent ISP making a money grab from streaming services to not traffic shape their content and second is force ISP to provide the required capacity to make use of streaming services practical otherwise users will go elsewhere.

[jimbouk]

hmm not sure on this - I can see the benefits in terms of removing commercial bias etc, but does this extend down to a consumer level i.e. removing traffic shaping?

...

Curious if it extends that far down or not really.

Tough balancing act. Streaming HD movies at peak times is going to eat bandwidth like anything else. Maybe rather than giving everyone up-to some ridiculous amount which drops dramatically during peak times, they'll actually have to give people decent quality service at a consistent but lower bandwidth?

[LSG501]

Finally the EU does something worthwhile for the consumers and lol at the ISP's 'compaints'... basically the ISP's are moaning because they now need to spend money on their infrastructure instead of throttling people's connections. Hopefully this rule will also fall down to BT connection level as that's were some of the bottleneck lies.

Now if BT (or government get their behinds in gear) can sort out fibre/high speed internet for everyone and a rule can be made to remove the 'unlimited' with fair use junk in terms and conditions we might actually have an infrastructure that would promote 'internet' business in the UK outside of London and other major cities.

[slipthemonkey]

This is fundamentally good but I can see some ISPs spitting their dummies out and letting some service drop and blaming it on not being able to shape the traffic effectively. The EU has done this with the consumer in mind but some how I can see the ISPs making the consumer suffer and then blaming the EU for it.

[peterb]

Finally the EU does something worthwhile for the consumers and lol at the ISP's 'compaints'... basically the ISP's are moaning because they now need to spend money on their infrastructure instead of throttling people's connections. Hopefully this rule will also fall down to BT connection level as that's were some of the bottleneck lies.

Now if BT (or government get their behinds in gear) can sort out fibre/high speed internet for everyone and a rule can be made to remove the 'unlimited' with fair use junk in terms and conditions we might actually have an infrastructure that would promote 'internet' business in the UK outside of London and other major cities.

True, but guess where that money is going to come from? It won't be from the content providers paying for priority, it will probably be from the consumer. The law of unintended consequences may result in higher end-user charges.

[valhar2000]

[...]some how I can see the ISPs making the consumer suffer and then blaming the EU for it.

They may try, but it would be hard to sell. Blaming Bittorrent, like Spud1 suggests, would be much easier, since plenty of people dislike software piracy and it is kind of true.

[LSG501]

True, but guess where that money is going to come from? It won't be from the content providers paying for priority, it will probably be from the consumer. The law of unintended consequences may result in higher end-user charges.

Although you could argue we shouldn't have to pay, the isp's and especially BT in general have been rather slow in upgrading the infrastructure. If they'd have started upgrades earlier they could have staggered the costs over a larger period of time instead of basically making it one big lump over a short time (still too long, I've only just got adsl2 from bt here and fibre is YEARS off). They can't say they were caught out, it wasn't like the internet became popular overnight it's been gradually increasing so it was obvious the requirements would become higher.

People have had issues with the copper wire infrastructure from BT for years for various reason, they were warned when adsl started about it's limited speeds etc it could carry, then again with adsl2, yet they still didn't react. And it's also telling how slow BT etc have been to react when you can get mobile connections which are faster than land lines in most areas (I ignore London as that's a 'special' case).

It's only going to get worse for BT/ISP's with the way media consumption is heading and ultimately like you say we'll be the ones to suffer as they'll more than likely find a way to 'screw us over'.

[Namix]

I hope it pass's, it's about time ISP's upgraded their networks to allow everyone to have a decent connection rather than packet shaping because their infrastructure outdated due to cost cutting. They charge us enough to use their service, its about time they re-invested some of it to provide a better service.

[VijaySathyan]

This is good news.

[Defiant]

Tough balancing act. Streaming HD movies at peak times is going to eat bandwidth like anything else. Maybe rather than giving everyone up-to some ridiculous amount which drops dramatically during peak times, they'll actually have to give people decent quality service at a consistent but lower bandwidth?

Why should the customer have to trade, its about time that the backbone and service providers start reinvesting in a major way in this countries network. What we are seeing here at this time a holding pattern as they have been able to control traffic through shaping and restrictions. People wonder why we have fits and spurs in our countries infrastructure in general.