So, this is it? When I saw the news after the net neutrality discussion in Brussels the week before last, I was immensely relieved. Compared with the US – they are still in the middle of the net neutrality debate – Europe managed to find an acceptable compromise within a few months.
With the United States in mind, we were expecting an endless debate and this is why we participated in the net neutrality discussion from the beginning (see blog posts). Over a year ago we made our point very clear with our white paper. We made net neutrality the topic of our sessions and speeches at several conferences. And we published OpenDPI to show everybody how DPI works and that transparency is doable – even for a network equipment vendor.
Now we are very happy about the decision in Brussels: Neelie Kroes, European Commission Vice-President for the Digital Agenda, supports a free Internet, but also says that Internet traffic management is necessary. Now it’s the operators’ responsibility to be as transparent as possible. This was the obvious solution from the beginning, but long time it seemed that there would be no consensus among net neutrality activists, technology vendors and operators.
But it was not only the short time the European Commission needed for the decision that surprised me, the plainness of the European compromise is very remarkable, too. Neelie Kroes identifies in her summary of the European Parliament Summit on ‘The Open Internet and Net Neutrality in Europe‘, three essential points that should ensure net neutrality in Europe:
- effective competition
- transparency to allow consumer choice
- ease of switching.
And that’s it. Hopefully ISPs willuse the power they have with this decision wisely.
Kommentar hinzufügen