European Parliament to vote on net neutrality

The debate on net neutrality has gone on long enough. A lot of people have weighed in on the topic, ranging from regular users to heads of broadband firms to government officials and industry analysts. Earlier, Virgin Media’s CEO of entertainment Neil Berkett said that there was no need for net neutrality in the UK as the competition in the industry was already healthy enough. Berkett stated: “As such, the average return from a triple-play customer [TV, broadband and phone] in the US is £70 to £80, but for us it’s £44. Consumers benefit from this as the market is so competitive, but enforcing net neutrality would cut this off at the knees.” The the Body of European Regulators of Electronic Communications (BEREC) also weighed in on net neutrality, explaining that ISP transparency is a pre-requisite of net neutrality: “We believe that a fully effective transparency policy should fulfil all of the following characteristics: accessibility, understandabilty, meaningfulness, comparability and accuracy.” In fact, a report published by Plum Consulting stated that “irreversible harm” may be done if net neutrality is ignored. Their findings state in part: “Some network access providers have claimed that the open internet model should now be changed. They argue that growing demand for content and applications is a problem… We conclude that there is no reason to believe that a departure from the open internet norm would be economically efficient – rather, we find a departure from this model would risk irreversible harm.” But now, it’s time for the European Parliament to weigh in on the matter. The pro-net neutrality side got a boost when a member of the parliament committee voted to provide them with protection last Thursday. The industry committee voted to adopt a resolution that backs the principles of net neutrality, and this same resolution will be up for a parliament vote in November during a plenary session. The adopted resolution was supported unanimously by the industry committee, voting 35 to none with 4 abstentions. The document stated that the “potential challenges when departing from network neutrality [include] anti-competitive behaviour, blockage of innovation, restriction on freedom of expression, lack of consumer awareness and infringement of privacy.” It also concluded the following: “The lack of net neutrality hurts both businesses, consumers and society as a whole.” The resolution also backs existing EU resolutions on promoting effective and healthy competition, stating: “Any measure in the area of net neutrality should, in addition to existing competition law, provide tools to deal with any anti-competitive practices that may emerge, as well as lead to investment and facility new innovative business models.”