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Netherlands first country in Europe with net neutrality

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Re: Netherlands first country in Europe with net neutrality

#41

Post by sjaakkkkk »

stingraycharles wrote: post #37
bonjourmr wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how long telcos thought they could get away with charging so much for SMS ( http://www.nickloper.com/2011/02/how-much-does-a-text-messag... ) but now that things have changed it looks as though they thought they had other ways of making incredible profits from message transmission. Ha!

The problem is, the money still has to come from somewhere. When income drops in one area (SMS), and costs do not go down, they'll likely have to increase pricing in another area.

True, these are only my individual observations, but after the legislation the prices for mobile subscriptions seem to have increased. Now almost every subscription has 'unlimited SMS' but the internet bundles are priced higher for what you get than before the regulations.

However, this increase of course would also have been the case without the new laws (as you say, as people move from SMS to Whatsapp, they have to compensate). The only difference is that they now can't differentiate between different uses of the internet, but only on the amount of data you get.

I don't think the net neutrality isn't such a bad thing price/economic wise. I'd rather have this clear system which might mean slightly higher prices for the average consumer than a system in which different prices for different uses of internet make calculating your actual costs more difficult. In my opinion, that would only give more opportunities to telecom providers to screw you over with little details, rules and clauses in their contracts -- something which history has shown they don't shy away from (rounding up every call duration to a full minute etc.).

Re: Netherlands first country in Europe with net neutrality

#42

Post by speleding »

stingraycharles wrote: post #37
bonjourmr wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how long telcos thought they could get away with charging so much for SMS ( http://www.nickloper.com/2011/02/how-much-does-a-text-messag... ) but now that things have changed it looks as though they thought they had other ways of making incredible profits from message transmission. Ha!

The problem is, the money still has to come from somewhere. When income drops in one area (SMS), and costs do not go down, they'll likely have to increase pricing in another area.

Although KPN saw profits drop by 11% they are still a very profitable business (€368M in 2011). It may just be that the telecoms industry may eventually have to settle for lower margins like other established industries.

Re: Netherlands first country in Europe with net neutrality

#43

Post by woodpanel »

KoulMomo wrote: post #40
woodpanel wrote: post #34

I've always struggled a bit with the concept of net neutrality. Leigislation should improve/secure freedom of choice. If it is about keeping providers from throttling traffic based on the traffic-source ( = prohibition of choices) I'm all for it. But what about my freedom to choose a slower connection? Or one without video chat capacities? I propably would be ok with paying half the price if my traffic has not the hi…

My understanding, and what I mean by Net Neutrality is that ISPs should treat packets that I access equally. This does not prevent ISPs from providing tiered services or instituting network caps. For example, if I get a plan that promises: 1) 5 mbs download 2) 1 mbs upload 3) 15 GB usage cap The ISP is well within it's rights to provide me with such a slow connection, as long as the packets I access on that slower co…

Thanks for making that a bit clearer to me.

I'm still confused why/if an ISP shouldn't be able to go further with offering me a "Non-You-Tube/Grooveshark-Plan" if it would be cheaper. I guess one critical point is that my data packages should not be looked into for privacy issues. But considering your mentioned plan: You could be rewarded for not using the 5mbs bandwith constantly.

So instead of looking into the data packages, using the "length of a data stream" to penalize heavy-users shouldn't be at odds with net neutrality. Right?

Re: Netherlands first country in Europe with net neutrality

#44

Post by sigil »

bad_user wrote: post #12
benwerd wrote: post #2

I'm proud of them, but the Internet is international - without broad acceptance, we run the risk of effectively having distinct National Internets with different rules and regulations. That scares me a bit, because the potential is still to have unhindered communications between anyone, anywhere. Net neutrality should be built into the fabric of the Internet through better technology - legislation clearly isn't worki…

There are already "national Internets". This is just the nature of the beast, the Internet being mostly decentralized. And btw, when it comes to net neutrality, I don't think it's such a good idea, because I'm a firm believer in a free market and government regulations only hinder competition. Net neutrality may be a solution in the U.S. where monopolies are a bigger issue and where you don't have much choice in rega…

Net neutrality may be a solution in the U.S. where monopolies are a bigger issue and where you don't have much choice in regards to your net provider depending on location.

Actually, 98% of US zipcodes have 2+ broadband providers, and 88% of US zipcodes have 4+ broadband providers. This is from the FCC's own data and excludes 4G providers, which are popping up like crazy (I'm posting this via a Clear mifi device for example).

http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-292191...

Re: Netherlands first country in Europe with net neutrality

#45

Post by gergles »

sigil wrote: post #44
bad_user wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are already "national Internets". This is just the nature of the beast, the Internet being mostly decentralized. And btw, when it comes to net neutrality, I don't think it's such a good idea, because I'm a firm believer in a free market and government regulations only hinder competition. Net neutrality may be a solution in the U.S. where monopolies are a bigger issue and where you don't have much choice in rega…

Net neutrality may be a solution in the U.S. where monopolies are a bigger issue and where you don't have much choice in regards to your net provider depending on location. Actually, 98% of US zipcodes have 2+ broadband providers, and 88% of US zipcodes have 4+ broadband providers. This is from the FCC's own data and excludes 4G providers, which are popping up like crazy (I'm posting this via a Clear mifi device for…

That includes things that are clearly not broadband, like satellite and "3G" that has a 2GB cap. Very few homes have access to more than 2 "real" broadband providers (your choices are the cable company or the telephone company, period.)

Re: Netherlands first country in Europe with net neutrality

#48

Post by antithesis »

> The net neutrality law prohibits internet providers from interfering with the traffic of their users.

Censoring The Pirate Bay is interfering the with the users' traffic. Does that mean the court ruling of Ziggo and Xs4all being forces to censor that site, contradicts this legislation?

Re: Netherlands first country in Europe with net neutrality

#49

Post by ktizo »

stingraycharles wrote: post #37
bonjourmr wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how long telcos thought they could get away with charging so much for SMS ( http://www.nickloper.com/2011/02/how-much-does-a-text-messag... ) but now that things have changed it looks as though they thought they had other ways of making incredible profits from message transmission. Ha!

The problem is, the money still has to come from somewhere. When income drops in one area (SMS), and costs do not go down, they'll likely have to increase pricing in another area.

Lack of money is generally not an issue for telecoms providers and SMS is an area that is so ridiculously overpriced that you could cut it by a factor of ten and still make money.

Re: Netherlands first country in Europe with net neutrality

#50

Post by micheljansen »

phatbyte wrote: post #18
JCB_K wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great, but let's get back on the topic of West-European countries, shall we? The Netherlands isn't Nordic by any stretch. Nor do they have awesome metal bands by the way.

My bad, I meant north european countries. But regarding the metal bands I still stick with the nordic countries like sweden and finland ;)

It's also not North European. Unless you consider Germany, England, Poland and Belgium to be North European, in which case half of Europe is North Europe.
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