Netherlands Cements Net Neutrality In Law

Fluffeh writes "A while back, Dutch Telcos started to sing the 'We are losing money due to internet services!' song and floated new plans that would make consumers pay extra for data used by apps that conflicted with their own services — apps like Skype, for example. The politicians stepped in, however, and wrote laws forbidding this. Now, the legislation has finally passed through the Senate and the Netherlands is an officially Net Neutral country, the second in the world — Chile did this a while back."

Re:Still charging high prices for data though

[SuricouRaven]

Android means Droidwall. You can block access to 3g, wifi or both on a per-app level with that.

Re:Still charging high prices for data though

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a bit of a "fandroid", but even I have to point out that you can only use Droidwall if you root your device. Rooting your device is similar to jailbreaking an iPhone (in a lot of cases, but not all as some manufacturers will allow you to [rom] unlock their phones).

If you jailbreak your iPhone, you can install Firewall iP which afaik will give you the same results.

Re:Too bad

[interkin3tic]

Our internet is half their speed, [phys.org] and I'm guessing that we have, proportionally, less than half the options for internet providers that they do.

Someone remind me of the specifics of when we gave telecos a bunch of taxpayer money to speed up our internet, and they, naturally, gave it to their CEOs and investors, and are now complaining they don't have the infrastructure to not throttle and cap and can't possibly afford to upgrade?

The dutch probably didn't do that. Just a wild guess.

Re:incomplete article.

[sFurbo]

I don't see how blocking TPB is not related to net neutrality. Net neutrality can be boiled down to "treat all package the same", which includes packages to and from TPB. The mechanism of package discrimination are different (pay us more or we won't allow this package to come through vs. we won't allow this package to come thorugh), but they are both examples of package discrimination, and thus breaks net neutrality (as I see it, at least). Of course, there is an immense differnce between an ISP deciding to do it themselves versus an ISP being ordered by a court, so they aren't equivalent in all respects.

The religious nutjobs, I have no idea how they fits in.

Which hint? The blokking of TPB?

[SmallFurryCreature]

I am dutch, our politicians are taking the hint and have sold out en-mass to big media by ordering the blocking of The Pirate Bay despite wasting millions on a free internet project.

This means nothing, it is just a load of drivel enacted by politician who have spend the last 2 years one enacting and revoking a 130km/h speed increase, a ban on burka's now canceled again and the privatization off the rail roads now to be reversed and the admittance that the privatization of the post office was a mistake...

It is not like the economy is down the crapper, un-employment is rising and the Euro/EU is a stinking pile of crap or anything.

Be very careful what you wish for when looking at other countries, KPN, which set of the rush for this law is the company that wanted to charge extra for whatsapp recently announced with other mobile operators that they would introduce a limited business only roll out of LTE, just enough to satisfy the license demands so if you pay a premium, own a business and are in the right street, you can have modern tech before the end of the decade. The rest? Get stuffed, we are making to many millions of 3G still.