Telco missteps, overreach leading to Dutch net neutrality law

Big news out of the Netherlands this week, where a government minister announced plans to guarantee network neutrality by law. If Parliament approves the amendment to Dutch telecommunications law, and it expected to do so, it would become one of the first countries in the world to legislate against Internet providers who want to charge more for using particular applications or services.

It has been an open secret in Europe for some time that mobile operators like to block or discriminate against Internet services which compete with their legacy offerings. Skype and similar voice services are the most obvious targets, however newer tools like WhatsApp have as well been targets. Many mobile operators stand to make less money from selling pure data packages than they did when they could as well charge separately for text messaging and voice minutes; some have simply decided to bill more for Internet services that compete with those offerings.

As European Commissioner Neelie Kroes—who happens to be Dutch—noted recently, "Blocking or charging extra fees for VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) has been reported on mobile operators in Austria, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Romania." And she made clear that she would not stand for it much longer:

The face of this high-level resistance to such plans

But even in the face of this high-level resistance to such plans, major Dutch telecommunications company KPN went ahead with new plans to charge extra for certain Internet services, notably Skype and WhatsApp. The company at that time admitted on an revenues call what most people suspected: it would be using deep packet inspection hardware to monitor all Internet traffic and classify it by application in order to make the new charging scheme work.

"Some providers of mobile internet had announced a surcharge for specific services," said Verhagen's press release afterwards the announcement. "This is because of the needed investments in the network and the decline in voice and SMS traffic. Minister Verhagen isn’t against paying for the quantity or the speed of the data traffic. The Cabinet, but, is of the opinion that a surcharge on specific services like Skype or WhatsApp goes too far."

Net neutrality proposal in the then few weeks

Verhagen will draft a net neutrality proposal in the then few weeks, one that will give users confidence that "specific Internet service on their mobile will not be additionally taxed or blocked by mobile providers."