Net Neutrality Wreaking Havoc upon Dutch Broadband Industry and Consumers

Digital Liberty ^ | 2011-07-20 | [Staff]

[92nina]

...The Net Neutrality rules prevent Internet Service Providers (ISPs) from managing network congestion and prioritizing data—including data-heavy applications (e.g. Skype, Netflix, etc.) – not to slow speeds, but to make network efficiency gains. Thus, as the rules turn ISPs into “dumb pipe” broadband providers, this then forces the companies to hike their prices in order to create more throughput as they are unable to manage their own or others’ data.

This week, KPN announced that in order to comply with the rules set forth by Parliament, they would have to significantly raise rates for mobile Internet customers, and other Dutch wireless companies are proposing the same—a fate that will be inevitable for American consumers should our comparable rules fail to be repealed.

Congress is currently working on rolling back the Net Neutrality rules. In the House, legislation (H.R. 2434—the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act of 2012) is under consideration to appropriate $319 million to the FCC—$35.2 million below President Obama’s budget request for the regulatory agency. In this legislation, as well, are plans to scrap the Net Neutrality rules enacted by the Commission last December, a proposal which has incited an uproar in the Obama White House.

H.R. 2434 was reported out of the House Appropriations Committee on July 7 and is currently awaiting a vote.

[92nina]

"Last month, the Parliament of the Netherlands passed Net Neutrality rules which have, since their passage, forced telecommunications companies to begin restructuring the ways in which they operate. Now burdened with harmful regulations, these companies must now find the means to deal with the financial losses associated with regulatory compliance...."

Take this article and others I found to the fight to the Libs on their own turf; put the Left on the defensive at at Digg and at Reddit and in Stumbleupon and Delicious

[silentknight]

How to deal with losses???

SNORT SNORT

They will raise prices - silly. We all know that.

[KarlInOhio]

Do Dutch ISPs have conflicts of interest in delivering a steady flow of high-speed data?

Ooops, lost your Netflix packet. Are you sure you wouldn't rather rent our pay per view movies than wasting your time with Netflix's buffering message?

[VanDeKoik]

This is why they curried favor with the loser geeks on the net to shove this through.

They know those guys only care about P2P, Online games, and streaming HD movies and porn.

Scare them into thinking the ISPs are looking to take that away, and “charge” them to go to certain websites, and they gladly, (without thinking, of course), beg the government to make the net “neutral”.

Now those idiots in the Netherlands have to pay MORE for their connection, and the government has their in to regulating the net.

[92nina]

I like your way of putting it.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

This article sounds like it was written by an ISP. KPN made big profits by charging customers exorbitant amounts for going over their data caps. When customers responded by dropping KPN’s own voice and text services to use cheaper services like Skype or Ping, KPN started snooping on customer data packets and began charging extra for Skype usage - this is in no way different than the electric company charging you extra to power a toaster that you bought yourself because it doesn’t happen to be the toaster the electric company wants to rent to you.

I don’t think government intervention is the way to fix problems like this, but repeating the nonsense of ISPs intent on bleeding customers dry only discredits attempts to oppose government imposed network neutrality.