European Commission Launches Net Neutrality Consultation

The European Commission has launched a consultation on net neutrality covering such issues as whether Internet providers should be allowed to adopt certain traffic management practices, such as prioritizing one kind of Internet traffic over another.


The EC will examine whether such traffic management practices may create problems and have unfair effects for users, and whether the level of competition between different Internet service providers and the transparency requirements of the new telecom framework may be sufficient to avoid potential problems by allowing consumers' choice.


The consultation will feed into a Commission report on net neutrality, which should be presented by the end of this year. All interested parties -- service and content providers, consumers, businesses and researchers -- are invited to respond to the consultation by 30 September 2010.
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