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Comment by nothis | Hacker News Reader

Disappointingly little concrete information of what's in now, anyone knows how to read these things and skimmed the original text? I heard that EU "net neutrality" is disappointlngly vague. I see providers offering free data for things like Spotify, which, in my understanding, is exactly what net neutrality should prevent.

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Yeah, there were some potential issues around "specialized services", zero-rating, "traffic class-based discrimination", and "impending congestion", which prompted a campaign to fix them, but it seems the creators of the campaign also seem pretty excited about the result now:

https://savetheinternet.eu/en/

However, according to Julia Reda above, the policies around zero-rating are still pretty unclear, and it seems they will be decided on a case-by-case basis (not great, but may be a little better than in the U.S., where the FCC seems to have no interest in dealing with zero rating at all).

I think you have to click through to the PDF at the side of http://berec.europa.eu/eng/document_register/subject_matter/...

It does cover this (search for zero-rating) although in a way that I find hard to summarise.

I think there will be more concrete information in the next few days, as the proposal is a bit long, you can find it here:

http://berec.europa.eu/eng/document_register/subject_matter/...

But it starts well:

>This Regulation aims to establish common rules to safeguard equal and non-discriminatory treatment of traffic in the provision of internet access services and related end-users’ rights. It aims to protect end-users and simultaneously to guarantee the continued functioning of the internet ecosystem as an engine of innovation.

>> "I see providers offering free data for things like Spotify"

Any source for this? I've only ever seen providers offer free Spotify membership, not free data.

Edit: Thanks for the responses. I had no idea this was happening.

Here's one not from the EU, but Switzerland

https://www.engadget.com/2013/01/21/spotify-signs-deal-with-...

From Portugal:

http://www.wtf.pt/ Look for "APPS COM TRÁFEGO ILIMITADO" (Free data apps). You can see the apps below.

http://www.yorn.net/YORN/tarifario/yorn-x/index.htm#apps

I'm not even sure it's legal, but people don't really care/see it as a problem.

Swedens I believe largest operators 3 and Telia has unlimited or a large amount of data that doesn't count towards the usual data limits when using specially selected services such as Spotify and Facebook.

Telia also attached a condition that you had to promise to be nice on the internet and not practice "näthat"(net hate). Not joking either, they were then very unresponsive to criticism and questioning of their stance on net neutrality.

T-mobile used to do this in Germany until earlier this month. In their FAQ [1], they state that the following in spotify count against customers' data plan: videos, album covers, sharing, and Spotify's "discovery" feature. They add a flat 100MB to the data plan to cover that. Note that the streaming of music is not included, so it doesn't count towards data usage.

They stopped offering this to new customers on August 2nd, 2016.

[1] https://www.telekom.de/hilfe/mobilfunk-mobiles-internet/mobi... (in German)

Deutsche Telekom was doing this and advertising it in Germany a few years ago but they've since stopped[1]. Spotify data didn't count against your (usually very slim) mobile data limit.

[1] http://www.golem.de/news/netzneutralitaet-telekom-fuehrt-dro...

Czech O2 offers free data for Spotify and 3 months of free premium membership.

http://www.o2.cz/osobni/spotify/ (in czech)

Happening in Canada too:

http://www.videotron.com/unlimitedmusic

we have here in sweden providers(Telia) that does infact zero the data on any trafic from Facebook and Spotify.

Happens in Austria with Drei.

https://www.drei.at/portal/de/privat/services-und-apps/zusae...

"Kein Datenverbrauch" == Zero Rating.

of course, Spotify isn't an american company

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