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Comment by Reason077 | Hacker News Reader

"Given how their market is ruled by very few large companies, NN is a moot point"

Exactly the opposite is true. NN is most important when you have a market dominated by a few large companies!

In Europe, we don't have net neutrality. It's common to see plans marketed with free/unlimited data favouring specific services, such as Netflix.

But neutrality just isn't a big issue so long as there is plenty of competition among providers. If one company is giving slow speeds (or high charges) to your favourite services, you just switch. There's plenty of choices.

Surely the real issue in the US & Canada is the limited competition among monopolistic carriers and service providers. Net neutrality is just a smokescreen!

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In Europe, we don't have net neutrality.

In Europe, we do have net neutrality. The EU wide legal framework has some big loopholes though, like allowing countries to decide whether they want to allow zero rating. And indeed, some countries did so.

See for example https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_law#European_... and https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/oct/27/eu-net-ne...

I wouldn't call it a loophole. The EU framework does not try to include pricing at all. And indeed the practice of "zero rating" seems increasingly widespread.

It's not a case of opting out: member states would have to make their own, stricter rules if they wanted to ban zero rating.

Surely non-discriminatory pricing of services is a fundamental principle of net neutrality? Without it, you can't really say Europe has net neutrality at all.

>>> In Europe, we don't have net neutrality

News to me. The EU most definitely has NN and healthy competition, it's doing fine.

Yes, the EU has healthy competition and is doing fine. But it does not have real net neutrality! See the posts/links above particularly with regard to "zero rating".

I personally don't think offering discount contracts for specific services violates NN. As long as services are all accesibile at all time at the same speed, that's NN.

Whether it's free Spotify streaming or free Spotify membership or free iPhone offered with your contract (Vodafone UK does all three) ... They're all the same and nothing to do with NN in my mind.

As long as all data streams the same at all time. Everything else is just marketing and sale offers.

Bundling (ie: "sign up and get service X free for 12 months") is one thing, and I'd agree that's outside the scope of net neutrality.

But zero rating (i.e.: "Service X data is free and does not count towards your data cap" is another. Discriminating by charging different rates for different data services isn't really much different to discriminating by prioritisation, in terms of the effect it has on the ability of rival services to compete.

It does, and causes harm to competition. Treating some data different because of a fee is exactly the type of behaviour net neutrality bans.

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