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Comment by jrnkntl | Hacker News Reader

Old news. Since that time mobile data subscriptions went up in price with all dutch providers: reason? "data usage for whatsapp and skype etc wasnt accounted for in the initial prices". Also, last month a judge ruled that two ISPs need to block The Pirate Bay. What's that about net neutrality?

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There's still a appeal running against the ruling; so nothing is currently filtered. Meanwhile the european court ruled ISP have no obligation to filter traffic since DPI violates privacy law, http://curia.europa.eu/juris/liste.jsf?language=en&num=C...

Dutch parliament is not pleased with the high prices and are pushing for EU regulation (http://www.nu.nl/internet/2501814/kamer-wil-af-van-absurde-t... , dutch) They also plan to create a third slot for the mobile frequency auction in 2012 which should increase competition and lower prices (http://www.nu.nl/internet/2651466/partijen-willen-prijs-mobi... , also in dutch) The NMA (dutch ftc) also raided mobile providers in december and they're being charged with cartel forming http://www.fiercewireless.com/europe/story/dutch-authorities...

I'd say there's a large effort being made in defending net neutrality. The only thing i agree on is that it's old news. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/06/dutch-parlia...

Not true, The Pirate Bay is filtered on Ziggo as of today and will be filtered on XS4All tomorrow. They have appealed the ruling, but have to filter in the meantime.

I'm using Ziggo and I can access The Pirate Bay just fine.

Well it makes sense, doesn't it? The costs for a mobile network provider are largely fixed and not really tied to consumption (it's maintenance and predictable/steady network upgrades).

Calls and SMS don't really cost the network anything (aside from inter-network fees). They're priced in such a way so that with the assumed amount of customers, they'll recoup their fixed costs. If people stop making calls and sending SMS, they lose that predicted income and have to recoup it from other sources (either the fixed monthly fees, data fees, or tacking on bullshit service charges).

Of course it makes sense; when you stick a price on a new service and find out a couple of years into selling that service that the price you put on it doesn't level with the costs you are making to maintain it. Then you need to level it; moral issues aside (some say the ISPs lured clients in with low prices only to raise them after they were in), that's the way it works. But then again, just raise the price, and do not block certain ports and sell it as a 'mobile internet' subscription or charge extra for 'certain kinds' (e.g. skype, whatsapp) of data usage.

The problem mostly was that people who were once overusing their SMS/text bundles/credits were now no longer paying huge bills because of Whatsapp. BBM offset this for providers by having a seperate BBM internet plan required.

Net neutrality in this context means an ISP must offer unfiltered internet. Unfiltered as in they cannot decide on their own to block certain sites or services. A judge passing a ruling to take some site down that he/she believes is breaking the law is something else entirely.

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