E.U. Not Worried About Net Neutrality

“The European Union (E.U.) has sufficient legal safeguards in place to prevent the Continent’s telephone operators from selectively managing consumer access to the Internet and no new restrictions are needed,” says Neelie Kroes, the commissioner for the E.U.’s digital agenda.

So the E.U.’s executive arm had opted to take a wait-and-see approach on the so-called network neutrality issue.

So far, the E.U. continues to believe that competition is sufficient to prevent the abuses network neutrality supporters tend to worry about, namely anti-competitive behavior by ISPs who own content assets, or erection of the access equivalent of content paywalls.

Perhaps oddly, where competition in the U.S. market includes a strong facilities-based cable and a strong facilities-based telco in nearly all markets, plus a couple to several mobile providers plus two satellite broadband providers, plus an occasional fixed-wireless provider, most E.U. nations have one dominant telco providing access to all other contestants, though facilities-based cable providers are becoming established, or are established, in the United Kingdom, for example, and mobile networks also offer broadband access.

It isn't always clear to some observers why multiple facilities-based competitors provide "less competition" than one network, albeit one with strong wholesale requirements. Wholesale "one size fits all" access is a good thing, one might argue. Multiple networks, each free to customize access offerings, arguably is better.

E.U. Not Worried Over Net Neutrality