The European Parliament adopted a law on network neutrality and abolished roaming tariffs

The European Parliament has adopted a key package of laws on the reform of the telecommunications industry, together with important amendments that correctly formulate and protect the principle of network neutrality.

Amendments were made at the last moment by a bloc of socialist, liberal, left-wing parties and the Green Party. This happened after consideration of the laws in the final committee of representatives of the telecommunications industry, who tried to inject a number of loopholes into it, including the right of telecoms to classify any web service as a “specialized service” with special priorities for its traffic.

Fortunately, the Trojan horses were removed from the bills, but they left the most important amendments 234-236, which formulate the so-called “strong definition” of network neutrality and specialized services, so that providers can no longer arbitrarily cut other people's traffic, promoting their service functionality.

Amendment 234
“Net neutrality” means the principle that all Internet traffic is considered equal, without discrimination, restriction and interference, regardless of the sender, recipient, type of traffic, content, device, service or application.

In addition to network neutrality, the package contains new laws that are designed to abolish roaming tariffs for all mobile operators in Europe and create a single open market for telecommunications services.
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The absence of roaming tariffs, among other things, is important for the “Internet of things” - the millions of devices that connect to the network, for example, via GSM. Recently, the Netherlands became the first country that allowed issuing and selling SIM cards to any legal entity, so car and smartphone manufacturers can take advantage of this opportunity - and sell devices right away with SIM cards that are registered in any mobile network with the same number and no roaming charges. tariffs.

The entire package of laws should receive approval from the new parliament, which will meet after the elections in May 2014.

The representative of the Pirate Party of Sweden in the European Parliament Amelia Anderdotter (Amelia Anderdotter) thanked colleagues for the correct choice and support of the package of laws. She expressed the hope that large telecoms will no longer be able to conduct discriminatory policies against their users, which contributes to a more open Internet environment and encourages innovation.

Representatives of the association of cellular operators GSMA, in turn, expressed dissatisfaction with the initiative of the European Parliament and stressed that the operators "should be able to develop services for the needs of users and charge different prices for different products." In addition, the lack of roaming revenues supposedly will have a negative impact on infrastructure investments, will hit the economy and the labor market. However, the operators are clearly getting a bit shy: for reference, the TeliaSonera operator alone last year received 1.69 billion euros of net profit, with a profit margin of about 14% .