Net Neutrality in the Netherlands

Abstract

The Netherlands is among the first countries thathave put specific net neutrality standards in place. The decision to implement specific regulation wasinfluenced by at least three factors. The first was theprevailing social and academic debate, partly dueto developments in the United States. The secondwas the implementation of the amended Europeanregulatory framework for the communication sector. Concrete developments in the Dutch market werethe third factor. The first part of this chapter describes the threefactor are described in detail. It sketches the contextof the debate including the amendments thatwere introduced to regulate net neutrality. Specificincidents contributed to the willingness to changethe telecommunications act. Next the relevant provisions are mentionedincluding the explanatory memoranda, as they offerthe necessary background for the interpretation ofthe provisions. Three provisions are relevant: thecore article on net neutrality and two supportingprovisions on transparency and deep packetinspection. The new rules have to be implemented andsupervised by the ACM (the Authority for ConsumersandMarkets), who had to deal with some firstcases. Next to the role the regulator, the marketwas faced with the consequences of the regulationand changed its pricing policies. We also mentionthe fact that the rules were more or less extendedinto the framework of broadcasting regulation. The analysis and conclusions promote anintegral value chain approach. It’s not possibleto restrict net neutrality to ‘network neutrality’exclusively. Other value chain elements need to beconsidered as well. it should be established whichelements of the value chain affect the process offree exchange between the information providerand the information user. This is a matter farmore complex than would be in line with a typicaltelecommunications approach where the accentis mainly on the provider of telecommunicationsnetworks and telecommunications services. Theconvergence between telecommunications andcommunications regulation can’t be ignored. Atthe same time, overregulation and underregulationwill mean that any problems concerning throttlingand blocking of Internet traffic will occur or beaggravated elsewhere in the value chain. Theintended purpose will then not be achieved. Real net neutrality issues will arise in the contextof the distribution of audio-visual services. Itis expected that questions on interconnectivity(including the role of so called Content DistributionNetworks (CDN’s) will get a more prominent place in the debate. Concepts such as ‘managed’ versus‘unmanaged’ services need to be clarified andimplemented in practice.