An anonymous reader writes: Europeans are a step closer to seeing new net neutrality rules put in place, after the release of an EU regulators' report on how often ISPs and operators throttle their services.
On Tuesday, digital agenda commissioner Neelie Kroes said the release of the report from by the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) means she will make recommendations to the EU on preserving net neutrality, which aims to make sure ISPs do not unfairly restrict customers from accessing the service or application or their choice.
"BEREC has today provided the data I was waiting for. For most Europeans, their internet access works well most of the time. But these findings show the need for more regulatory certainty and that there are enough problems to warrant strong and targeted action to safeguard consumers," Kroes said in a statement.
"Given that BEREC's findings highlight a problem of effective consumer choice, I will prepare recommendations to generate more real choices and end the net neutrality waiting game in Europe," she added.
A spokesman for Kroes told ZDNet UK on Tuesday that the recommendations will be put in front of the European Commission before the end of 2012, or very early in 2013.
Kroes has pushed for EU member states to hold off from introducing their own individual net neutrality laws, saying that legislating on an ad-hoc country-by-country basis would "slow down the creation of a Single Digital Market". She has asked them to wait until Breec published its report, which was commissioned more than a year ago.
In its report, BEREC reported that between 20 percent and 50 percent of people in the EU are tied into broadband or mobile broadband contracts that allow the operators to limit access to services like VoIP or file-sharing. In the UK, most of the major broadband providers, such as Virgin Media and BT, use throttling on some of their packages in order to manage traffic volumes....
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