Net neutrality could become law in Italy - unless internet users would rather opt out

Net neutrality could become law in Italy - unless internet users would rather opt out | ZDNet: "Technically speaking, the bill doesn't completely rule out so-called 'fast lanes', but it does impose some strict limitations that should prevent ISPs from exploiting them to make a non-neutral internet the norm.

First of all, the bill states any traffic prioritization should be explicitly requested by the customer and granted by the provider under an agreement that is separate from their normal broadband contract. Additionally, the prioritization cannot be in any way linked to discounts or other deals associated with their normal broadband plan.

 "The premise of the bill is that having neutral access is a right and the providers cannot strip their users of it. At the same time, users can give up that right by voluntarily asking for prioritization of sort, provided that they do it voluntarily and without having been induced to," Quintarelli said.

 For example, a customer might ask that, on top of their normal (neutral) subscription, their VoIP traffic should be treated as privileged on their access loop so that they could keep having conversations even when, say, some heavy file transfer is going on. The same thing could be put in place for IPTV or cloud backup services' traffic.

 "But it must be the customers asking for it because it fulfills their needs," Quintarelli said. "We are not against traffic shaping per se. We just want to avoid any traffic shaping which could harm competition in the market: the net should be neutral in that respect."" 'via Blog this'