It appears that the U.S. is not the only country pushing for net neutrality. Across the pond, the U.K.'s telecom regulator Ofcom is now weighing what a net neutrality plan would mean to its communications market.
What's prompting Ofcom's CEO Ed Richards to look more closely at net neutrality has been the growing contention by media companies that their bandwidth hungry content should not be singled out, while service providers believe that they should be compensated by anyone that wants to carry content on their networks.
In one case, the BBC argued that incumbent service provider BT was "throttling" the download speeds of its iPlayer service. BT shot back saying that content providers shouldn't be entitled to a "free ride" on networks that they have spent billions of dollars to build out.
While Richards said Ofcom will put out its findings this spring, he's not sure that the U.S.' proposed approach would be a good fit for the U.K. and Europe overall due to competitive structure of its communications market. Richards added that it would be "even harder to justify blanket net neutrality rules when we consider the risks they could pose to potential collaborative and desirable investment in networks."
For more:
- The Telegraph has this article
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