Net neutrality: what is it? Easily explained

The topic of net neutrality is on everyone's lips, but only a few know what it really is about. We explain it in this practical tip.

What is net neutrality?

The term net neutrality means - greatly simplified - that an Internet provider has to treat all websites and online services equally. So your provider must not simply decide to throttle or speed up access to a particular service, while all other pages can be accessed at the usual speed.
In practice, this means that an Internet provider, for example, must not throttle the Netflix streaming service while not slowing down access to Amazon Video. That would violate net neutrality. It looks different if your provider throttles all your traffic. If no service is preferred and all data packets are transmitted at the same speed - or just as slowly - it is in the sense of network neutrality.
So-called zero-rating offers, i.e. if certain services are not counted towards your data consumption, do not correspond to network neutrality in the opinion of the Federal Network Agency. The Austrian RTR and the Norwegian NPT also take this view. Nevertheless, providers always bring zero-rating offers to the market. For example, an Austrian mobile operator had a tariff in which streaming via Spotify was not counted towards data consumption and was not affected by throttling.
In summary, the idea of network neutrality states that all data traffic must be treated equally and Internet providers must not favor or discriminate against services.

A regulation dealing with the topic of network neutrality applies to the entire area of the European Union. How the individual member states interpret it is up to them. Nevertheless, there is a uniform legal situation on the subject of net neutrality throughout the EU.
This EU regulation states that basically all data packets on the Internet must be treated equally.
There are exceptions to zero-rating offers: these are not precisely defined, so they are checked by the regulatory authority in the respective country.
Another exception are so-called special services. These are services such as Voice over LTE or linear IPTV. These are allowed under strict regulations. In this way, they must not replace other services on the Internet and not disadvantage them.

In the next practical tip you will find out what the difference is between the Internet and the intranet.