The main problem with this argument is that "net neutrality" is a poorly defined term.<p>What it has come to symbolise in the states is the lack competition, and the ability of At&t verizon and timewarner to stifle competition.<p>For example: the netflix fiasco.<p>Comcast wanted money for peering directly with netflix.<p>In the UK and most of Europe that sort of dick waving is very very difficult to achieve.<p>Firstly because there is competition in the UK, holland, france etc., there is more than one provider of broadband in most areas (and very very tight rules about what the monopoly can charge.)<p>That means that if netflix is slow because a certain company is playing hardball, customers will leave.
So deliberately slowing down a key legal service is going to loose you customers. Doing so in an effort to boost your own rival will also lead to successful prosecution (unlike in the states)<p>Secondly here in europe, peering is cheap and easy. Places like LINX, LONAP and the european equivalents means that peering centres are co-owned by all the people peering. Not a Big ISP. There are still peering agreements where money is changed hands.<p>Thirdly ISPs here are more than happy to have Edge caches. why? because it cuts down on the need for peak bandwidth to non local traffic. It also cuts down on bandwidth going other third-party connections(which again cost money).<p>Crucially, Not all traffic is treated the same. For the last 10 years QoS has been applied to virtually all domestic connections. You literally cannot have cheap broadband, with full connectivity and no traffic shaping <i>and</i> it be usable. To make sure that your domestic internet is usable the ISP would have to provision your full link speed in the backhaul, to all upstream networks.<p>ISPs may say that they don't traffic manage, but they are 100% telling porkies. In the UK, all ISPs have a fair use policy. This states that certain types of traffic will be slowed during peak hours, <i>or</i> that if you use too much bandwidth your whole connection will be slowed.<p>Traffic management is universal.