Viviane Reding, the EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media, says that an open Internet is "crucial" to Europe. But that doesn't mean a little traffic shaping, service prioritization, and discrimination won't be allowed.

In a September 2008 speech in Copenhagen, Reding told a network neutrality conference that "a cynical observer may note that in the end this whole Net Neutrality debate is about hard cash. Dollars and euros... This is just arm wrestling between big network providers and successful providers of Internet services."

According to a (sponsored) study from Synovate, 91 percent of European Internet users expect ISPs not to block or degrade services, but only 7 to 15 percent of Internet users would actually switch ISPs if that happened.

That doesn't sound like the position of someone inclined to push network openness rules into law, and indeed Reding has repeatedly make clear that she doesn't favor such an approach. Instead, she wants to rely on competition to solve any problems that arise—competition that does tend to exist more in Europe thanks to widespread line-sharing rules.

"Some proponents of Net Neutrality would like to see equal treatment for everyone cast in the Stone Tables of the Telecoms Reform," she said. "But we must recognise that openness for innovation sometimes cannot exclude legitimate network management practices. For instance, traffic prioritisation can sometimes be an important driver of value and growth for operators... In the end, it will be up to the consumers to decide to change to a provider that offers them what they would like."

Switching is hard work

The key question, of course, is whether consumers actually would switch ISPs to avoid abusive practices, which brings us up to this week, when Google, Skype, Yahoo, and other Internet companies offered some new research on the question. According to a (sponsored) study from Synovate, 91 percent of European Internet users expect ISPs not to block or degrade services, but only 7 to 15 percent of Internet users would actually switch ISPs if that happened. And 25 percent of users would simply blame the website or service for the problem, not the ISP.

The web companies trot out the numbers to make two points: first, despite the rhetoric about "net neutrality" being an "American issue," most of the EU's Internet users have an expectation that their Internet connections will be fully open. Second, competition may not be enough to head off problems.

The issue has become a hot-button one as the EU considers a massive Telecom Package. The goal is nothing less than a reworking of EU European telecom policy to produce a "single market" for telecommunications services instead of a patchwork of national fiefdoms. But all sorts of gristle is being tossed into the soup pot, including amendments relating to the French "three strikes" law that would boot repeat copyright infringers off the Internet.

To net neutrality supporters, though, the big worry is a UK-backed amendment that would allow ISPs to do all sorts of things—as long as whatever they choose to do is disclosed to users.

The details of what might actually get passed remain in flux. The European Commission, the European Parliament, and EU member state representatives are all meeting this week to hash out a final version of the law, which could pass in the next month.

Bolstering Reding's case for competition was a new EU report out this week showing that the average monthly price for broadband fell in the last year. 1-2Mbps connections are 19 percent cheaper, while 2-4Mbps links dropped 29 percent in one year.

Whether or not Reding's approach is the right one, she's correct to point to the differences between EU and US markets. In Europe, line-sharing rules in nearly every country mean that DSL connections can be obtained from a host of providers at regulated prices, rather than the common US duopoly situation. And Europe is increasingly pushing the same approach with next-gen fiber networks. Greece and the UK, for instance, are both rolling out national fiber infrastructures (though the UK's will only provide fiber-to-the-node in many places), and both are requiring the network to be open to competing ISPs. Greece promises 100Mbps connections to 90 percent of its homes within seven years, along with a choice of Internet provider.

A business dispute

But even with competition, switching can be a huge hassle. If Google, Skype, and Yahoo are correct, then it will take some truly egregious ISP behavior before people start switching in droves. And that could give ISPs plenty of room to "experiment with different consumer offerings," as Reding puts it—something that could be quite bad for business.

In Reding's view, though, "business" is exactly what this is about. She has made clear that the EU wants competition and won't tolerate "abusive or anticompetitive behaviour," be she has no interest in making net neutrality into a moral issue.