Telenor, one of the largest Internet providers in Norway, used to love net neutrality; back in 2009, it voluntarily signed on to a net neutrality code of conduct. So imagine Norwegian surprise this week when Telenor bosses went public with their hope to charge sites like YouTube and state broadcaster NRK.

In an interview with the business daily Dagens Næringsliv, a Telenor exec made the usual case: YouTube uses too much traffic and it needs to compensate ISPs for it.

"The regime for distribution of data content is free for the sender, and this must be changed," said Telenor's CTO. "For the content providers it means that they will have to pay to make content available online, regardless of how much they send."

Sites that pay up will get quality of service guarantees; everyone else goes into the "best effort" pool.

Objection



Norway's Consumer Council, the independent government agency that has previously attacked Kindle DRM, Apple's iTunes DRM, and Sony's PS3 "upgrades," immediately called out Telenor for violating the net neutrality principles it signed back in 2009.

Those net neutrality guidelines (PDF, English) were brokered by the Norwegian Post and Telecommunications Authority, but they weren't government regulations; a host of ISPs signed on voluntarily. The agreement had only three principles, the third of which was that "Internet users are entitled to an Internet connection that is free of discrimination with regard to type of application, service or content or based on sender or receiver address." Traffic prioritization would be allowed, but only when it done at the direction of an end user.

"It seems like Telenor has forgotten that without content, people would not need Internet access. At the same time, it is precisely innovations such as YouTube or Web TV services that make people willing to pay more for extra capacity," said the Consumer Council's Thomas Nortvedt this week.

And he noted the common concern with most of these pay-to-play arrangements: they tend to favor an ISP's own services. "When Telenor both controls your Internet connection as well as the music streaming service Wimp, it's clear that we need predictable guidelines that grant everyone, also competitors such as Spotify, the same access and quality," said Nortvedt.

The statements fit with the Consumer Council's basic position on net neutrality, which says among other things that "the quality of the content must not be affected by the Internet service provider’s agreements, preferences, financial interests or other concerns." As for investing in new capacity, it "must be met with further development of capacity, not by traffic management."