Internet users want Net Neutrality!

Over half a million people, including OpenMedia supporters, across multiple coalitions and countries, took part in a campaign to tell the EU telecom regulator to stand up for net neutrality.

That’s the powerful message that over half-a-million people recently sent to EU telecom regulators.

Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web, described this movement as our chance to ‘save the open Internet in Europe’, and he wasn’t exaggerating.

European regulators are deciding if the Internet should have a two-tier system, where certain paid content is prioritized, making the rest of the web slower and more expensive to access. On the other hand, we have telecoms pushing for an Internet where competition, innovation, and creative expression are a thing of the past.

So we launched our ‘no toll booths’ campaign to stand up for the web. We believed it was vital that we pitch in and help ensure that as many people as possible have the chance to stand up against this huge threat to the open Web.

To fight back against this, we asked you to send your comments to the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC), who are responsible for these key rules. They opened this consultation to get information from the public on how to shape regulations implementing the EU’s Net Neutrality rules, addressing ideas like zero rating (recently quashed in India), specialised services, and traffic management.

At OpenMedia we know very well that unless thousands of us speak up, those with the lobbying power become the gatekeepers of the Internet. In fact, telecom companies felt so threatened by the power of people’s voices that they banded together in the last days of the campaign to threaten to stop plans for 5G Internet if net neutrality went ahead.

That’s why it’s so powerful that, on July 18th, at the deadline for BEREC comments, 36,000 OpenMedia supporters had added their voices to say yes to net neutrality, and no to online toll booths. Groups from all across the world have worked together on this critical issue, whether it was in the www.savenetneutrality.eu orwww.savetheinternet.eu coalitions or OpenMedia.org, and between all of us, the final total sent to BEREC was over half a million comments!

Thank you so much to all of you who supported the campaign.

What’s next?

Now that BEREC have hundreds of thousands of comments, they have to read and analyse them over the summer, publishing the final guidelines on 30th August 2016. At that point we will know if we have won a momentous victory for Net Neutrality.

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Thank you once again for standing up for the Open Web.