What is net neutrality

Net neutrality is the principle that internet service providers should treat all internet traffic equally — not throttling, blocking, or prioritising specific services for commercial reasons. Different countries have implemented or repealed net-neutrality rules at different times.

Why it matters

Without net neutrality, ISPs can:

• Throttle competing services (an ISP that owns a video service can slow down Netflix and YouTube to advantage their own product)
• Charge users more for "fast lanes" to specific services
• Charge content providers for guaranteed delivery (Netflix paying ISPs to ensure Netflix users get good speeds)
• Block specific services entirely (extreme; rarely deployed even in non-neutral regimes)

The economic effect is that internet services depend on ISP cooperation; smaller services without resources to negotiate get disadvantaged; user choice gets implicitly limited.

Country-by-country status (May 2026)

United States. Net neutrality rules were enacted in 2015 under the Obama-era FCC; repealed in 2017 under the Trump administration. The repeal allowed ISPs to throttle, prioritise, and charge for service-specific access. The FCC under Biden has signalled willingness to revisit; specific rule-making has been complicated by Supreme Court interpretation of FCC authority. State-level laws (notably California SB 822) provide partial protection. As of 2026, no comprehensive federal net-neutrality framework exists.

European Union. Net neutrality is enshrined in the 2015 Open Internet Regulation (Regulation 2015/2120). ISPs are prohibited from blocking, throttling, or prioritising specific services. Enforcement is decent; specific complaints get investigated and fined.

United Kingdom. Post-Brexit, the UK retained the EU framework substantially. Ofcom enforces. Less aggressive than EU enforcement but still meaningful.

Canada. CRTC's Telecom Decision 2009-657 and subsequent rulings provide net neutrality protection. Strong enforcement.

India. TRAI's 2018 net neutrality rules prohibit discriminatory pricing and throttling. Strong in principle; uneven enforcement.

Australia. No specific net neutrality law. ISPs operate under broader telecommunications competition framework.

Russia, China, Iran, similar regimes. Net neutrality is not the framing question; ISPs operate under direct state control with extensive throttling and content filtering.

What ISPs have done since US repeal

Documented cases since 2017:

• AT&T capped video to 480p on its mobile plans (the "Stream Saver" feature, framed as data-saving)
• Verizon throttled Netflix during peering disputes
• T-Mobile "Binge On" capped video to 480p
• Comcast throttled BitTorrent (this was earlier, 2007 — the original net neutrality test case)
• Multiple ISPs have throttled streaming during congestion or peering disputes

The Wehe app (Northeastern University research) maintains continuous measurement of throttling patterns. The data is publicly available.

VPN and net neutrality

A VPN encrypts your traffic, hiding the destination service from your ISP. This means:

• Service-specific throttling is defeated. The ISP cannot identify Netflix vs YouTube vs Zoom inside the tunnel.
• General congestion-based throttling is not defeated. If the ISP throttles all traffic during peak hours, the VPN tunnel is throttled too.
• Per-account caps are not defeated. The cap counts total usage; the VPN does not reduce it.

For users in countries with active throttling (notably the US), VPN is a practical countermeasure for service-specific throttling. For users in countries with strong net-neutrality enforcement (EU, UK, Canada), there is less to bypass.

The detection: run a speed test directly to a specific service, then run the same test through a VPN. If the VPN-routed test is meaningfully faster than direct, the ISP is throttling that service and the VPN is restoring normal speed.

What net neutrality does not mean

A few common misconceptions:

• Not "all traffic gets the same speed regardless of distance." Speed legitimately varies by physical distance, server load, network conditions. Net neutrality is about non-discrimination, not equal-speed-for-everyone.
• Not "ISPs cannot manage congestion at all." Reasonable network management — temporarily throttling all traffic during congestion, regulating individual heavy users — is generally allowed under most net-neutrality frameworks. Service-specific discrimination is what is prohibited.
• Not "free internet for everyone." Net neutrality is about ISPs not discriminating among services; it does not mean ISP service is free.

For the technical detail of how throttling works and how to detect it, see our ISP throttling blog post.