A debate in Dutch Parliament resulted in a number of amendments presented to the Telecommunications Law. Dutch minister of economic affairs Maxime Verhagen supports a proposal from the opposition parties, making net neutrality law. In particular, ISP's providers will be allowed to use traffic managament for operational purposes and offer content filtering on offensive internet content. This amendment was put forth in order to garner the support of small religious parties. Afke Schaart (Liberal Party VVD) withdrew her amendment on net neutrality. On Tuesday 14 June, the net neutrality proposal will likely be adopted.
Parties proposed a number of amendments in the run up to the vote: ◦ Jhim van Bemmel (PVV) considered an amendment saying operators must offer subscriptions billed to the second and with no starting fees. Verhagen defended the starting fee, saying provider must pay to establish a connection. Meanwhile, an amendment for billing to the second already exists, allowing Van Bemmel to withdraw his amendment.
◦ PVV, Labour Party PvdA and Independent Party D66 want a clear opt-in for cookies; ◦ Martijn van Dam (PvdA) wants to eliminate the increased burden-of-proof for Opta; ◦ D66, PvdA and Green Party (GroenLinks) want criminal law to apply to privacy aspects. Verhagen advises against this; ◦ Van Dam wants Opta to have the tools to regulate providers of programme services, i.e. cable companies. This will entail amendments to the Telecommunications and Media Act. Verhagen says that changing the Media Act would not help however;
◦ Van Dam wants minimum download speeds. Target: 100 Mbps in 2015; ◦ Van Dam, Bruno Braakhuis (GroenLinks) and Verhoeven want to make sure that consumers cannot be cut off from the internet. Verhagen said he wanted to research the last point. He tried to discourage the other points such as minimum download speeds but left other points to Parliament.
◦ D66 said it did not make sense for Verhagen to ignore the adopted two motions concerning the 800 MHz auction. He still pushes for a 2x15 MHz reservation for entrants in the 800 MHz-band;
◦ Gerda Verburg (CDA) and Schaart asked that the regulation over net neutrality be implemented only after consultation with the European Commission. Until then, they want government to barter an agreement with the mobile operators. ◦ Verburg and Schaart asked the minister to bring clarity to the question over interference on cable from the 800 MHz spectrum, before the summer recess (July through August). Cable operators as well as telecom companies must take measures, they said. ◦ Sharon Gesthuizen (SP) asked the government to come out with a coherent vision about privacy issues. Verhagen responded by saying he was disappointed with the request. ◦ Jhim van Bemmel wants to make it possible to port from fixed numbers to VoIP, even for small providers. After Verhagen assured that this issue had already been taken care of, Van Bemmel withdrew his motion.