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c0lo [soylentnews.org] writes:

After a closely-fought contest, Europe's crucial telecoms package has passed through its first European Parliament vote, as have amendments that remove loopholes that would have clashed with the open internet. [networkworld.com]

Deputies on the Parliament's Industry committee had previously backed a proposal tabled by the European Commission which would allow internet providers to prioritise access to specialised service, but the assembly's Socialist, liberal and Green groups formed a majority to back amendments overturning the committee position. This would correct situations like the one revealed by BEREC (a group of that represents EU telecom regulators), which in a 2012 study over 250 fixed-line and 150 mobile operators across Europe, have shown [euractiv.com] that blocking of Skype/VoIP traffic was common.

Under the new rules, Internet providers would only be able to offer consumers specialised services of higher quality, such as video on demand and business-critical data-intensive "cloud" applications, if they were not supplied to "the detriment of the availability or quality of internet access services" offered to other companies or service suppliers.
Specialized services will still be possible as long as the network capacity is sufficient to provide them in addition to normal Internet access services.

The new legislation will also ban mobile roaming charges [sundayworld.com] starting with 2016.

A similar law was struck down by US [theverge.com] in Jan 2014

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