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Ofcom Publish 8th Annual Report into UK Net Neutrality Issues

Wednesday, Jan 29th, 2025 (12:11 pm) - Score 800
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Ofcom has today published their 8th annual (2025) monitoring report of the UK’s Net Neutrality rules (guidelines), which were originally established to prevent unfair blocking or slowing of access to legal websites and internet services by broadband ISPs and mobile operators (with some exceptions). Overall, the report found no major concerns.

The original rules meant that providers couldn’t easily impose excessive restrictions against internet traffic and should treat almost all of it equally (i.e. they should avoid favouring specific services, such as by blocking or slowing access to rivals). However, there were some exceptions to this, such as when providers need to impose general traffic management, court ordered blocks or for security measures etc. (e.g. anti-virus/spam filtering).

NOTE: Network slicing, which is more a feature for the latest 5G Standalone (5GSA) networks, allows for multiple virtual network slices across the same physical network. Each slice is isolated from other network traffic to give dedicated performance, with the features of the slice tailored to the use case requirements (e.g. dedicated capacity for card payments or stable latency for multiplayer gaming).

However, Ofcom softened these guidelines a bit in 2023 (here), such as by allowing providers to offer premium quality retail packages (e.g. those with tweaks to deliver lower latency) and support for specialised services so that providers can deliver specific content and applications that need to be optimised (e.g. a limited allowance for network slicing on 5G mobile).

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The regulator also clarified some previous conflicts around the issue of zero rating (i.e. free mobile data), such as for cases where mobile operators excluded some websites giving a social benefit from being included in a customer’s billed data usage (e.g. those offering public health info. and support during the COVID-19 pandemic).

Suffice to say that today’s report found no significant problems with any of the related monitoring areas. The new report was also the first one to implement Ofcom’s revised approached to monitoring, as set out in the previous 2023 review.

Ofcom’s Statement

In summary, we have found that, so far, ISPs have not made major changes to their approaches to net neutrality based on the additional clarity and flexibility provided in our guidance. They have made only limited use of traffic management during the relevant period.

Mobile ISPs have continued to offer zero-rating. Some have offered commercial zero-rating packages, including open offers that zero-rate a particular class of content, and all have provided zero-rated access to some socially beneficial content to all their customers.

All the ISPs have continued to differentiate their retail offers based on speeds and data allowance. There has been some development of specialised services, with some mobile ISPs using 5G network slicing. In terms of the quality of fixed and mobile internet access services in the UK, these services continue to improve in line with advances in technology, with coverage of gigabit-capable broadband and 5G expanding and take up of packages with higher speeds increasing.

However, the regulator did note that one unnamed ISP “undertook trials over the relevant period which rate limited traffic of certain categories of content delivered over particular routes to its network“. The categories of traffic managed under these trials were “short form video and live TV“, with traffic identification based on identifying specific Internet Protocol (IP) address ranges sending this traffic over the routes in question.

The management actions were imposed, said Ofcom, semi-permanently in the network during these short trials but only impacted traffic under certain circumstances (where congestion was occurring in part of the network or appeared to be imminent). These trials were targeted and of short duration, and the information provided “does not indicate these measures have been implemented on an ongoing basis“.

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Sadly, Ofcom drew no firm conclusion on the compatibility of such a trial with their Net Neutrality guidelines. But we think the trial they’re talking about is Vodafone’s work with Meta (Facebook etc.), which deployed a new mobile broadband (4G, 5G) “network optimisation” for “short-form videos” across the UK and other countries (here). This was said to “free up network capacity” for customers and allowed them to “view more high-quality short videos“.

The regulator said they will continue to monitor the market, and so we look forward to their next report in 2026.

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Mark-Jackson
By Mark Jackson
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and .
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Comments
2 Responses

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  1. Avatar photo Hubz says:

    “high-quality short video” lol

    Maybe idiotic content should be delivered at a lower bitrate.

    1. Avatar photo htmm says:

      I don’t disagree with your sentiment on the “short videos”, but it is not for the ISP to decide. Their only job is to deliver my bits to me with as less interference as possible.

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