Tech firms send open letter to Vaizey

Signatories from Skype, Yahoo and Open Rights Group lobby culture minister to preserve net neutrality

Some 19 UK businesses and organisations have sent an open letter to secretary of state for business innovation and skills Ed Vaizey, asking him to continue upholding the principal of net neutrality by securing it in law.

The letter, signed by representatives from organisations including eBay, IMRG, the National Union of Journalists, the Open Rights Group, Oxford University, Skype and Yahoo, calls for Vaizey to establish five key principles to safeguard the government's commitment to the open internet.

The five principles, as outlined in the letter, are:

1. The internet should remain open so that everyone is able to send and receive the content, use the services and run the applications of their choice, on the device of their choice, within the law.

2. Traffic management should be kept to a minimum, and deployed for purely technical, security or legal reasons. There should be no discrimination in the treatment of internet traffic, based on device, or the origin and/or destination of the content, service or application.

3. Meaningful information about any traffic management practices must be made available to all stakeholders, end users and businesses who rely on broadband infrastructure to reach their customers.

4. Future investment in network capacity and underlying infrastructure must take place in a way that is consistent with the end-to-end principle and where new models of internet access do not compromise openness.

5. For competitive markets to function effectively, the regulatory framework must be fit for purpose and able to respond to abuses by network providers.

The letter also called on the government to protect the open internet through a judicious implementation of the new EU legislation for electronic communications, and requires Ofcom to closely monitor the market and demonstrate that effective and timely enforcement processes are in place to respond to complaints about unfair discrimination from any affected stakeholder.