Net neutrality in mobile broadband: A European study based on a large scale testbed

In Europe, net neutrality is guaranteed by the Body of European Regulators for ElectronicCommunications guidelines, which state that the user's traffic should never be differentiated.However, ensuring that these rules are actually followed is not easy, due to the scale of theproblem (the number of operators/providers is large) and to the inherent variability of net-work conditions. In this paper, we analyze a number of European mobile broadband operatorsin terms of neutrality. The study is based on measurements collected using the NeutMontool in Measuring Mobile Broadband Networks in Europe, a large-scale testbed spanningfour European countries. By following an infrastructural approach, important benefits canbe obtained with respect to methods based on volunteer-contributed data: testbed nodes arealways available, users' resources are not depleted, and the increased uniformity of devicesreduces possible sources of bias. Results show that, despite EU regulations, some operatorsare not neutral, thus, highlighting the need for a monitoring system.