Versione italiana
Turin, November 9, 2010 - The Nexa Center for Internet & Society announces the first public release of Neubot, the network neutrality bot, a software that aims to provide Internet users a simple tool to assess the quality and the neutrality of their Internet access.
Despite years of promises Internet users still live mostly in the dark.
To choose an Internet Service Provider (ISP), users can rely on advertising only. And advertising almost always indicates just the price and the maximum theoretical browsing speed. In most cases, ISPs websites do not provide any information regarding the quality of service.
When they buy Internet access from a specific provider, users sign very vague contracts. With rare exceptions, indeed, these contracts do not provide any quality of service guarantee. Not even on the lowest access speed [1]. In addition, expecially in case of mobile wireless, the contracts often prohibit certain applications, such as Voice over IP. This violates the principle that access providers should not interfere with users traffic (the so-called "network neutrality" principle).
Once they become customers, in most cases users are not updated on the status of the service. Almost always, they don't receive periodic statistics regarding the service quality or information regarding possible traffic management practices (e.g. peer-to-peer throttled or blocked in the evening.)
In other words, ISPs know everything about their network and have a very deep knowledge of their customers. Users, however, know virtually nothing about the service they receive.