In Europe, we do have net neutrality. The EU wide legal framework has some big loopholes though, like allowing countries to decide whether they want to allow zero rating. And indeed, some countries did so.
See for example https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_law#European_... and https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/oct/27/eu-net-ne...
It's not a case of opting out: member states would have to make their own, stricter rules if they wanted to ban zero rating.
Surely non-discriminatory pricing of services is a fundamental principle of net neutrality? Without it, you can't really say Europe has net neutrality at all.
News to me. The EU most definitely has NN and healthy competition, it's doing fine.
Whether it's free Spotify streaming or free Spotify membership or free iPhone offered with your contract (Vodafone UK does all three) ... They're all the same and nothing to do with NN in my mind.
As long as all data streams the same at all time. Everything else is just marketing and sale offers.
But zero rating (i.e.: "Service X data is free and does not count towards your data cap" is another. Discriminating by charging different rates for different data services isn't really much different to discriminating by prioritisation, in terms of the effect it has on the ability of rival services to compete.
Exactly the opposite is true. NN is most important when you have a market dominated by a few large companies!
In Europe, we don't have net neutrality. It's common to see plans marketed with free/unlimited data favouring specific services, such as Netflix.
But neutrality just isn't a big issue so long as there is plenty of competition among providers. If one company is giving slow speeds (or high charges) to your favourite services, you just switch. There's plenty of choices.
Surely the real issue in the US & Canada is the limited competition among monopolistic carriers and service providers. Net neutrality is just a smokescreen!