Congratulations, Europe: The Internet Now Has VIP Seating

The EU’s wider Digital Networks Act, adopted as a Commission proposal on 21 January 2026, forms the bigger political frame.

The European Union says it protects net neutrality, says traffic should be treated without discrimination, blocking, throttling or prioritisation, and says citizens have the right to access lawful content and services of their choice, which sounds reassuring until one notices that the entire trick sits inside the word “lawful”.

Austria’s RTR now presents 5G network slicing.

A slice is a virtual lane inside the 5G network, built to give different services different technical qualities, such as speed, latency, reliability or security.

In theory, this can make sense for emergency services, medical systems, industrial machinery and critical infrastructure. In practice, it creates the perfect technical vocabulary for a two-tier internet, because once the network can be divided like this, the only thing missing is the usual parade of consultants explaining why this is not discrimination, but “optimised connectivity.”

And no, 4G was never some innocent woodland creature drinking from a stream, either.

LTE already had traffic differentiation through bearers and quality classes, which means certain services could already receive different treatment, but 5G slicing makes the whole arrangement cleaner, more flexible, easier to sell and easier to wrap.

IPv4 and IPv6 are the addressing system beneath it. They decide how devices and websites are found and reached, while blocking usually happens through DNS, IP routing, TLS metadata, app stores, registrars, CDNs, payment systems or plain legal pressure on providers.

The EU’s wider Digital Networks Act forms the bigger political frame.

It promises harmonisation, investment and modern infrastructure, as always.

In reality, telecom companies want predictable revenue and priority services, regulators want tools, the Commission wants centralised steering power, and citizens are expected to applaud the future while quietly discovering that the public internet is becoming the cheap compartment behind the kitchen.

The rest of the world is not exactly a gallery of saints as well:

The United States managed to lose federal net neutrality protections again after a court ruled the FCC lacked authority to restore them, which is the American version of freedom.

Canada still defines net neutrality more cleanly, insisting that internet traffic should be treated equally with little or no manipulation, interference, prioritisation, discrimination or preference.

India built strong rules against discriminatory treatment, then hesitated when 5G slicing arrived, because every principle eventually meets a telecom lobby with a PowerPoint.

Brazil put net neutrality into its Marco Civil da Internet, while authoritarian states like China and Russia skipped the poetry and went straight to censorship, isolation and punishment.

Europe, meanwhile, prefers the respectable, bureaucratic and mushy method.

Raise a glass to the new European internet: open by principle, sliced by design and blockable by procedure and "lawful" content.

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