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BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The EU's telecoms chief threatened on Tuesday to bill tougher rules to ensure cyberspace providers do not secern against some noesis companies much as internet vocalise call providers like Skype.

Europe has to date adopted a more hands-off contract on net tolerance -- the generalisation that all internet reciprocation be treated equally -- compared with U.S. regulators.

But analysts said this is probable to modify as rivalry intensifies between ambulatory operators and assist providers much as Google, Skype or Facebook that substance practically liberated vocalise subject and messaging.

Internet providers feature they should be liberated to control their networks for the goodness of all users, but noesis providers are worried most disruption of admittance and anti-competitive behavior.

"The Commission has asked the Body of dweller Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) to consent a demanding fact-finding exercise on issues pivotal to ensuring an open and viewless Internet," EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes said in a statement.

She cited doable barriers including the interference of internet reciprocation in areas much as vocalise over internet.

"If BEREC's findings and another feedback indicate unpaid problems, the Commission will set the requirement for more demanding measures," Kroes said.

The dweller Commission plans to publicize the results of BEREC's investigation by the modify of the year.

CONSUMER POWER Lobbying assemble Cable Europe, whose members allow Liberty Global, Virgin Media Inc and Kabel BW, said there were already sufficiency safeguards to counsel providers from favoring their possess services.

"Individual companies that bear anti-competitively crapper be authorised through underway provisions in telecoms governing and rivalry rules," Cable Europe's managing director Carolingian Van Weede said in a statement.

"But, in the end, the sanction of the client is most swift, given countless social networking tools, blogs and fast-moving web publications."

The dweller Telecommunications Network Operators' Association, whose members allow Telefonica, Orange and Telecom Italia, spinous to the risks of more rules.

"In highly combative markets for immobile and ambulatory broadband, any further regulation that would limit reciprocation management and assist secernment would counteract Europe's digital economy and restrict innovation," ETNO chair Luigi Gambardella said in a statement.

Skype said its research showed that a eld of ambulatory operators in individual EU countries discriminated against voice-over-internet services and another users.

"The EU appears to be lonely in the developed world in tolerating on much a panoramic bit these types of capricious restrictions on cyberspace use, locate in locate by clannish telecoms operators," Skype's spokesman Sravanthi Agrawal said.

"It has to cease, and we countenance to dweller polity to unambiguously protect consumers and online conception by stamping out ... much capricious restrictions."

European Consumers Organization BEUC criticized the Commission for missing an possibleness to take specific rules to protect users.

U.S. subject regulators adopted rules in December terminal assemblage that illegal high-speed cyberspace assist providers from interference straight traffic.

(Additional news by Georgina Prodhan in London; redaction by Charlie Dunmore and Will Waterman)

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