Telephone companies have been toying with the idea of offering network wide ad blocking to their customers for a while now, with at least one company actually testing a system that blocked ads for a day. Offering mobile customers the option to have all ads blocked on their devices could be very attractive to the users. Of course, marketers, brands, ad networks, and others are very opposed to the idea.
Apparently lawmakers in Europe agree that this is a bad idea because they have established new rules that make it illegal to implement network wide ad blocking. This is part of a clause in their net neutrality guidelines, which states that telco’s, “Should not block, slow down, alter, restrict, interfere with, degrade, or discriminate advertising when providing an Internet Access Service.”
While some teleco’s are continuing to look into this as an option, they will now have to overcome what appears to be a strong legal prohibition on this practice. While it has been proven to be possible to block these ads, it may no longer be worth the effort since any teleco that attempts it would have to pay significant legal fees to even try to convince the courts that they are allowed to.
Of course, individual users can still install any type of ad blocking software they would like to get the ad-free experience they want. Having people install this type of thing one at a time, however, is much less of a concern for publishers and advertisers than having a network wide ban.
