A recent European Parliament ruling has told Internet Service Providers that they will not be able to charge online companies that have data-intensive natures more. This has been an issue in recent years as broadband speeds have allowed for enormous amount of data to be streamed rather than downloaded.

The best example of course is Netflix, which manages to stream HD movies with download speeds as small as 5Mb. The ruling will also extend to future services on the horizon, like the much anticipated PlayStation Now service, which will stream video games from the PlayStation back catalogue. Let’s face it, streaming The Last of Us is potentially going to need more broadband oomph than an episode of Breaking Bad.

The real winner of the court ruling though is of course the consumer. If the court had ruled that Netflix and the like did have to pay extra charges, you can bet those costs would have been passed onto their customers. with Sony not having told us any of their pricing schemes so far, we’re hoping this keeps them low.

As great as this news is, there’s a stark contrast over in the US where the ISP’s actually won a similar legal battle, meaning Netflix have been forced to stump up some extra cash. Still, doesn’t look like they’re going out of business any time soon.