This paper investigates how a sub-field of regulatory policy responds to changing circumstances in the 2010s through the case studies of network neutrality regulation, a significant Internet regulation issue, by examining two examples: Japan and the UK. In so doing it reveals how a regulatory regime drawn from a specific political tradition – the preference for self-regulation - has shaped its approaches in response to external challenges and a possible transformation of the regulatory state. Although network neutrality has been a high profile issue attracting much attention among experts in the US and the EU, countries such as the UK and Japan have chosen different approaches that emphasise co-regulation by stakeholders including industry actors. The response of the UK has revealed an evolving process in which co-regulatory Open Internet approaches have changed into more explicit regulation mobilised by the initiatives of the EU but with significant involvement of the British authority. Elsewhere, with a different set of structures, the Japanese approach has preferred co-regulation rather than statutory, without advocating stronger regulatory remedies. What appears is the similarity of two examples that prefer benign approaches to this issue, although they have significantly different political traditions and structures. In pulling the above together, the paper argues that the reluctance of the state to intervene is a key characteristic of both examples, with no strong actors and structures encouraging stringent regulation, paying attention to the status of the UK and Japan as non-dominant countries in the field of the Internet and the significance of state traditions and policy networks.