The US’ decision to scrap rules designed to ensure a free and open Internet leaves the EU as the biggest market where “net neutrality” still prevails — but critics say the EU is not a level playing field.
Consumer rights groups complain that EU regulations are being interpreted in ways that allow telecom firms and Internet providers to offer discriminatory access to applications ranging from social media to music and video streaming.
“In practice, providers are allowed to use their position as gatekeepers to favor certain services, which is detrimental to consumers, competition and innovation as far as new, smaller players are concerned,” said Eduardo Santos, director of the D3 Association for the Defense of Digital Rights in Portugal.
“The law is lax on that, which is wrong,” he said.
At the heart of the issue is a practice whereby network operators charge nothing for data traffic on a popular app or a pool of apps in order to attract more clients.
This preferential pricing strategy, called “zero rating,” is being tolerated to an extent by European net neutrality rules.
In Portugal, the practice grabbed international attention when US Representative Ro Khanna, campaigning against the removal of net neutrality in the US, portrayed it as a nation without a level playing field.
Khanna tweeted that Portuguese Internet providers were “starting to split the net into packages” and cited offers advertised by local telecoms provider MEO, a unit of Dutch-listed Altice.
Aside from standard zero-rating pricing, some of MEO’s mobile phone packages adopt two-tiered pricing that critics see as an even bigger departure from net neutrality than zero rating.
In addition to a basic package, it offers more attractively priced add-on packages tied to groups of the most popular apps.
For example, its “Social” package lists eight apps, including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Apps not listed are only available at the more expensive, basic data-usage rates.
MEO says it “complies with the EU rules on net neutrality and there is no market distortion caused by its offers.”
It denies any preferential treatment, saying that the apps tied to its packages only reflect consumer preferences and that other app providers should contact MEO if they want to be included.
Nevertheless, experts and regulators say it is an exaggeration to describe the EU situation as “no net neutrality.”
EU rules still ban operators from blocking access to apps, which is what backers of net neutrality fear will happen after the US regulator’s decision on Thursday to repeal the rules there.
However, Carlos Martins, a software programmer and blogger in Portugal, said MEO’s offers represented a threat to fragment the Internet.
He likened it to the broadcasting industry, where content is split up into separate pay-TV channels.
“Unfortunately the tendency is for providers and telecoms to test the limits of the rules more and more, so the concern is that such offers will spread,” he said.
In Italy, mobile operator Wind Tre was banned this year from offering its own music app in a zero-rating plan, meaning the app’s usage did not count toward the plan’s data cap.
Once the cap was reached, the app could keep functioning while “general traffic” would slow down until more data was purchased.
Wind Tre did not comment for this story.
In making its decision, Italian regulator AGCOM cited the EU’s net neutrality policy, adopted in April last year, which states “providers of Internet access services shall treat all traffic equally, when providing Internet access services, without discrimination, restriction or interference.”
The policy is interpreted by national regulators, which may have different views on the issue of zero-rating, said Marco Pierani, a spokesman for Italian consumer group Altroconsumo.
“There are cases that can be interpreted differently depending on the country, which is absurd given that we should be a single digital market,” he said.
“It is a battle we continue to fight... Leaving the choice to the service providers creates a false market and places the choice in the hands of very few operators who are very strong,” he said.
The Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications has produced guidelines on zero-rating and says national regulators “are still at an early stage of the implementation of net neutrality rules.”
“The situation with zero-rating offers is not black and white,” group chairman Sebastien Soriano said.
The group expects to come up with a detailed report within 12 months to assist Brussels in a review of the regulations.
“We are applying these rules for a little more than a year. We ask for a little bit of time to be judged on that,” Soriano said, adding that national regulators were taking action.
“That MEO offer is a third kind of offer — so far the only one in Europe... but I assure you that it is under scrutiny by the Portuguese regulator ANACOM and it has not been cleared,” he said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in