The Body of European Regulators published an assessment of how EU Net Neutrality rules have been applied so far.
Background: BEREC, which groups together the national regulators of the EU28, was tasked to issue guidelines for the application of the EU Regulation on Net Neutrality, passed in November 2015. It did so in August 2016.
What’s new? BEREC has now published its much anticipated assessment of how the Regulation, and the guidelines it set out, have been applied. BEREC maintains the guidelines are generally working well; however, it also identified some areas requiring clarification. These include, among others: new variants of zero-rating practices, and commercial practices in general; provision of different QoS classes; characterisation of specialised services; 5G, and particularly network slicing. To this end, BEREC has noted that industry has not yet provided examples of network slicing use cases which could be hindered by net neutrality rules.
Next steps: BEREC aims to update the guidelines in 2019. Stakeholders will be invited to respond to a public consultation, in which they will be able to comment on a draft of the updated Guidelines.
