The body grouping together European regulators gathered stakeholders’ perspective on the guidelines.
Background: The Body of European Regulators (BEREC) plays a key role in the application of the EU’s Regulation on open internet access. As required by the Regulation, BEREC adopted guidelines in 2016, which help national authorities apply the regulation. During 2019, BEREC is working on a review and possible update of the guidelines based on an opinion and on a consultation of 2018, and on NRAs’ experience.
Purpose of the workshop: As part of the review, BEREC decided to run a workshop to gather industry stakeholders and get ‘face-to-face’ engagement. The workshop was made up of four sessions: traffic management, 5G, end-user rights and commercial practices, and transparency & NRA supervision.
Some highlights: Unsurprisingly, the session on 5G saw a lively debate, reflecting the current effort of industry to make sure that net neutrality rules do not restrict operators’ ability to carry out the network slicing practices necessary to realise the potential of 5G. Both Vodafone and ETNO/GSMA referred to the need to enable ‘permissionless innovation’ and asked to change the criteria of the ‘necessity test’ based on the needs of each service and on market demand. In the third session, representatives of parts of the tech industry warned about anticompetitive effects of zero-rating, which is very often inaccessible for small companies and ends up only benefitting tech giants. Barriers to entry are deemed high and lengthy to overcome.
Next steps: BEREC will run a public consultation on the draft updated guidelines from October 2019, with a view to finalise them in its first plenary of next year (Q1 2020).
