Telecommunications providers in the European Union should reduce the practice of “zero rating”, in which they combine their Internet access with services whose use is exempt from the limits of customer data: content streaming services with intensive use data such as Spotify and Netflix. as well as the operators’ own rivals to those services are popular examples.
In a landmark ruling issued Tuesday morning, the EU’s highest court, the EU Court of Justice (CJEU), confirmed that it is illegal to block or slow down traffic once the user’s data limit is reached. . . , just because that traffic is not. part of a zero rating agreement.
This was the first time the court was asked to interpret the wording of the EU net neutrality law of 2015: the term “net neutrality” refers to the principle of equal treatment for all passing traffic by the operators’ networks.
At the time the law was passed, advocates of net neutrality were deeply concerned that loopholes would allow operators to get away with practices that prioritize one traffic over another, for commercial reasons rather than for reasons. techniques. .
EU telecom regulators decided in 2016 that the terms of the law technically allowed for a zero rating, provided an assessment shows that customers are not turning away from services that compete with the bundled offering. Defenders of net neutrality took it as a victory, but only now has the CJEU confirmed that the zero rating is off the table.
And something else. Not only did the court say that it was illegal to block or slow down traffic just because it’s not part of a zero-rating agreement; said there was no need to evaluate the effects of such a policy on clients’ rights; having politics was bad enough.
The ruling does not prevent operators from offering zero-fee services that are exempt from the customer data cap, as long as those services are capped like everything else when the blanket cap is reached.
The case involved Telenor Hungary, a former subsidiary of the Norwegian telecommunications giant Telenor. The Hungarian telecom regulator had told Telenor to remove two packages that included zero-fee services: one package provided free data for messaging services such as WhatsApp; the other covered music services such as Spotify, but the operator appealed and the case ended up in the CJEU, which was requested by the High Court of Budapest to interpret the EU law.
Defenders of net neutrality are delighted.
“It draws a very strong red line for telcos trying to deviate from the EU’s net neutrality rules. The zero rating is detrimental to consumers, it compromises their freedom of choice. The purpose of net neutrality is for consumers to be able to access everything the internet has to offer. “
Changing dynamics
“The dynamics of the industry have changed,” said Antonios Drossos, a Finland-based telecom consultant whose firm Rewheel has analyzed zero-rating offers from the EU over the past few years.
Drossos noted that operators are increasingly offering unlimited data to their clients, which means that it makes no sense to use specific zero-rating services. Even when the data isn’t unlimited, he said, carriers like those in France often provide up to 100 gigabytes of usage for just € 10-15 ($ 11.89- $ 17.83).
The zero rate is not just a European problem, by no means. In 2016, India’s telecom regulator shut down Facebook’s zero rating service “Free Basics” for breaking net neutrality.
And in the US, the Federal Communications Commission was preparing to end the practice until the newly installed Trump administration removed investigations into AT&T and Verizon’s zero rating of their own mobile video services, before destroy the neutrality of the net in general.
