Précis - The Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (“BEREC”) and the European Commission have published their joint investigation, “A view of traffic management and other practices resulting in restrictions to the open Internet in Europe”
What?
The report, published on 29 May 2012, contains the results of an investigation into traffic management and other practices resulting in restrictions to the open Internet in Europe anticipated by our article.
The objective was a wide-ranging pan-European inquiry into network traffic management, the potential restrictions to access, content or applications and their variety and relative importance.
The report covers the occurrence of restrictions on specific traffic (e.g. P2P and VoIP traffic) as well as reporting on measures implemented by operators to manage and protect their networks (e.g. security measures, congestion management). It also considers how operators of fixed networks manage their networks in order to offer specialised services (e.g. for the provision of telephony) and how that could affect internet access services being delivered through the same fixed network; and the use of data caps/fair use policies. Finally, the report surveys the measures taken by operators to comply with various legal obligations.
The report is available here.
BEREC has also announced that it is consulting on three new publications in the context of net neutrality:
- quality of service guidelines
- a report on differentiation practices and related competition issues, and
- a report on IP Interconnection.
So what?
Both the report and consultation will be of interest to network operators and others. The consultation closes on 31 July 2012.
