Neutrality across the ICT value-chain: from Networks to Platforms – WS 03 2014

12 June 2014 | 14:30-16:00
Programme overview 2014

Session subject

This session will focus on the ongoing efforts aimed at safeguarding the “network neutrality” principle at the European level, while investigating the concept of “platform neutrality”.

Session description

Over the last 15 years, Internet intermediaries such as Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and online platforms have acquired a pivotal role with regard to the full enjoyment of Internet users’ fundamental rights and the promotion of a free online market. Indeed, it may be argued that the aforementioned intermediaries have emerged as Internet “points of control”, allowing users to access and use the Internet and thereby exercise their rights to benefit from the information society [1].

On the one hand, ISPs have acquired the capability to manage Internet traffic through a variety of techniques that may be used to discriminate against specific content, applications, devices or users. To this latter extent, research conducted by the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications [2] (BEREC) has demonstrated that discriminatory practices are quite widespread at the European level and at least 20% of European Internet users undertake contracts foreseeing restrictions of specific applications and services.

Therefore some observers have argued that ISPs are consolidating a position of gatekeepers [3], due to their technical capabilities to control access to online contents, applications and services. It is important to note that such control has the potential to jeopardise network neutrality and Internet openness, which play an instrumental role in fostering the free flow of information, media pluralism and a competitive online market. For this reason several legislators have already adopted or proposed network-neutrality regulatory frameworks, in order to define “rules of the road” for ISPs aimed at guaranteeing Internet openness.

On the other hand, the concept of “platform neutrality” has been increasingly debated and considered as beneficial in order to allow both new (e.g. blogs, social media platforms, etc.) and established (e.g. broadcasters) journalistic-content suppliers to play their crucial role in modern democracies, thus independently contributing to the citizens’ forming of political will. However, further reflection seems to be needed to clarify both the meaning and the implications of the platform neutrality concept.

This session will analyse the role that the network neutrality principle plays in order to further individuals’ participation to democratic life and foster a competitive online market, and will ignite discussion with regard to the challenges and opportunities associated to the “platform neutrality” concept.

Particularly, the panel will interrogate such questions as: (i) In order to maintain and develop a free and open Internet, which are the minimum requirements in terms of¬ network access, traffic exchange as well as peering agreements amongst different networks? (ii) Can better connectivity to specific content, applications and services be in the interest of end-users? (iii) What are “specialised services” and how can they be implemented? (iv) What do we mean when we speak about “platform neutrality”? (v) How does the “platform neutrality” concept relate to the provision of diverse online content and the prevention of monopolistic behaviours? (vi) Do we need regulation or can the market alone provide adequate solutions?

People

• Focal point: Luca Belli, Council of Europe / CERSA, Université Paris 2
• Live moderators: Luca Belli (CoE/CERSA) & Frédéric Donck (ISOC)
• Rapporteur: Vladimir Radunovic (Diplo Foudation)
• Remote participation moderator: Sorina Teleanu
• Digital facilitator: Hauke
• Panelists/speakers: Sabine Verheyen (European Parliament); Matthijs van Bergen (ICT Recht); Matthias Spielkamp (Reporters Without Borders); Elvana Thaçi (Council of Europe); Per-Erik Wolff (ARD).

Format of this working group at EuroDIG

Interactive roundtable

Protocol. Discussions

See the discussion tab on the upper left side of this page

Further reading

General information on network neutrality

Messages

Reporter: Luca Belli, Council of Europe / CERSA, Université Paris 2

1. Internet traffic management – if needed for quality of service reasons – should be appropriate, transparent and not-discriminatory
2. The net neutrality principle is instrumental to the full enjoyment of Internet users’ fundamental rights
3. To protect net neutrality principle, national and European policies are required, in addition to the competition-driven market
4. Specialised services should not cause a detriment to the quality of the regular “Open Internet”

Live stream / remote participation

Click here to participate remotely

Transcript

Provided by: Caption First, Inc., P.O. Box 3066, Monument, CO 80132, Phone: +001-719-481-9835, www.captionfirst.com

This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.

>> LUCA BELLI: Okay. Good morning to everyone and welcome to this yearly workshop on Neutrality across the ICT value chain from networks to platforms. My name is Luca Belli, I recently joined the Council of Europe Internet governance unit, and I’m also completing my PhD in public law.

I will co-moderate this workshop together with Frederic Donck, from the Internet Society.

>> FREDERIC DONCK: Yeah, you just did it. My name is Frederic Donck, Internet society. Thank you.

>> LUCA BELLI: So together we will explore, together with our panelists and with you, these two main concepts, network neutrality and platform neutrality. There is already ascertained degree of maturity in the network neutrality debate because it is 15 years old debate. Today we will try to elucidate the importance, the value of the network neutrality support with regard to the protection and the promotion of human rights and media.

We will try also to analyze more in detail the regulatory debate in Europe – the debates in Europe.

>> FREDERIC DONCK: Precisely about Europe, we have the Council of Europe and European Parliament, so we will have questions of the status quo and the status of the regulation so far, or legislation so far with network neutrality, but we will also investigate the questions of the day. One of the big issues in Europe, that is specialized services, managed services, call it the way you want, and will it later or not co-exist, in which way and in which manner the global manner as we know it and how to preserve the global Internet as we know it with those new specialized services. So we will investigate into those issues.

>> LUCA BELLI: Then we will finish with the platform neutrality topic that is emerging in just couple years. The just Net coalition has inserted platform neutrality principle in their daily declaration a couple years ago, but this concept is not as mature as the network neutrality concept. So we will try to define this concept and how can this concept be put in relation with network neutrality.

So to start with our inquiry on the importance of the network neutrality principle, I would like to address to Matthias Spielkamp from Reporters Without Borders, what is the Reporters Without Borders perspective?

>> FREDERIC DONCK: Why don’t we give a chance to each of the panelists to introduce themselves.

>> LUCA BELLI: Maybe to save time they can introduce when we ask questions – or as you prefer. But I think they can introduce themselves –

>> FREDERIC DONCK: Very quickly. Ladies, first. Sabine, if you can just say something about you, then Elvana, and then we follow.

>> SABINE VERHEYEN: My name is Sabine Verheyen, I’m a German Member of the European Parliament. I’m a member of the culture committee. I was a member of future committee. I’m reelected now and I hope I can work on the culture committee and the Internet committee in the future, but that will be decided in the next few weeks, especially the content side and the media side are the aspects I’m working on. Child protection were in the past issues I worked on and the question of the telecomm package and network neutrality and how to implement solutions for that was also part of my work, too, in the last year.

>> FREDERIC DONCK: Elvana, please.

>> ELVANA THACI: My name is Elvana Thaci and I work for the Council of Europe. I’m working for the steering committee on media and Information Society, which is the Council of Europe’s intergovernmental committee responsible for developing media and internet policy on the Council of Europe.

Thank you.

>> MATTHIAS SPIELKAMP: My name is Matthias Spielkamp, I’m a journalist by profession and I run as managing editor consumer information platform, online platform here in Germany on legal issues and how they – what role they play in regulating the Internet, especially copyright issues, privacy issues and these things. I’m also pro bono member of the German section of the Reporters Without Borders Board of Oversight.

>> MATTHIJS VAN BERGEN: I’m Matthijs van Bergen, I work as a legal advisor for a Dutch law firm. We’re currently launching a more international division under the name Legal ICT, which I’m also part of.

Between 2010 and 2011, I advised Bits of Freedom, a Dutch foundation protecting digital civil rights on the topic of network neutrality. Fortunately, the Dutch legislators have listened very well and they adopted a very good law on net neutrality, which was actually inspired by the European convention on human rights.

Since then I have served as an expert for the Council of Europe and written a report, all protecting human rights through net neutrality, that was together with Luca Belli, our co-moderator. And currently I’m advising a group of municipalities in The Netherlands who are trying to find the best and most efficient way ensure that all their constituents have access to affordable, good quality, and neutral broadband. Thank you.

>> PER-ERIK WOLFF: Hello, I’m Per-Erik Wolff. I have an educational background in law and media management. I work for ARD, which is Germany’s biggest public service broadcaster with the specialty that Germany has two public broadcasts; ARD and ZDF. I work for ARD and we do radio, television and online services. I work as an advisor in media policy public affairs. I’ve been working since 2007. Thank you.

>> LUCA BELLI: So we would like to start with Matthias Spielkamp to know what is Reporters Without Borders perspective on network neutrality and what could be the added value of the network neutrality principle. What is the role of the network neutrality principle in order to impede censorship and to foster media freedom?

>> MATTHIAS SPIELKAMP: The three issues you mentioned, I think the network neutrality debate applies to two of them mostly. Censorship, I, at this point in time I would say we don’t have a problem with what we usually call censorship when we are debating network neutrality. We do have an issue when we talk about freedom of expression, media plurality and diversity. Why is that? I think because of the reasons that I suppose many people in this room already know because they have been voiced in this debate over and over again. If we don’t have net neutrality, we have higher entrance levels for markets, we have higher entrance levels for new ideas for platforms that can also be platforms for the use of voicing free expression, reporting and journalism.

Now, we could use as an example to illustrate that where this would apply the example of Twitter, where you have a huge platform that needs a lot of bandwidth. We don’t have high bandwidth content in the sense that there are videos distributed, at least not many of them, and not on the same network. But you could imagine that if you don’t have net neutrality legislation or if you don’t have net neutrality, how it comes about is a different question; you would have higher market entry levels, or herders for companies like that.

As I report, from what I just said, you can already deduct that we have specific problems when it comes to high bandwidth content. And this, of course, applies to audio and video content in the first place. So this is a very broad argument. We are aware of that. At the same time, we are really convinced that it applies to this whole ecosystem of companies and platforms that do the job of providing channels of reporting journalism and free expression. So this is why we as Reporters Without Borders feel that this is the debate that is very close to our heart. I can tell you, though, that it was hard to convince even people in our organization that it is an issue because it is somewhat hard to explain why it even has any effect on the things that we’ve been doing traditionally. But since every – all the content is being transmitted digitally now, I think it is quite clear why we are seeing this as an issue for Reporters Without Borders.

>> LUCA BELLI: Thank you for providing it is both network neutrality principle is both instrumental to foster media communication and also to foster a level playing field so every Internet user can access the free market ideas.

I would like to keep on with – to know from your perspective what is the added value of network neutrality of implementation, the implementation of network neutrality in regulatory framework or European context through regulation or some other tools?

>> PER-ERIK WOLFF: Can you hear me?

I have the media perspective speaking from ARD, I know I have three minutes, so I’ll try to stick to those.

But I want to cover four aspects: The role of the media, the role of the Internet, the role of net neutrality within Internet, and the role of Europe and regulating.

First of all, I want to start with media are not milk, they are not marmalade. I think everybody knows that. But it’s about stating that it’s economic products, but also cultural goods. That’s why they’ve always been regulated so far in the old world, in the non-virtual world. Then the Internet came and it’s become a big success, it’s revolutionizing our economies, and that’s okay. It’s multiple innovation. That’s great with us, but we should also not forget it’s means of distributing media and it’s an unprecedented tool for distributing media, so that’s where some problems comes from.

Now, net neutrality is much more from our perspective a technical category as far as network and traffic management. For us it’s a vital premise for the freedom of communication and media pluralism. I think as a media content supplier, it’s about having equal opportunities to having access to users. So everyone should have those and we want – it’s not enough to just state that, especially with companies. We need safety on that perspective.

I think coming to the European perspective, it’s important to see that this freedom of information opinion is part of the European convention human rights of Article 10. And if you look at that, it’s not about just the means – it’s not just about the content, it’s also the means of dissemination. The means – if you restrict dissemination or distributing content, you restrict receiving information. And then we’re talking about Article 10 and the access to information.

So discriminatory treatment of certain content against other is against net neutrality, but it’s also against Article 10, so to speak. Therefore we need a regulatory framework as we’ve seen it in the The Netherlands – but now we have the proposition by the – the proposal by the European Commission. And as far as I’m informed, it has immediate effect. So national regulation is fine, but – count European legislation as it has immediate effects. So that’s why we’re excited to see where we are now and where we’re going.

>> LUCA BELLI: Thanks for highlighting that nondiscriminatory traffic management is instrumental to media diversity.

I would like to – that provides us next to Elvana Thaci from the Council of Europe, what is the state of play of Council of Europe elaboration and recommendation on network neutrality with regards to promotion and the protection of freedom of expression and the right to privacy, and something – how this recommendation relates to the approval and behaviors?

>> ELVANA THACI: Thank you. Before I answer that question, I just would like to recall a little bit the history of the Council of Europe’s consideration in support for network neutrality and to bring the current, the current initiative into the perspective of the political debate of the political network neutrality.

First, there is no doubt for the council that there is valid relationship between network neutrality and freedom of expression. This is from 2010 in a statement of the highest political decision making body of the Council of Europe, committee of ministers. This happened in 2010, and you recall at that time most of the debate about network neutrality was made by the actors with the loudest voices saying because the market model of Internet traffic is evolving so we should just sit back and see what is happening and how that is going to evolve. And the regulators should do nothing but monitor.

The political statement of the Council of Europe expressed support for the principle of network neutrality at that time. Then we had another political statement on the governance of the Internet on the broader picture of the Internet, how it should be governed, what should be the political restraints for the governance for the actors and the Internet. There, again, there was support for the principle of open network, which is network neutrality.

Later on, in 2012, we had a very much welcome pronouncement by the European court of human rights in the case of – versus Turkey, a statement about the importance of the Internet for the exercise of right to freedom of expression as guaranteed by Article 10 of the European human rights. The court there did not deal directly with the network neutrality, but it established the underlying basis, the eco-basis and the rational for the link between freedom of expression and infrastructure of the Internet.

As it was mentioned earlier here, the court said any interference would be a means of transmission of the information is interference with the freedom of the right to expression.

So going back to network neutrality, what is interference? What is traffic management? And how should traffic management meet the threshold established by the second paragraph part of the European convention? That’s where we are now in the Council of Europe and we are looking at a new instrument, a policy instrument on network neutrality. And we are also looking at the other developments in the field.

I will explain a little bit the thinking that is involved in this draft, it’s still a draft, this instrument that hopefully will be adopted by our committee of ministers later in the year. What this draft does, it recognizes the structural evolution of the Internet and its significance for access to information.

With structural evolution, I mean the business models of Internet participants have shifted, have changed over the years as the Internet has expanded. And with Internet expansion, I mean the significant growth of bandwidth and content and services. We have different participants on the Internet. We have the creators of content, the suppliers of content, and distributors of content, the webco networks and access networks. And all these actors, all these participants are negotiating new commercial agreements about the delivery of content. The result of these commercial agreements sometimes is that some content has been priority and it can travel faster than other content, and that’s where we have the freedom of expression issue and we have the big question mark on the pluralism and diversity of the information on the Internet.

The approach that has been taken by the current draft in the Council of Europe is to recommend to council members safe principles with regard to network neutrality, to recommend principles with regard to pluralism and diversity of information.

We have defined the principle method of neutrality as equal treatment of all data on the Internet, and then we move on to perceptions to this principle, that is traffic management and we try to identify what are the constraints of traffic management to happen for the discretion exercise in relation to traffic management.

The other principles that are foreseen are in that draft recommendation concern the pluralism and diversity of information. I will perhaps elaborate on these later in the debate. But let me mention for the moment that one of the most interesting ones is a dissociation of the function of transmission of information from the function of content production. Another principle is the –

>> LUCA BELLI: We need to move – three minutes have already expired.

>> ELVANA THACI: Even three minutes?

>> FREDERIC DONCK: Let’s take it from here then. Thanks, Elvana.

I would like to just now go through a little bit in your opinion, we have a chance to have you here.

>> The European Union moment.

>> LUCA BELLI: I take it from here. Sabine, before we get into network neutrality, you have a chance, could you please tell us where we are with this telecomm package? I mean, where do we go? What’s the status? How do you see the biggest challenges? And where will it start really?

>> SABINE VERHEYEN: Perhaps short, let’s start with the beginning of the package. It’s just one year ago that they offer us very complex regulation, draft regulation not on network neutrality in special, but especially on killing the roaming and bringing instead specialized services of the plan. That was the problem where the discussion started, there should be resolve in two and a half year without really having an impact assessment that was correctly done, and many, many other things that was fast done, report or legislative text. And we tried in the different committees to bring it to a complete way to make it round like we said in German. I don’t know if we can say it in English like this. And there was one special point, if you allow to implement specialized services, you must secure and ensure that the Internet access service is still in future and neutral – that that net neutrality is still part of the Internet access service and that specialized services just can be in a special frame, in addition, but not instead of the Internet access services. And that is what we try to bring in the legislative text. At the moment there is with a big majority decided draft or first reading text from the parliament where net neutrality is fixed and also where net neutrality has a clear definition and where specialized services are also possible but in a clearly defined frame and clearly defined conditions under which they should be part also of the legislation.

You must take a look at the whole legislative text, not just on the single paragraph, because in total it brings together many aspects. For example, that we want to strengthen the right of consumers, especially in the question of how a contract is made so that the consumer can decide not just on having the contract up to a special quality of service for Internet access services, but that the telcos have to guarantee, let’s say, a kind of minimum of quality that can offer normally all the time. I think that’s a big difference to what we have now because that makes more transparent what kind of contract I have with my telco provider, so also the specialized services that are not allowed to tackle the quality and structure of the regular Internet access service is clearly defined there.

At the moment we just have the first reading from the parliament. It lies now with the council. The council didn’t work on it during the last half year because the Greek presidency said they will not deal with it now. I think the Italian wanted to do, that’s my information at the moment, but we have to wait what’s going on with the commission, what’s going on with the president of the commission, and how all these things that are around the new elections will develop now, and if the Italian presidency of the council is really working on it or not. If it’s possible to work, we will take a look what’s happening after summer holidays. So there will be the key points if the council of the governments or the ministers are also supporting the position that parliament took. And I think parliament took a very clear position for net neutrality.

>> FREDERIC DONCK: Thank you, Sabine. Which is right. I would like to keep just a moment with you. Okay. Let’s have questions, consumers might benefit from – some of the content have really sufficient speed and sufficient quality, so why did parliament decide to just regulate prioritization, regulate specialized services in such a strict way?

>> SABINE VERHEYEN: Because I think it might tackle the diversity. If you have small and medium-size enterprises, new companies coming up, and if they need a special quality for their service on the open Internet access, and they have to make contracts with all the telco providers we have all over Europe, I think that might be impossible for them to do so. So it will be a hurdle for getting into the market and we think that diversity might be tackled by the specialized services. That’s why we say it must be in a clear framework and you must have the chance via open Internet access services and via services you deliver through this open Internet access, to have this in a good quality also in future to get new companies, new services, new content also, to the people, to the consumers.

I think we also have to think about vertical integration we’ll have in the market. The telco providers not just are owners of the infrastructure, they’re also provider of the access service, they’re provider of content, they are perhaps provider of specialized services. They might support their own services more than others. There might be infringement in the competition. That’s reason we say if we allow specialized services, it must be in a very clear and strict framework, otherwise the markets might be a little bit, let’s say, quelled up.

>> FREDERIC DONCK: Thank you very much, Sabine. Very clear.

You mentioned diversity. I’d like to come back to you, Elvana. Prioritization, why we call them specialized services, should we have, like, for broadcasting must carry rules or stuff like this? I mean, what do you think?

>> ELVANA THACI: Thank you.

The thinking in the Council of Europe right now, and right now we only have a draft and I need to specify that, a draft recommendation. The thinking is that we must have – and that’s – the draft currently provides that states can impose obligations, may be able to impose obligations to carry content that is in the public interest. And that is a cornerstone of the paradigm of the concept of pluralism and diversity of information which has applied traditionally to media broadcasting and it’s now projected in the Internet environment. So the answer is, yes, in the current thinking.

>> FREDERIC DONCK: Thank you very much. Another aspect that I would like to explore with you, Per-Erik, is a more technical one. If specialized services, on the one hand, and the global Internet, on the other hand, were distributed on different physical lines, there might be less problems that we might have. But, as a matter of fact, they’re both being delivered on the same physical line which might then mean that there might be degradation of the global Internet. So how do you think we should tackle this? I mean, how should we preserve the quality of best effort global Internet with the consistence of the specialized services on the same critical access. How should we deal with this?

>> PER-ERIK WOLFF: Again, from a media perspective, it’s – to be clear – hello, on terms and definitions. Because from what I understood, it was very interesting to see that the commission’s original proposal had no definition of net neutrality. None at all. Now it’s very controversial. Instead we had the introduction of the specialized services. But as we see it in a very vague way, so I wasn’t really sure if it’s part of the best effort Internet, the open Internet, or if it’s to be separate. Would it concern or would it have effects on online services like Facebook? Or Netflix? Or is it a different thing? So I think from my perspective, or our perspective, we need to be clear about definitions, and I think the decision of the European Parliament was a great step forward to be quite strong in definitions.

And I think we’re okay with specialized services as long as they don’t interfere with net neutrality, as long as they don’t interfere with the open Internet. I think that’s why they need to be strictly separated. They can use the same infrastructure, but they should be separate things. That’s what we think is important. So we’re talking about close networks.

And if you have one of these vertical integrated providers, they can be kind of cable networks on the Internet, that’s okay. But they’re also Internet access providers and then they need to separate their closed networks from the open Internet. And it shouldn’t – so specialized services should not use a substitute for Internet access server. That’s very important to us.

And when these providers of specialized services are Internet access providers at the same time, then the technical consumer perspective, they must be very clear how to charge and that they have a market driven prices. So that this market is transparent and it’s not as its now. It’s intransparent and it’s not clear what the quality of service we have and how the pricing takes place. Similar things apply to traffic management. We’re okay with traffic management, especially if it’s to guarantee the functioning and the safety of the Internet, but we do have problems if it’s more like preferring some content to others, and especially if the other content is of less commercial value. And then, again, it’s about having standardized measurement methods on the quality of service and comprehensible criteria; comprehensible for content suppliers like us, but also comprehensible to users at home. Yeah.

>> FREDERIC DONCK: That would be great. I like the last part for the users as well.

>> PER-ERIK WOLFF: For having specialized service would be considered something separate from the open best effort Internet as BEREC has underlined.

>> FREDERIC DONCK: I believe we – I can see some people nodding in the room. I know that we have some –

>> PER-ERIK WOLFF: We have some –

>> FREDERIC DONCK: I’m looking forward to this. My last question for you, Matthijs, and that is again, investments. We know that broadband and broadband access must go through massive investments. So how do you see with going forward including the incentive for telecoms to just give up and – in a neutral way, of course?

>> MATTHIJS VAN BERGEN: I understand I’m the only one using slides, but I prepared a little PowerPoint because pictures can say more than a thousand words, and we have very little time for words also. It should be known that the Internet is not just a platform for individual and collective empowerment and freedom, but also there are a lot of pictures on the Internet, so pictures are an important part of the Internet. I would turn to the question at hand, which is how we should ensure that neutral broadband capacity will be available for everybody. And I think the answer begins with starting to think about fiber connections to the home and business as utilities, like gas, water, sewage. Also another analogy that is very useful is to think of it as digital public highways.

So, well, I have – yeah. The introduction is already out of the way.

Next one. So this is one of those pictures I think says more – yes, while it is universally accepted that our physical highways and the physical infrastructure for our utilities are constructed and maintained by our governments, we have left the creation and maintenance of our digital highways almost entirely up to the free market. In our current Internet age, this seems a bigger and bigger mistake. This policy threatens to make the Information Society accessible only through toll roads that are much narrower than they should be, and are often completely passed by, less populated and rural areas.

So this is one of those pictures I think says more than 1000 words. Instead of providing open and neutral access to everyone, commercial toll road operators would rather sell priority on congested networks to the highest bidder, than to pay a lot of money to expand capacity for all. This way the rich pay too much for their connectivity and the poor hardly get access at all.

Would we accept a physical highway system where the lights are always green for Ferraris but always red for Fords? Or where ambulances have to pay extra to run their sirens and buses have to pay extra to use the bus lane while those costs are ultimately transferred onto patients and passengers?

Rural areas which could actually benefit the most from having fast and reliable broadband are being left behind by the market. Telecomm operators who understandably think of their bottom line and their shareholders’ dividends before the interests of the society at large, find the cost per connection too high to bring it to the homes, particularly in remote areas. And the old copper cables that were installed there long ago, one could say in an era when governments there realize their important role in connecting all of their citizens simply cannot carry enough data, particularly over long distances.

So the market failure in broadband is not limited to rural areas. As the European Commission has officially recognized, broadband is a sector with important positive externalities. This means when better quality neutral broadband is available everywhere, society as a whole profits. Positive externalities are market failures, and that’s also recognized by the commission. So to correct this market failure, government should stimulate the accessibility and speed of broadband and enable much broader and more level platform for innovation, economic growth and well-being.

Fiber-optic cables which can deliver more data than cables and wireless technologies, should be connected to every home and business. For most of us this hasn’t happened yet. If the market is left alone, it appears likely that it will never happen for many. So we could say that fiber connection is a lot like other utilities, such as electricity, water, gas, sewage, except we don’t have it yet. Eventually everybody will need it, or already needs it, and when we invest it in together, the rewards will be much greater than the cost.

Given the issue of net neutrality, it would not be smart for governments to just give telcos a bunch of cash so they can create big fiber toll roads. Much smarter would be to invest the public money to create public open physical fiber infrastructure for all markets players to compete on. After all, we don’t give postal companies, or taxi companies, or bus companies a bunch of money to build their own roads so they can sell their taxi services or bus services on the road and charge others a toll for using their roads. We build the roads as public infrastructure.

To ensure maximum value of public spending, it should be ensured that any subsidized networks are as open as possible on every layer. For example, while trenches are open to install public fiber, private parties could also be allowed to lay their own fiber in the trench as well.

Points of presence, you know, where routers and optical laser equipment are installed, they could be created large enough so multiple operators could place their lasers and equipment in there and use the available dark fiber. For certain digital public services such as electronic, government, remote care, remote education, it could be smart to light some of the dark fiber and create dedicated virtual lines, which is also perhaps relevant to what Elvana mentioned, or, like, an obligation to carry signals with a public interest. This could be possible over the public fiber infrastructure as well. So, there would be no worry these public signals would not be transmitted.

But due to the economic problems such as high barriers to market entry and conflicts of interest at the telco level, also mentioned by Sabine, you have the vertical columns where the interest of transport not necessarily aligns with the interests of what is being transported. So competition forces do not sufficiently pressure incumbent telecomm providers to invest their money to create a basic infrastructure that is available to provide an abundance of bandwidth to all. This is the market working against us.

I’m almost done.

Once we have an open public fiber in the ground to every household and every business, we can start letting the market work for us again. Once the fiber is in the ground, all that is needed to upgrade network speeds in the future is to replace the optical equipment in the routers. This can be left to the market. The cables can stay right where they are. Manufacturers actually guarantee fiber cables for 50 years. So governments can invest in laying the cables over a very long period of time, and much longer than market players do. So this investment can be done much better by government.

And I haven’t yet used the buzz word multi-stakeholder, so I’ll finish with it. A network where the government invests in its own civil works and the physical infrastructure, digging the trenches, putting the fiber in there, in the public interests and tears down barriers into the data packet based telecommunication markets, that is, of course, very multi-stakeholder, or collaborative, if you prefer. A new buzz word. So let’s help our governments to invest in digital infrastructure to enable economic growth, innovation, and individual freedom for all. Thank you.

>> LUCA BELLI: Thanks, Matthijs for your perspective on traffic management and infrastructure enhancement.

And how should we distinguish – Matthias, how should we distinguish content from traffic management? If you want, content management from traffic management? And what could be the link with the concept of network neutrality – sorry, platform neutrality that we were – we would like to try to explore a little bit today?

Go ahead.

>> MATTHIAS SPIELKAMP: Well, is this on?

>> LUCA BELLI: I think so.

>> MATTHIAS SPIELKAMP: With respect to the idea of platform neutrality, which is must be a little bit novel to me, but there is one concern that I have, or one important delineation that should be made, I think, is that it is natural for governments to want to impose neutrality on, on traffic, on transport. But it is more problematic with respect to fundamental freedoms, freedom of speech, to impose rules or laws on the content side that would require content delivery platforms – I don’t know if platforms also includes Facebook or things like this – to force them to be neutral. This is more difficult because no content is ever neutral. And if you have a government that mandates content to be neutral, this could also be used as an instrument to actually sensor content saying that it’s not neutral.

>> LUCA BELLI: I think Sabine wants to reply.

>> SABINE VERHEYEN: Before we discuss about platform neutrality, we have to define what we he mean with platform. Because we have a platform regulation, order media services directive on European level, that’s the platform that’s meant here; the TV cable that were there or the satellite. Let’s say forms of infrastructure, or platforms of infrastructure where you deliver content by this platform.

Where new platforms in the connectivity area where you have devices that are a kind of platform and where is a gate keeper function at the moment. And I think there is – it is necessary if you want to keep it open to make perhaps a new kind of regulation on platform neutrality so that not single companies who produce devices make via the gate keeping role, they may have closed shop for special content.

It’s important to define properly what’s meant by platform, which kind of platform, and to find perhaps, if necessary, and that’s very, very important, and that’s the reason why you have to make really a good impact assessment, or research, or studies on that where it is necessary to ensure that the neutrality to find legislation to make clear that they should be open and not like a closed shop. Because otherwise you get new gate keeper functions and perhaps also not open and free information flow, but canalized information flow.

>> MATTHIJS VAN BERGEN: Just to add to that, I think maybe there’s a misunderstanding. In my opinion, this is not about the management of content, or the regulation of content, it’s about regulating the content access so that content supplies might be broadcasters, might be others, have equal opportunities to have their content on these graphic interfaces of the platforms that we need to define. That’s what it’s about. So we can, we can be this to the market, because you have gate keepers and they have their own interests. They might have special deals. In Germany we had this discussion about the Dutch telecomm and Spotify, so there was a big discussion on that, whether they would have special treatment. So it’s more about having access, being found, and have – that’s a big issue for us, integrity. So you don’t take the content you have and do something, whatever is in your commercial interest. Like, for example, put commercials on news content or children programming just because you make money on it. But it was never thought of from a content perspective. So that would be my addition to this. It’s not about the content, it’s about access and, yeah, the ranking, being found.

>> LUCA BELLI: Usually when we are speaking about platform neutrality is more about the capability of some platforms to influence, orientate, and enhance or – different government of human rights. Exactly.

>> MATTHIAS SPIELKAMP: By the same logic, couldn’t newspapers also be considered bottlenecks in a sense?

>> But you’re also free to buy any device you want, or to use any platform you want. This could be –

>> FREDERIC DONCK: I think we can open the debate because it’s starting to be a little heated. So, anyone, you can reply.

>> SABINE VERHEYEN: How would you define platform?

>> MATTHIAS SPIELKAMP: To me that’s an open question and it’s not quite clear. If platform includes something like a Facebook, something like a Spotify, something like these services themselves, yeah, that’s content for me. So in what sense is platform broader than net neutrality, like the network? To me it’s clear why we need net neutrality because we need to ensure that packets are being sent from A to B in a neutral way with as much bandwidth as possible and not that providers sell priority or use their commercial influence to put certain, like, to manipulate users to use certain information that is more valuable to them while they should be focused on transporting packets from A to B. That is simple to me. I don’t quite understand yet what the extra component of platform is next to the highways that should be neutral.

>> SABINE VERHEYEN: The device, for example, might be a platform. If you have a closed shop like an app store, or play store, like how you call it in the future, there is a decision taken not by you, but by a company that sells you the device which kind of content you get as an application and which kind you don’t get, then it’s a gate keeper function and then it’s a platform.

>> FREDERIC DONCK: Let’s continue because I was a bit confused by those platform conversations. So I would like to clarify that.

>> MATTHIJS VAN BERGEN: I would like to give some input maybe to clarify. I think from our point of view, looking at the value chain, the content generation side, that’s where we are as broadcasters. But they have logs, press newspapers, it’s not just broadcasting. Then you have new intermediaries coming in. They do some new bundling, so they take content they find and bundle it on platforms. That’s a different thing. This intermediary, the bundle content from the content distribution side. We were talking net neutrality must carry, that’s distribution. But in between content generation and content distribution, you have the content bundling. Aggregators, yeah. They unbundle the content they get and they rebundle it, they make new packages according to their interests, which is basically, okay. But that’s what happens on the platform side and that’s where I would make the logical differentiation between neutrality, about the net neutrality, which is distribution net neutrality and the bundling neutrality. That’s what I think this whole discussion about platforms graphic interfaces is because they aggregate content according to their own logics.

>> MATTHIAS SPIELKAMP: But is it then a licensing problem? Because the content could be licensed or not licensed to be aggregate or rebundled or things like that.

>> FREDERIC DONCK: This is another issue. Matthias, she wants to inject something.

>> MATTHIAS SPIELKAMP: Yeah, and I’m really pessimistic that I can clarify anything. I might make it more confusing by the examples I would like to give, because this is what we are trying to wrap our heads around at Reporters Without Borders. And we’ve been discussing this for quite a while. And this headline of platform neutrality, which is really fuzzy. So right now I hope this is productive discussion in the sense that we have probably come closer to having a shared understanding of what we are talking about, because one aspect of platform neutrality is exactly where we have new intermediaries that are very, very powerful and we need to define what that means. And we don’t have a ready definition for that. But if you use examples, like the one where in the Apple app store there was an app that was supplied that gave you the possibility to check out based on a data driven journalism project to find out what United States drones struck in what parts of the world and with what outcome, then this was a website that was live and that was accessible. At the same time, the app that used wire on API, the data that was provided by that project, by that, basically, database, it was also providing the data to the website was not allowed in the – to be distributed and sold on the Apple app store. With changing rationales by Apple, you know, it was resubmitted and then they came up with a different reason why they wouldn’t allow it on the app store. Finally they did allow it quite recently.

And one more example is if you have, for example, if you have content that you would under certain circumstances regard as journalistic content on a platform like Facebook, and these – this content is revoked by Facebook, you have a very, very intransparent process of how this is being done, and you are very, very powerless as a person who is using that platform to do anything about that. So there’s no regulation there either.

Of course, we would have to clarify and define how there can be regulation, because we have to somehow distinguish –

>> FREDERIC DONCK: What’s your relationship with network neutrality? In what you were saying, how do you see the relationship with network neutrality?

>> MATTHIAS SPIELKAMP: I have hard time seeing a direct relationship with network neutrality. I was not maintaining that I do, I was going to say that I see not a broader aspect here, broader network neutrality, but a very much slimmer aspect of it that goes into a different direction. But that’s what I’m saying, it’s really hard to define right now what we’re actually talking about.

>> FREDERIC DONCK: Thank you. I will open for questions. But be prepared, dear panel, to some questions from me. I believe, this is also always the time when we address network neutrality, sometimes I wonder whether we don’t address competition issues or lack of competition issues rather than network neutrality and I would like to have your thought about that.

I will open the floor. Gentlemen, please introduce yourself and ask.

>> RICHARD TILT: My name is Richard Tilt, I work for the Internet Watch Foundation, which is a UK organization which seeks to remove and/or block child sexual abuse material on the Internet. And, I mean, we certainly support the notion of net neutrality, but are becoming increasingly concerned I think about the draft European regulation in terms of what effect it might have on our activities. And it would be interesting for panel comments on that.

>> SABINE VERHEYEN: I can take – I think we can take away these concerns because in the recital there’s very clear said that this regulation doesn’t tackle in any way existing regulation cause of throttling, blocking. So if you have a national regulation for child protection, and, for example, in Great Britain you have the blocking of the pictures, then it’s still possible to do so because there is additional legislation on this. But that legislation is not part of this directive we have here.

That’s clearly said in the recital. It was taken out in the article, but in the recital it was kept in so that the explanation is clear. Because otherwise we would have to make a long list of legislation that’s not tackled by this paragraph in the articles. So that was the reason we took it out. But if there is national legislation for protection or for other reasons, copyright questions, that’s not tackled by this.

>> I would like to add to that a little bit, and perhaps Elvana could also have some perspective on this because a rule like enforcing the UK where certain access would be filtered, or et cetera, it would still need to meet the requirements of being necessary in a democratic society and proportioned to legitimate in pursuit. I’m not sure that this particular measure stands up to that test, but that is another test to be performed. The net neutrality rules do leave room for if a court decides that a certain website is illegal, a court has decided that, then, of course ISPs will not be forced under net neutrality to still transmit this – to transmit this website. That is obvious.

Yes, I would like to leave it at that.

>> FREDERIC DONCK: There was a question here.

>> LORENZO PUPILLO: Yes. Lorenzo Pupillo, Telecomm Italia. The comment with Sabine Thaci, I don’t think that – I don’t understand why you are making this connection between small and medium enterprise and potential negative effect of the current situation as far as network neutrality, the need to change legislation. I think that the literature shows that small to medium enterprise are the one that most, benefit the most from differentiated quality of services, speed from network operator. Because they’re the one cannot compete content wise, so they have to differentiate the service to be able to compete with bigger company. This is what the literature shows. I will suggest you to lead the Max Johnson people jumping down the net, and the network neutrality debate, first off.

Second, for a market like Europe where you have a thousand, I would say think about – whereas modern enterprise are the backbone of the – to some extent. I’m pretty sure this is the market that will be addressed, at least with the same emphasize from metro period, like potential big deal with the Google and so on. So I think that our fundamental differences in – that you make, I think that there is – your implication, assumption are completely, I don’t know, they are not sound at all.

I have many other question, maybe I will ask later on.

>> FREDERIC DONCK: Please, that’s interesting.

>> SABINE VERHEYEN: We have many other dossiers in the European Parliament over the last years, whether it was e-commerce and other things; the transport sector and the e-commerce and the linkage on that. Everywhere it was said that net neutrality – in each of these, network neutrality is the fundamental base for the development of new economies on the Internet. And that was said with all the studies we read before made by the commission, made by institutes, made by all of them.

The reason to say, it’s that reason that we say specialized services are possible, but in a special framework, is that we give the chance if someone as a new company or as a big company wants to have a special service, they can do. They are able to do. But this should not be directly linked to the regular Internet access server. It can be a special offer, something let’s say quite good or better than others. That’s no problem at all, that’s the reason why we give the space for specialized services in the directive. But we must be clear that we need a general or open Internet access service and that is something different from these special services you can get if you want something additional. But there must be a general support for people who want to access the Internet in a good quality like they paid for. I think if there are problems with financing, it should be transparent and clear. If you want a good Internet, you have to pay for it. If you want a high capacity and a high speed, you have to pay for it. Even now, the contracts are not all equal. I think we don’t ask in this dossier for a commonistic system where everything is the same. We are asking for a fair, a transparent and competitive system on the telco sector.

>> I would like to add to that. I think Sabine explained it very well. Also, one thing she previously explained, if you need to buy a specialized service or specialized access, quality of service, if that is sold on the market, you don’t have it, as a startup you need to negotiate with every single ISP in the chain to every single person that you want to reach. That is not feasible for any startup. Any startup doesn’t have the money to buy lawyers to argue over technical quality of service issues; how fast it will be delivered or how much priority you will get on one network or the other network, that is simply not feasible for startups or small businesses.

And with respect to the business model that some telcos would like to advance, and this is understandable from a commercial perspective, but it’s not in the interest of society at large, is that they want to sell this priority on their network. They would be very happy to sell priority for a high price to more affluent customers. The very large Internet companies can pay for this priority and smaller startups would have no chance to compete with them because they cannot afford the priority. The lights will be at red for their traffic on the Internet the whole time, while the lights will be green the whole time for the very powerful, wealthy already established companies.

>> For the sake of reference, it is true that there is literature supporting what you were saying, but there is also literature supporting what Matthijs was saying and I would like to quote a direct reference from – and traffic management practices if you are interested.

There is a question there.

>> KRISTO HELASVUO: Yeah. My name is Kristo Helasvuo and I come from Electronic Frontier of Finland. Thank you as a panel for a comprehensive introduction to this subject.

I would like to just stress for you maybe if you consider net neutrality only from the point of view of the content and licensing, maybe compare it to the traffic speed limits or such, then you might somehow miss the whole, kind of the bigger picture of what is at stake at network neutrality. And if you consider it from the point of national, global, European Union, you could think it’s actually about imposing or taking away of that national Cyber walls. So it’s basically saying that do not impose national restrictions on the IP, traffic or networking. So if you consider it from that point of view, you are maybe understanding more clearly what the – is it about. So it’s not only about licensing, it is actually about building global new, as you said economics, and also communities and governance models. And you shouldn’t be afraid of telling that the basic idea is to get rid of the national structures, if I’m not getting it wrong.

>> FREDERIC DONCK: One question here, please.

>> JACOB DEXE: Thank you very much. Jacob Dexe from Swedish Think Tank Fores. I’m a bit worried that the – some proponents of net neutrality are using what almost sounds like scare tactics when you talk about the problem with net neutrality, or not having net neutrality. There is no evidence of a tiered system that will force all new entrepreneurs to pay premium fees to get access to the Internet. There have been scandals with big corporations that have to pay, like Skype, for example, with some telcos. There is a problem with Netflix in the U.S. There has been no discriminating against smaller corporations. There has been discussion about making big contributors of data paying more for their access. So I’m not really sure why the toll booth analogy still lives on because it doesn’t seem to be any evidence of that actually happening. It’s a very horrible scenario, yes, but there’s no evidence of it yet.

>> SABINE VERHEYEN: With regard to what you said, we have to look forward, not backwards if we want to make new regulation and make it for the status quo. I think that’s not okay, then we are always running behind. But we have to think, what will happen if this will be implemented? And I think if you implement with a special need of quality, if it’s not divided, the specialized service is not divided from the general Internet access service, or the open Internet access service, you will have influence by these new services via prioritization on the regular Internet access. And then there might be the infringement, like you said, if there’s always the red light for those who didn’t pay and the green light for those who paid, or content providers or service providers, then you will get these infringements in the market. Then you will have the big ones who are able to pay and the small once who might not be able.

Then you have to take a look from the consumer side. If you, for example, have a special type of provider in the rural areas that you don’t have in the cities, three, four, five, six, different, you just have one, because all the others are not interested. And if one is dealing with the people in a special area, it doesn’t make any sense for other providers to go there, too, because there is no business to make. In these areas you just can, for example, get in a special quality, a special service, just if they have a contract with exactly these provider. So if you, as a smaller company, wanted to provide to all the people all over Europe, and we are also in a digital single market, the same service, the same quality, you are not able to do without making contracts with all the telco providers who have all over Europe. And that might be a problem in future. That is the reason why we say there must be a high quality Internet access that’s not tackled by specialized service or influenced by the specialized services. They can come in addition if you want to do something special, but the general Internet access service must be in a high quality reachable for everyone at every time if you pay for it. It’s no fun for zero. I think that’s clear.

I also have to pay for my water, gas, other things. For me it’s a kind of general interest that everyone can have access in an adequate quality, and that’s not tackled by some interests, commercial interests for special services. That can be in addition, but not combined with the general Internet access.

>> I wanted to also to comment on your question. I came across an extreme example in Sao Paolo which seems to be quite wide spread in the global south. Big companies like Facebook or Twitter sponsoring free access to the Internet for their services and only their services. Everybody else is excluded. So you get a cheap Smart phone and get access for free to specific networks and nothing else. So Facebook might offer video, might offer sort of cheap shopping stuff, but excludes the rest of the Internet. So that is 100% discrimination against anything that we associate with the Internet. We know about these services in South Africa, in India, in Pakistan, or Brazil. The sort of side effect is that many people now oppose the principle of net neutrality because it would mean that if net neutrality is enforced, they don’t get this free service anymore.

>> I think maybe a good description of the problem is that if you have to pay a telco to not get blocked, this is the same as the business model of the mafia. Tim Woo has explained very well this is how Tony Soprano would explain his network. If you don’t want to have a little accident on your lines, you might want to pay up. No offense to Italians, my accent was terrible.

>> Yeah. And by the way, that is – I don’t want to say precisely the way things were negotiated between – and Netflix, but that is not far from logic.

>> FREDERIC DONCK: I don’t agree. Seriously, I would like to come back on this. Again, I see telcos in the room. For once you will have a platform to react now. Don’t be confused, network neutrality and lack of competition in certain routes. So what you mention is a situation where suddenly on certain routes you have peering, or paid peerings, and you realize that if you take level 3 and you realize that on 57 routes, six who are chronically congested, other routes where there is no competition. Certainly when you have competitions, there is no congestions anymore.

So I would like to make sure that we’re not making any confusions between competition, certainly in this case lack of competition. Because in the case of Comcast, half Netflix, the reason is they can make them pay peered. So is it just about competition or are we talking about neutrality? I would like your thought about that.

>> Precisely. What I was saying just because there are measurements showing that Netflix’ traffic was slower in the before the negotiation and then jumped up after negotiation. That would be for the neutrality.

>> FREDERIC DONCK: That is abuse, that is abusing a dominant position. That is pure competition. Okay.

>> I kind of want to answer that instead of what I was going to say. Competition in the end user market doesn’t solve net neutrality. And it doesn’t solve net neutrality problems for one reason, and that’s because it’s – it’s not the end user that’s paying, it’s the company that’s trying to get through the gateway, the barrier that the Internet provider is putting up.

If you know, sending party pays in the mobile network has been an extremely difficult problem to solve because sending party pays, means the person that’s calling me has to pay my company’s termination rate. And I don’t care how much it costs to call me, I care how much it costs me to make calls.

The business users association calculated in, I think it was 2007, that users in Europe were spending 10 billion euro in needless termination charges, because termination rates are very, very competition resistant because the person who is choosing the provider isn’t the person who is paying – they’re not the sending party. If I’m calling you, you don’t care how much it costs me to call you.

And in ETNO, the former monopoly association, ETNO’s submission to wickers specifically said they want to generate a sending party pays model in IP networks. And if we know sending party pays is resistant to competition, and if we know they want to bring in sending party pays, we know that competition doesn’t work.

Briefly to the point, if I may, the point I was going to make, it took the European Commission about five years from its first pronouncement that it had identified problems in the roaming markets to actually addressing them with legislation.

Every single person in this room lost. And not in considerable amount of money because of the five years it took the Europe Commission to go from identifying the problem to fixing the problem. We know from BEREC what the problems are today. I don’t want to pay. I don’t want anybody in this room to pay. I don’t want the world to pay for the bad example that Europe would be setting. If we don’t deal with the problem now, and we don’t maintain a democratic open Internet, that is living from the success that means we’re all sitting around the table in the first place. We musn’t fix what’s not broken. We must keep the Internet open and democratic and free.

>> Thank you. My name is – Tan, I’m from the Young Pirates of Europe and I want to come briefly back to the point which Mr. Van Bergen was pointing out, the structural division of network and Internet access. And I think that is a way – something we discuss way too little currently. But, on the other hand, we have a – we have in Europe 10 to 8 different markets which mainly already consist of big multinational corporations running the infrastructure. And we have – they are calling on the Europe Commission to unify the European market which they are seemingly willing to with the – market agenda and also with roaming agenda. So my point is, aren’t we running out of time if we want to implement such a division when we are facing a – unified European market which will most likely get us in  oligopoly, which will bring us into problems that we maybe won’t be able to solve?

>> I’m not sure about running out of time. We’re always running out of time. If there is something that should be done and we’re not doing it yet. So, yes, we are running out of time implementing good net neutrality. It should be done yesterday and not today. At least we are moving ahead, I think. And a lot still can be done to stimulate that we actually have markets working for us and not against us. As you say, if you leave it up to market to build physical infrastructure, if you leave it up to market to build roads, you don’t get benefits. Rich have to pay more, poor don’t have access, or people who live far don’t have access. If you invest as a government in infrastructure for all, you open this up and then you create competition on the level of Internet access services, on the level of specialized services. Once you have that fiber cable in the ground, you have over a thousand times more capacity to play with. You can allow lot of different operators to offer services on the market. You can also create specialized services that actually have characteristics that make them not very suitable for the Internet, but for some intranet. For example, local health care services or these kind of things, they can all be offered on this abundance of bandwidth that we would have if we just dug some hole and put some cables in the ground.

>> SABINE VERHEYEN: Especially to your question, there are some forwards or were some in the past when you discussed the development of Internet access in the rural areas to think about bringing telco services, and not just telco but also Internet services under the universal services directive. To say it’s a universal service it has to be delivered to everyone, like gas, water, telephone and other things. And so the companies will have to make a mixed price for the service they have to deliver. We said as long as the market is working, as long as they do it without having this obligation, we keep it out. So it was not put into this directive because we give the chance to the companies to do it, let’s say on a free market and not direct, under the directive for universal services.

There is also the idea to make an unbundling, like we have in the gas and the electricity sector. There you have the network that’s owned by many, many companies, by the big ones, by small ones, by cities, by others. If you want to use the network infrastructure, you have to pay a fee. If you are an access service provider or gas or water or other things, with water there are differences, with gas and electricity we have this. There are many models to think about, but that’s necessary when all the other free markets effects don’t really work. We hope that we will give an input that we – that also the company themselves are doing their work. I think it’s also a question of business, of future.

>> FREDERIC DONCK: From the – Tech Italia.

>> The thing that I get from this debate that we are framing network neutrality as a solution in search of the problem. We today in Europe, we don’t have the problem because this is, in Europe, the problem markets, one of the most competitive in the world, the Americans should be rewarded if that’s what happened. Because in Europe I can switch, I can switch service provider for Internet. We have, at least in my area, I have six provider of broadband. If somebody in theory is screaming at me, I can change. I can change provider.

So this is – we have to be careful. This idea that, this idea that because in theory, in the future something may happen, you know, bring me to make a very strong legislation.

First of all, this is extremely – from a law making standpoint, it’s really worry because we are not talking about selling tomatoes or textile and so on. This we are in the digital economy. The digital economy, besides the more slow, is characterized strongly by the law or unintended consequences. In other words, this matter, because we are talking about technology that change so much cannot be so strongly regulated in very normative way, because otherwise we screwed up everything.

What I was saying this morning, when we look at Internet neutrality, we should look at internal, not with the eye of the past, but with the future. Because we have totally completed it today, we have a completed sector of services that to some extent we have to find a way but need, for instance, different treatment.

The packet that we send you is fueling the car, the message – you are running out of oil should we treat differently from the packet that tells you, listen, my air bag went off because I had an accident, it’s calling an ambulance. This is basic today.

So we should work keeping account – there is already – I don’t understand you said integration. There is already antitrust law that if needed they can strongly operate. I also in addition question then maybe I close?

Yeah. No, on the other issue. This idea of considering fiber as utilities can be, in theory, an interesting idea to look at. But in – it’s completely rule out in Europe because no state would be able to put the man in necessary to do that. Because there is already – we know that there is a problem of shortage of man. So the manner should go where the market does not go. Where there’s competition there is enough man to put in a competitive way. This is not approach, it’s the old approach over the monopoly. You want again – industry, this is interesting idea if you want.

>> FREDERIC DONCK: Thank you for your comments. I think there are some immediate reactions.

>> SABINE VERHEYEN: I just want to congratulate you, living in an area where you have free providers to change and to choose. I would like to invite you to my constituency, and we are not the worst one, I’m living nearby. Often directly by the Dutch and Belgian border, not far away if you go to the – that’s the rural part, there are still local communities who are not delivered with Internet service – Internet access service. And they would be happy to have the choice between one and nothing, and not just having the choice between nothing and nothing. I think as long as this is, we don’t talk about a competitive sector. We have competition in Europe, that’s right. In the U.S. we have big ones, but I think there is much to do, especially for the rural areas. I think there is still a lack of being connected for many, many people.

>> I just want to bring in the media perspective again. I think the Swedish colleague said that, to put it in my words, the car hasn’t crashed. There’s no proof that the car has crashed. Others will argue, well, there is proof that the car has crashed. Coming from a media perspective, it’s about to make sure if the car is called media, that it is not going to crash. That’s where preventive regulation comes in. So that’s a different aspect take to it. But it should be, because as media are affected. You should be very careful about legislation and the consequences. So even just to say, well, we don’t have any evidence, don’t – in the case of media, don’t wait for the evidence, because it’s very sure to build media structures again, once they have problems.

Preventive is not a bad thing, especially if it comes to cultural goods that are extremely important for democracies. Again, economic perspective and there’s the cultural or societal perspective that should be recognized, too.

>> FREDERIC DONCK: Just two, very quick comments and then we will have a new feature of this EuroDIG, that is the voting of three ballot points to sum up what we have discussed during the workshop. And these ballot points will be included in the document on the messages from Berlin that will be delivered at the United Nations IGF. So last comments and then we will hear the ballot points and we will vote ballot points.

>> VOLKMAR EICH: Okay. My name is Volkmar Eich, I’m here from LOAD in Germany. I’m more and more wondering to what extent the discussion we are forced into about net neutrality and quality of service is the wrong suggestion. Suppose Internet delivering bits from one place to another is a commodity service, and we need to establish and enforce that commodity services rules apply to this business. So, this is not so easy. It means amount of usage is metered. But, interestingly for the providers, as more data is transported, the more they can earn. It’s a move away from the current flat rate models we are kind of looking at from all perspectives. It might be different and challenging, but I suppose as long as and as fast as we move into this commodity services business and view on the IP and Internet delivery as a commodity, as soon as we are getting away from net neutrality and quality of service discussions, as everybody is more or less interested in providing high speed access where he can sell it. So probably this a way out of this hole we moved and ducked ourselves into regarding net neutrality and quality of service. Thanks.

>> FREDERIC DONCK: Last comment. You wanted to make a comment? Yeah. I think you can talk.

Sorry. I think we cannot hear it.

>> ZORAIDA FRIAS: Thank you. My name is Zoraida Frias, I’m from the Spanish IGF. I feel we are getting stuck on the connectivity part again of the value chain. So I wanted to turn back to the platform neutrality and, well, I’ll be quite direct, we have identified a problem very well. We have identified the gate keepers. But my question is, does Europe have any idea on how to address the problem?

>> FREDERIC DONCK: It’s an open question. I think we will organize the next EuroDIG workshop on this topic.

>> ZORAIDA FRIAS: Thank you.

>> FREDERIC DONCK: So, now, as I was mentioning, we have three ballot points. There are three, am I right? So the ballot points will be announced by Sorina, our remote moderator. And is being operated by our recorder who could not be here, so he is remotely elaborating ballot points. So then I’ll ask you to express your consensus. We have to crystalize rough consensus around these ballot points.

So as we have crystalized rough consensus, this is something typically done by the IETF, the body that organizes, elaborates the standards, I would like to ask you to use the same method that the IETF workshop used to crystalize rough consensus. That is humming. So for those not familiar with humming, it means reproducing the sound hmm.

So when Sorina will read each ballot point, you will be – if you agree, I will ask you, do you agree? And you will say “hmm”. If you understood, say “hmm”. Excellent. Wonderful.

We will be in the EuroDIG history for being the first EuroDIG workshop doing this. So excellent.

Aren’t we excited?

Sorina, please, read the first ballot point.

>> SORINA: Our report is –

>> FREDERIC DONCK: Sure. One second.

I wanted to be even more precise in asking if they agree they hum. And they don’t – yeah, but if you agree with what Sorina will say, you will hum. And to be extremely super sure that we have an – I will ask you after you humming, do you disagree? And if you hum again, we will not have any rough consensus.

So, please, the first ballot point.

>> SORINA: Thank you. The first one. Internet traffic management. If needed for quality of service reasons should be managed in an appropriate, transparent, and non-discriminatory way?

>> FREDERIC DONCK: Do you agree with this?

>> AUDIENCE: Hmm.

>> FREDERIC DONCK: Do you disagree with this?

I think we have rough consensus.

Second ballot point.

>> SORINA: The net neutrality principle is instrumental to the full enjoyment of Internet users fundamental rights?

>> FREDERIC DONCK: Do you agree with this statement?

>> AUDIENCE: Hmm.

>> FREDERIC DONCK: Do you disagree with this statement?

Excellent. Rough consensus again.

Final ballot point.

>> SORINA: Actually we have four ballot points. This is the third one. To protect the net neutrality principle, national and European policies are required in addition to the competition driven market.

>> FREDERIC DONCK: Can you reread this ballot point?

>> SORINA: Yes.

To protect the net neutrality principle, national and European policies are required in addition to the competition driven market.

>> FREDERIC DONCK: Do you agree with this ballot point?

>> AUDIENCE: Hmm.

>> FREDERIC DONCK: Do you disagree with this ballot point?

>> AUDIENCE: Hmm.

>> FREDERIC DONCK: I think we have rough consensus.

>> (Inaudible.)

>> FREDERIC DONCK: That would be – I would prefer it for the format of next EuroDIG.

Thanks.

Then we have the final ballot point.

>> SORINA: The last one. Specialized services should not cause a detriment to the quality of the regular open Internet service, but should contribute with further development.

>> FREDERIC DONCK: So do you agree with this statement?

>> AUDIENCE: Hmm.

>> FREDERIC DONCK: Do you disagree with this statement.

We have 99 percent.

>> (Inaudible).

>> FREDERIC DONCK: Sorry?

>> (Inaudible).

>> FREDERIC DONCK: Yes.

Sorry?

Yes.

Last one or every ballot point?

Last one.

>> SORINA: Specialized services should not cause a detriment to the quality of the regular open Internet service, but should contribute with further development.

>> FREDERIC DONCK: If you want, we can do it again.

Yes.

>> (Inaudible).

>> FREDERIC DONCK: Okay. I think we do not have rough consensus on which she asked maybe a valid point. So let’s – so let’s rephrase the last point and skip the last part.

>> SORINA: Specialized services should not cause a detriment to the quality of the regular open Internet.

>> FREDERIC DONCK: Do you agree with this ballot point?

>> AUDIENCE: Hmm.

>> FREDERIC DONCK: Do you disagree with this ballot point? I think we have rough consensus.

Excellent. Thank you. We are in the history of EuroDIG for being the first workshop humming.

Excellent. Thank you. Thank you.

[Applause]

>> LUCA BELLI: Thanks to our panel. Thank you very much.

>> FREDERIC DONCK: Thanks a lot to this marvelous panel. Thank you.

Pictures from working group

Link

Session twitter hashtag

Hashtag: #eurodig_ws3