Obama Net Neutrality Approach 'May Influence' Europe's Debate
President Barack Obama's net neutrality statement Monday prompted reaction from some European stakeholders closely following the parallel debate in Europe. Obama's call for rules prohibiting blocking, throttling and paid prioritization, and for increased transparency among ISPs, their customers and the rest of the Internet, led to industry calls for a light-touch approach, while one consumer group demanded tougher net neutrality safeguards. The Council of the European Union working party on telecom and information society is scheduled to discuss net neutrality at its Nov. 14 meeting, its provisional agenda said. Telecom ministers are expected to debate the topic Nov. 27 as part of their wider discussion on the European Commission-proposed telecom single market (or connected continent) package, said an EU diplomatic official.
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The Trans-Atlantic Business Council said it had, for the first time, agreed on a common vision of net neutrality. The statement, released the same day as Obama's, noted the "renewed interest in the Open Internet debate on both sides of the Atlantic." Europe has a balanced framework to support and protect open access, the TABC said. It criticized some of the EC and European Parliament language in the connected continent measure.
TABC urged policymakers to set five "guiding principles" for net neutrality. Transparency is "critical" to ensure that customers are informed about the choices available to them and that online service providers are aware of ISPs' practices, it said. There must be customer choice in content accessed and services and programs used, as long as it doesn't harm network integrity and security, it said. Neither ISPs nor any other player in the digital value chain should be able to engage in anticompetitive discrimination in the transmission of any particular Internet services, and any net neutrality framework must allow coexistence with specialized services that don't constitute best-effort Internet service.
Regulation must not bar measures aimed at protecting children, preventing access to illegal content or preserving network security, while ensuring freedom of expression and access to information, TABC said. Any regulation must allow experimentation, ensure a robust best-effort Internet and keep a competitive online playing field, it said.
The issue is very important to European network operators, especially since the EU hasn't decided which direction to take, said a spokesman for the European Telecommunications Network Operators' Association. As the U.S. and Europe consider their respective approaches, "we urge policy makers on both sides of the Atlantic to adopt a future-proof path to ensure that the Internet can continue to grow, consumers and all players in the eco-system can continue to benefit, and that those that invest in the underlying infrastructure can continue to do so at the necessary levels to sustain the intense growth of 'Digital' in both economies," it said in a news release. Most ETNO companies belong to the TABC, said the spokesman.
U.S. and EU policymakers should take a light-touch approach to the open Internet, ETNO said. Traffic management benefits consumers, and network operators should have the commercial freedom to develop new business models and offer customized services to support investment and drive innovation and competition, it said.
"This week's signals from the White House combined with countries such as The Netherlands legislating nationally, are emboldening," emailed a European Consumers' Organisation (BEUC) spokesman. Although the EC and European Parliament "have been clearly trumpeting the need" for net neutrality safeguards, the overall process is "currently stumped in the Council," he said. Some national governments are "pandering to scaremongering by the dominant telecoms operators who say net neutrality will equate to a drain on market investment." That self-serving prognosis isn't based on evidence, he said.
It's critical that the net neutrality provisions survive the final edit of the connected continent negotiations, said the BEUC spokesman. Obama's statement could help, he said. The new EC and European Parliament now have an invaluable opportunity to insulate the Internet from market manipulation, he said. If they don't, the Internet will likely be pyramidized in favor of the few companies with the deepest pockets keen to push their own content and services to the detriment of rivals, he said.
The EC proposal for net neutrality reform, introduced in September 2013, was welcomed by most telcos and incumbent operators, said Innocenzo Genna, a consultant who represents smaller players. That draft is still pending but amendments approved by the European Parliament and views informally expressed by the Council "have radically changed the initial scenario," he wrote Wednesday on his blog. The idea of classifying the Internet as a public utility "may be disruptive in US but not in the EU," Genna wrote. Under EU e-communications law, all networks, whether fixed or mobile, that supply voice and data may be regulated if national authorities discover competition failures, he said. Similarly, paid prioritization should have a limited impact in the EU, because users can switch to another provider, something that's still a concern for dominant ISPs in Europe, he said.
The EC welcomed Obama's statement. "It shows that both the European Union and the United States are on the same page: We are committed to safeguarding the open Internet," an EC spokeswoman told us. Net neutrality is a key pillar of the digital single market, a top priority for the new EC, she said. Obama said ISPs shouldn't be gatekeepers that decide which content or services consumers can access, and the proposals from the EC and European Parliament "go in the same direction," notably by guaranteeing that consumers aren't unfairly blocked or slowed down, she said.