Brussels, BELGIUM – Italy’s telecoms regulator, AGCOM, is setting a dangerous precedent that shows how the European Commission’s forthcoming Digital Networks Act (DNA) could introduce network fees across the EU through the back door, the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA Europe) warns today.
The Italian decision also contradicts the recent EU-US joint trade statement, which explicitly ruled out network fees, and poses a clear danger to Europe’s open internet.
A study by Plum Consulting warns that mandating dispute resolution in the IP interconnection market – a far-reaching consequence of AGCOM’s decision and thinly veiled feature of the upcoming DNA – is exactly what the CEOs of Europe’s biggest telecom operators are lobbying for.
By reclassifying content delivery networks (CDNs) as ‘electronic communications networks,’ AGCOM subjects them to an existing dispute resolution mechanism under Italian law. This hands large telecom operators a powerful tool to demand payments from CDNs and content providers, pressuring them into paid agreements.
The Plum study demonstrates how this model will inevitably lead to network fees on an EU-wide scale. By triggering repeated disputes with CDNs and content and application providers (CAPs), big telcos would establish legal precedents for paid peering agreements.
Far from addressing a perceived market failure, mandatory dispute resolution would hard-wire network fees into EU law through the DNA. It would distort a market that is already highly functional, with fewer than a dozen disputes in the past decade. And so, the DNA would dismantle the current internet model, in which close to 100% of all peering is free.
The following can be attributed to CCIA Europe’s Policy Manager, Maria Teresa Stecher:
“What is happening in Italy is the first act of a play that could soon spread across the entire EU. For months, we’ve heard from the European Commission that network fees are off the table. Yet mandatory IP dispute resolution keeps resurfacing under different names – and Italy shows us exactly what that means in practice.”
“The Commission has a clear choice: follow Italy down a path that would break the internet, or uphold its commitment to an open digital economy. We urge EU policymakers to learn from Italy’s misstep and ensure that the Digital Networks Act does not include any mechanism that could be used to impose network fees, directly or through the back door.”
Notes for editors
Study on the negative impacts of mandated dispute resolution in IP Interconnection, Plum Consulting, available here: https://plumconsulting.co.uk/study-on-the-negative-impacts-of-mandated-dispute-resolution-in-ip-interconnection/
