Skype: “Enough rhetoric and red tape: the EU should confirm its position by action”
This post was published on the Skype corporate blog of Jean-Jacques Saelm, who is involved in EU Government Relations Relations. He continues a series of posts about network neutrality (see here or translation here , as well as the continuation of the epic here )
After the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the Government of Canada, Google, and Verizon have expressed their support for open Internet, the European Union must unequivocally show its intentions with actions.
At the beginning of last week, the heads of Skype, Sony Electronics, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter and other Internet, telecom and media companies published an open letter to the FCC in support of the introduction of rules protecting the open Internet, i.e. the right of users to access and use what they need online, which we welcomed earlier .
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Also in a joint blog post on Wednesday evening, US Verizon Wireless communications provider CEO Lowell McAdam and Google CEO Eric Schmidt (Eric Schmidt) said they consider it important that the Internet remains an open platform without restrictions .
On Wednesday, Canadian authorities published the framework conditions that will be used to assess whether Internet providers discriminate against this or that type of traffic or content. Further on Thursday, the FCC voted (3 against 2) for the development of formal rules based on 6 principles of the Internet, designed to protect the open Internet.
And what about in Europe? Well, Skype is still arbitrarily blocked by a number of mobile operators in several EU countries. The same applies to a variety of VoIP and P2P applications. At the same time, news reaches us that the European Commission has circulated a draft declaration of network neutrality, which mentions the “great importance” that the Commission attaches to “protecting the neutral and open Internet, taking into account the will of the co-lawmakers to build a network neutrality to the rank of the regulatory principle ”. The Commission also promises to conduct a review of the problem in order to submit recommendations to the European Parliament by the end of 2010, and in the meantime to begin monitoring the market in order to use the powers it has to expose abuses. This gesture of goodwill from the EU, we can only welcome.
However, so far we have not seen any actions by the European authorities that would help eliminate these blatant violations of the right of Internet users to decide for themselves what they want to do on the network. The excuse that “network neutrality” is an American problem no longer works . It is very convenient, but simply not true: millions of users and thousands of developers of VoIP, P2P and streaming video services can confirm this, because their traffic is blocked or discriminated by operators throughout Europe, just like it happens with Skype. And the fact that politicians do not know about it is explained only by the fact that all these people do not have the opportunity to hire an army of lobbyists like big telecom operators.
Thousands of innovative developers, whose ability to create and offer their products, applications, services and content to users depends on the availability of an open Internet, cannot wait for years until the political debate ends, or until “the market cleans up itself” - they all go bankrupt, without waiting for a decision. Users also can not wait until they have the opportunity to freely use what they already pay for - full access to the Internet, it does not matter - home or mobile.
People started complaining about high roaming tariffs of mobile operators in the late 1990s - it took 10 years and the market did not adjust itself until the so-called new roaming rules reduced prices. Now that the threat to the open Internet is explicit, we cannot wait: the European Commission must have the courage to use its powers (such as new roaming rules or the right to protect the functioning of the intra-European market) in order to curb cases of abuse at the first opportunity. If she needs more authority, the Commission should develop legislative proposals to get them, urgently.
And remember: you can sign a petition in support of the open Internet in Europe , and also contact your deputy or regulators to protect your Internet.
After the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the Government of Canada, Google, and Verizon have expressed their support for open Internet, the European Union must unequivocally show its intentions with actions.
At the beginning of last week, the heads of Skype, Sony Electronics, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter and other Internet, telecom and media companies published an open letter to the FCC in support of the introduction of rules protecting the open Internet, i.e. the right of users to access and use what they need online, which we welcomed earlier .
')
Also in a joint blog post on Wednesday evening, US Verizon Wireless communications provider CEO Lowell McAdam and Google CEO Eric Schmidt (Eric Schmidt) said they consider it important that the Internet remains an open platform without restrictions .
On Wednesday, Canadian authorities published the framework conditions that will be used to assess whether Internet providers discriminate against this or that type of traffic or content. Further on Thursday, the FCC voted (3 against 2) for the development of formal rules based on 6 principles of the Internet, designed to protect the open Internet.
And what about in Europe? Well, Skype is still arbitrarily blocked by a number of mobile operators in several EU countries. The same applies to a variety of VoIP and P2P applications. At the same time, news reaches us that the European Commission has circulated a draft declaration of network neutrality, which mentions the “great importance” that the Commission attaches to “protecting the neutral and open Internet, taking into account the will of the co-lawmakers to build a network neutrality to the rank of the regulatory principle ”. The Commission also promises to conduct a review of the problem in order to submit recommendations to the European Parliament by the end of 2010, and in the meantime to begin monitoring the market in order to use the powers it has to expose abuses. This gesture of goodwill from the EU, we can only welcome.
However, so far we have not seen any actions by the European authorities that would help eliminate these blatant violations of the right of Internet users to decide for themselves what they want to do on the network. The excuse that “network neutrality” is an American problem no longer works . It is very convenient, but simply not true: millions of users and thousands of developers of VoIP, P2P and streaming video services can confirm this, because their traffic is blocked or discriminated by operators throughout Europe, just like it happens with Skype. And the fact that politicians do not know about it is explained only by the fact that all these people do not have the opportunity to hire an army of lobbyists like big telecom operators.
Thousands of innovative developers, whose ability to create and offer their products, applications, services and content to users depends on the availability of an open Internet, cannot wait for years until the political debate ends, or until “the market cleans up itself” - they all go bankrupt, without waiting for a decision. Users also can not wait until they have the opportunity to freely use what they already pay for - full access to the Internet, it does not matter - home or mobile.
People started complaining about high roaming tariffs of mobile operators in the late 1990s - it took 10 years and the market did not adjust itself until the so-called new roaming rules reduced prices. Now that the threat to the open Internet is explicit, we cannot wait: the European Commission must have the courage to use its powers (such as new roaming rules or the right to protect the functioning of the intra-European market) in order to curb cases of abuse at the first opportunity. If she needs more authority, the Commission should develop legislative proposals to get them, urgently.
And remember: you can sign a petition in support of the open Internet in Europe , and also contact your deputy or regulators to protect your Internet.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/73570/
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