Le Parlement Européen et le Conseil ont récemment adopté un règlement visant à définir et faire appliquer la neutralité du net au sein de l’Union Européenne. Élément vital au bon fonctionnement d’Internet et à son développement, la neutralité du net est également une condition à une concurrence numérique juste et non faussée.
Dans le cadre de la consultation organisée par le régulateur européen des télécoms (ORECE) sur l’application de ce règlement, j’ai pu défendre, en tant que vice-président de la Commission des Affaires européennes au Sénat, ma vision d’une neutralité du net non biaisée et respectueuse des droits des internautes européens (ci-dessous la totalité de ma réponse).
Ainsi, j’ai soutenu l’ORECE dans son interdiction de mesures de gestion du trafic Internet intrusives et attentatoires à la vie privée des utilisateurs. J’ai également soutenu une extension du périmètre d’application du règlement, celui-ci étant trop restreint actuellement.
En outre, j’ai encouragé le régulateur à promouvoir des pratiques publicitaires qui n’induiront pas le consommateur en erreur. Surtout, j’ai rejoint de nombreuses ONG en demandant l’interdiction du zero-rating, pratique déloyale consistant à ne pas décompter d’un forfait de données l’utilisation d’un service en ligne particulier : l’autorisation de cette pratique conduirait en effet à donner à une entreprise un avantage concurrentiel injuste tout en contredisant l’esprit du règlement européen sur la neutralité du net.
J’attends avec sérénité le résultat de cette consultation. Le règlement européen va dans le bon sens et l’ORECE, mis à part les éléments que j’ai soulevés, traduit avec volonté ces règles de bon sens.
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Dear Sir or Madam:
The Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) has published for consultation draft Guidelines on the implementation of new net neutrality rules from Regulation (EU) 2015/2120 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 November 2015. As a Member of the French Parliament and Vice-Chair of the European Affairs Committee of the Senate especially in charge of digital topics, I would like to share some comments on recommendations released by your agency.
First of all, I must say I am satisfied with many key elements and interpretations held in the current BEREC’s draft Guidelines. To be more precise, I strongly back the following recommendations concerning:
- The right to choose terminal equipment, as defined in paragraph 23 and paragraph 25 of the Guidelines;
- A traffic management conception which strictly distinguishes network congestion from undersized capacity;
- The ban of extensive traffic management measures, such as deep packet inspection (DPI), as referred to in paragraphs 66 and 67. Moreover, this rule is in accordance with judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) “Scarlet Extended SA v SABAM” (24 November 2011, case C-70/10);
- The obligation of transparency in advertising campaigns.
These points should be noted and underlined in the final release of your Guidelines.
Nevertheless, some Guidelines appear to be rather questionable and even disputable:
- Firstly, the current definition of a “public communications network” is too restrictive. As in the case of wi-fi hotspots given in paragraph 12, these should not be totally out of scope of the Regulation. Excluding all network offered only to a “predetermined group of end-users” (§12) means in fact no effective protection for a huge number of end-users that rely on this type of network (for example: students in a hall of residence are not covered by the current BEREC’s public communications network definition because the provided internet connectivity is only for residents).
Additionally, nothing can excuse an enterprise providing a non neutral internet connectivity to its customers: the Advocate General’s opinion in current case C-484/14 concludes that such enterprises are not liable in case of law infringement and CJEU should rule in the same way.
The Framework Directive 2002/21/CE does not restrict the definition as much as the current draft Guidelines do. BEREC prescribes a definition that never refers to end-users. The Directive should be interpreted as referring to networks that allows access to the rest of the Internet. Therefore, I suggest clearly extending the definition of “public communications network” to networks that allow end-users to access to the rest of the Internet. Such a definition excludes corporate intranets from the Regulation but includes traffic to other public Autonomous Systems (AS). This definition is also convenient because it does not forbid companies from restricting access to non professionally-related websites or online services. - Secondly, draft Guidelines should be more explicit about Article 3(1) of the Regulation that forbids restrictions of internet traffic based on location or destination. In contrast, this paragraph should be interpreted as an implicit ban of geoblocking within the EU. “End-users shall have the right to access and distribute information and content […] irrespective of the end-user’s or provider’s location” means that content providers should not discriminate end-users according to their location. Indeed, this is the orientation that European institutions intend to promote (see COM(2016) 289 final for the Commission and Report 2014/2256(INI) by J. REDA for the European Parliament).
- Thirdly, zero-rating should not be allowed. Article 3(2) forbids limitations of end-users’ rights but BEREC strangely seems to conclude here that this paragraph allows a certain kind of zero-rating. For example, an end-user won’t be able to correctly use a very-limited data cap with a music streaming service not included in a zero-rating offer. Allowing zero-rating will have harmful consequences on the market: ISPs will be encouraged to reduce data’s quota concurrently with zero-rating offers. This could especially be the case in France where ISPs are also content providers: Orange, the major mobile operator in France, is also a shareholder of Deezer, a music streaming service. Additionally, BEREC’s current position will strongly disrupt some EU countries legislations like the Dutch and Slovenian ones which currently ban zero-rating. Therefore, I encourage BEREC to strictly forbid zero-rating and to require a convenient data cap from ISPs.
- Fourthly, Recital 11 of the draft Guidelines allows data compression techniques. This formulation is vague and may refer to different compression mechanisms. Applied to images’ compression, the current formulation allows ISPs to alter integrity of a JPEG image as soon as the content is preserved. This should not occur. As a consequence, BEREC should, in the 4th sentence of Recital 11, replace the latest word “content” by “integrity”.
- Fifthly, no detriment of specialised services on IAS should be allowed. Paragraph 118 of draft Guidelines allows a specialised service to deteriorate IAS as long as the user is informed and can still obtain a minimum speed. This exception will allow ISPs to still sell an “internet access service” but also to fully bypass regulation of specialised services: ISPs will be encouraged to add in contracts, in small characters, that the subscribed specialised service could limit usability of IAS. If end-users want to subscribe to a specialised service prior to access to IAS, they do not necessarily need and want an internet access service. Therefore, the term “internet access service” should not be ambiguous. Besides, the “minimum speed” is not definable and will lead to subjective decisions. This is why I suggest to remove paragraphs 118 and 119 and replace them with one expressing that specialised services cannot limit IAS (end-user’s own IAS and other end-users’ IAS) except in mobile networks where detriments should be limited in time and scope.
- Sixthly, Guidelines should focus on internet advertised speed. Article 4(1) letter (d) of the Regulation requires ISPs to publish the minimum, normally available and maximum speeds. The way Guidelines currently define these elements is pertinent, but ISPs will tend to advertise the maximum speed in big characters and the normally available speed only in small characters. Because it is known that this criteria has a prominent role in the end-users’s ISP choice, Guidelines must clearly ensure that ads will not focus on the maximum speed. As the Regulation wants to regulate advertising campaigns, I suggest that BEREC asks ISPs to display normally available speed by using the same font size as the maximum speed in ads.
- Seventhly, ISPs must offer an IPv6 connectivity and non-NATed IPv6 addresses. As IPv4 addresses are becoming scarce, end-users have to share the same IPv4 address with others using a NAT mechanism. IPv4 issue prevents end-users from self-hosting services and then fully respecting Article 3(1) of the Regulation. This is why Guidelines should prescribe ISPs to provide full IPv6 connectivity with static addresses. Otherwise, this would have a negative impact on European short-term competitiveness in this area.
I hope my recommendations will help you to improve these Guidelines on net neutrality. My team and I are of course available for any further information.
Sincerely,