Re: AT&T lobbies European Parliament to destroy net neutrality

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 22:20:53 +0000

Are you sure they have business in Europe? I thought they are just a player on the North American market?

Re: AT&T lobbies European Parliament to destroy net neutrality

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 09:35:58 +0000

AT&T lobbies European Parliament to destroy net neutrality

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 08:33:52 +0000

AT&T is speading some amendments to the Telecom Package in the European Parliament in order to destroy net neutrality, in order to be able to sell different kind of services at different prices (note the for different service offerings in their proposed article 22 Quality of Service). Here is what is circulating in the European Parliament (doc and pdf):

Proposal amending Directive 2002/22/EC on universal service and users’ rights relating to electronic communications networks

New Recital 14b

Council political agreement	Proposal for amendments/position by industry coalition
	(14b) Management of networks in order to, for example, address congestion and capacity constraints and to enable new services should not per se be considered an example of a restriction requiring intervention under Directive 2002/22/EC, and due account should be taken of the right of network and service operators to diversify their offerings in a competitive market, including through the imposition of reasonable usage restrictions, price differentiation and other legitimate competitive practices. Temporary non-compliance with any minimum quality of service requirements due to unforeseeable circumstances beyond the reasonable control of the service and/or network provider (force majeure) should not be subject to sanctions.
Justification
To provide more legal certainty, appropriate guidance on intervention under the new legal basis for NRAs regarding QoS in Art. 22 (3) needs to be put in place (s. below on Art. 22 (3)). A Recital is therefore needed that gives legal certainty to operators that specific legitimate practices will not be called into question by NRA intervention, as this would hamper innovation in the network with a negative impact on network integrity and new business models to emerge. The text proposed here had been adopted by the responsible Parliament committee IMCO in first reading.

Article 16

Council political agreement	Proposal for amendments/position by industry coalition
(16) A competitive market should ensure that users are able to have the quality of service they require, but in particular cases it may be necessary to ensure that public communications networks attain minimum quality levels so as to prevent degradation of service, the blocking of access and the slowing of traffic over the networks. […]	(16) A competitive market should also ensure that users are able to have the quality of service they require have contracted to purchase, but in particular cases it may be necessary to ensure that public communications networks attain minimum quality levels so as to address to prevent unjustified degradation of service, usage restrictions and/or limitations and the slowing of traffic.
Justification
To be aligned with the new article 22.3

Article 22 Quality of service

Council political agreement	Proposal for amendments/position by industry coalition
3. In order to prevent degradation of service and hindering or slowing of traffic over networks, Member States shall ensure that national regulatory authorities are able to set minimum quality of service requirements on an undertaking or undertakings providing public communications networks. […]	3. In order to address prevent unjustified degradation of service and hindering or slowing of traffic over networks, Member States shall ensure that national regulatory authorities are able to issue guidelines setting set minimum quality of service requirements for different service offerings on an undertaking or undertakings providing public communications networks. […]
Justification
The current EU legal framework and the new rules on transparency proposed in this Directive in principle already provide for sufficient safeguards to ensure the ability of end-users to access content and applications of their choice. In particular, a competitive market for retail broadband access - where necessary ensured by wholesale ex-ante access obligations under Directive 2002/19/EC - and transparency requirements regarding restrictions of quality of service under this Directive will penalise any undue restrictions of users’ ability to access the content of their choice. Abusive behaviour such as anti-competitive discrimination in upstream wholesale markets will moreover be addressed under competition rules by the competent authorities. If NRAs are nevertheless given the power to intervene in QoS, it should be clarified that this can be done only to address observed harmful practices that are not justified by legitimate interests of network management. A Recital to the Citizens Rights Directive should give legal certainty to operators that specific legitimate practices will not be called into question by NRAs. To the contrary, any text that would per se restrict welfare enhancing differentiation of quality of service would negatively affect network innovation and quality differentiation needed to maintain and improve quality of service for end-users. It also risks impeding new business models which can help to bring about much-needed investments in increased speed in the access network. Finally, if measures on minimum QoS requirements are considered necessary, guidelines would be the appropriate tool to deal with the emerging NGN environment. The introduction of an option to take any “other measures” as proposed by the EP would create high legal uncertainty.

Let's have a look who is the author of the Microsoft Word document:

zoobab@warsaw /home/zoobab [16]$ strings Desktop/Industry\ Coalition\ proposed\ amendments\ to\ the\ USD\ directive.doc | tail -n 21
Proposal amending Directive 2002/22/EC on universal service and users
rights relating to electronic communications networks
User
Normal.dot
User
Microsoft Office Word
AT&T
Proposal amending Directive 2002/22/EC on universal service and users
rights relating to electronic communications networks
Title
Microsoft Office Word Document
MSWordDoc
Word.Document.8
ons networks
Title
Microsoft Office Word Document
MSWordDoc
Word.Document.8
AT&T
Proposal amending Directive 2002/22/EC on universal service and users
rights relating to electronic communicati
zoobab@warsaw /home/zoobab [17]$

Laws are made by lobbyists, and this is not unstoppable. What you need is counter lobbying by consumers and civil society, but Brussels provide a too high barrier of entry for that to happen. At the end, 500 million of EU citizens will pay for the damages of bad EU directives written by lobbyists of american corporations.