In mid-July, the German Supreme Administrative Court decided that the zero-rated offering of Deutsche Telekom – Stream-On – violates net neutrality principles. The operator has to either alter the offer or withdraw it from the market.
Nettest
Austrian Post faces € 18m penalty for violation of personal data protection
Austrian Post faces a scandal with storage of personal data of millions of customers without their consent, reported Die Presse. The data protection authority found the national post operator guilty of a violation of the GDPR rules implemented in May 2018 and imposed a penalty of € 18m on the Post. The Post will appeal against the decision.
Vodafone Germany launches 5G network with 5G mobile router
Vodafone Germany has launched 5G network in the first 20 cities and municipalities, using 60 antennae on 25 base stations. In August, the operator plans to have 5G signal available on 50 base stations. Simultaneously with the launch of 5G network Vodafone markets the country’s first 5G mobile router GigaCube 5G and offers a new GigaCube 5G tariff series, including more data without a price increase.
French regulator Arcep publishes report on quality of mobile services
French regulator Arcep has published the 20th edition of the report on the quality of mobile services. The report shows a significant improvement in the service quality of all mobile operators; confirms the leadership of Orange; Bouygues becoming the second leading operator in terms of quality; SFR progressing and Free improving sharply but remaining significantly behind.
Alaska Policy Forum representative: Net neutrality may be catastrophic for Alaska
The US Congress is considering reinstating net neutrality regulations from 2015. ‘This bureaucratic red tape will end the internet as we know it and turn it into a government-run public utility,’ Bethany Marcum expressed her view for alaskalandmine.com. She worked in telecom for a decade, and is now Executive Director of Alaska Policy Forum. By redefining net neutrality, the progress Alaska has made when it comes to broadband technology will come to an abrupt stop, she writes.
BEREC consults on Quality of Service guidelines
During its 40th plenary meeting (3rd-4th October 2019, Crete) the Board of Regulators approved the draft BEREC Guidelines detailing Quality of Service Parameters for public consultation.
In accordance with Article 104 of the European Electronic Communications Code (EECC) NRAs shall take utmost account of these Guidelines when specifying quality of service parameters to be measured, the applicable measurement methods and the content, form and manner of the information to be published. By 21st June 2020 BEREC shall adopt the above mentioned Guidelines. The public consultation is open to 5th December.
German Supreme Administrative Court bans DT’s Stream-On service
In mid-July, the German Supreme Administrative Court decided that the zero-rated offering of Deutsche Telekom – Stream-On – violates net neutrality principles. The operator has to either alter the offer or withdraw it from the market.
New SIGCOMM Study on content-based differentiation is out
During ACM SIGCOMM 2019 in Beijing on 19-24 August 2019, an interesting analysis on net neutrality, with focus on US-based ISPs was presented. ACM SIGCOMM is the flagship annual conference of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group on Data Communication (SIGCOMM) on the applications, technologies, architectures and protocols for computer communication. The document sums up an extensive one-year study of content based traffic differentiation policies deployed in operational networks, using result from 1,045,413 crowdsourced measurements conducted by 126,249 users across 2,735 ISPs in 183 countries/regions.
French regulator ARCEP presents experimental 5G projects
More than a dozen projects have responded to the call of the French government and the regulatory authority ARCEP from January to create experimental 5G platforms. The platforms in the 26 GHz frequency band (so-called “millimetre” frequency band) shall be open to third parties and promote and identify new uses of 5G. The selected projects relate to areas such as logistics, smart city, mobility and coverage of sporting events.
