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.
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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.
French regulator Arcep builds on know-how of colleagues in 3.4-3.8 GHz auction
French regulator Arcep brought together representatives of national regulatory authorities (NRA) from 15 countries of the EU for a mutual exchange of know-how from organising 5G auctions. The draft terms of the auction in the band 3.4-3.8 GHz in Metropolitan France was subject to public consultation from mid-July to 4 September.
Hong Kong awards 5G licences in 3.5 GHz band
The regulator of Hong Kong OFCA has successfully auctioned off a total of 200 MHz of spectrum in the 3.5 GHz to four mobile network operators for a total of HKD 1.006 billion.
Israel launches 5G auction
The Israel Ministry of Communications has published the tender for award of frequencies for 5G mobile networks. The frequencies will be awarded in an auction, using the CCA format (Combinatorial Clock Auction) with the second highest bid price rule (Vickrey auction). The total spectrum available in the auction includes 2×30 MHz FDD in the 700 MHz band, 2×60 MHz FDD in the 2,600 MHz band and 300 MHz TDD in the 3,500-3,800 MHz. For the first time, a tender for award of frequencies will be accompanied by an incentive system that includes grants and a reduction in spectrum fees in the total amount of NIS 500 million.
Martes-Specure to provide 5G auction platform in Poland
Polish regulator UKE has selected Specure EAS as the spectrum auction platform to support the award of frequencies in the band 3.6 GHz. With the selection of the electronic auction system supplier the Polish regulator is successfully proceeding towards meeting its objective to distribute the band by June 2020.
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.
French regulator consults on award of frequencies in 3.4-3.8 GHz band
On 15th July 2019, interestingly a day after the Bastille Day, French regulator Arcep launched a public consultation on a draft decision that sets out the procedure and conditions for awarding licences to use frequencies in the 3.4 – 3.8 GHz band, in Metropolitan France. The contributions to this public consultation, which will run until 4th September, will enable Arcep to finalise this procedure and the terms of allocation. Arcep will then submit its final text to the Government in the weeks that follow.
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.