Stanford CIS

July is a hot month for zero rating

on

"The Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) concluded a consultation on its guidelines for net neutrality on 18 July.  As I describe in my comments, the EU law for open internet access never mentions the terms net neutrality, zero rating, or specialised services, but BEREC has developed 43 pages of de facto rules based upon these introduced terms.  Moreover amendments related to these items were unanimously rejected by the European Parliament last year however, provisions that would bring about the desired effect of the rejected amendments  suspiciously found their way into the BEREC guidelines. A number of observers (Strand Consult, Martin Geddes, Andrew Orlowski, etc) have noticed the link between US-funded advocacy efforts of Barbara van Schewick, SavetheInternet, eDRI, and Access to promote draconian provisions both the Parliament and to BEREC."