Stanford CIS

Comments submitted to the BEREC Consultation on the Draft BEREC Report on the IP Interconnection Ecosystem

By Barbara van Schewick on

Comments submitted to the BEREC Consultation on the Draft BEREC Report on the IP Interconnection Ecosystem.

I welcome the opportunity to submit comments to the BEREC Consultation on its Draft Report on the IP Interconnection Ecosystem.

I submit my comments as a professor of law and, by courtesy, electrical engineering at Stanford University whose research focuses on Internet architecture, innovation, and regulation. I do not speak for Stanford University.

I have a Ph.D. in computer science and a law degree and have worked on net neutrality for the past 24 years. My book Internet Architecture and Innovation, which was published by MIT Press in 2010, is considered the seminal work on the science, economics, and politics of network neutrality. My papers on network neutrality have influenced discussions on network neutrality all over the world.

I have testified on matters of Internet architecture, innovation, and regulation before the California Legislature, the US Federal Communications Commission, the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission, and BEREC, including on proposals to force applications to pay ISPs for terminating traffic to the ISPs customers.

The FCCs 2010, 2015, and 2024 Open Internet Orders relied heavily on my work. My work also informed the European Union's 2015 and 2020 guidelines implementing the European Union's net neutrality law, the E.U.s 2022 update that banned harmful zero-rating, and the 2016 and 2017 Orders on zero-rating by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India and the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission, respectively.

I have not been retained or paid by anyone to participate in this proceeding.