Net Neutrality in France - "we need some regulation"

   

We were waiting for the ARCEP conference on Net Neutrality in France (see "Net Neutrality Train Next Stop: France (?)" - here).
 
In the meantime we saw how things have changed quickly in the US - reducing the likelihood that Net Neutrality will become a regulation there.

 

The conference took place as planned (agenda - here), and was concluded by Jean-Ludovic Silicani, président de l’ARCEP (French regulator), setting "5 main conclusions" (document, in French - here) - including:

• The Internet business (ISP, Content providers) should be transparent
   
• A certain degree of traffic management should be allowed, when congestion occurs and it is done in a transparent and non-discriminating way. It is expected that there will be differences between fixed and mobile carriers
   
• A certain level of regulation is needed - the internet eco-system cannot be exclusively self-regulated

This sounds very similar to the FCC proposed guidelines for Net Neutrality. During the day, it was mentioned that French MNOs are/were blocking VoIP (Skype), while they are investing Billions of Euros in network infrastructure - the classical Net Neutrality conflict. See more here.

 

Mr. Silicani concluded by hoping that France could lead the "Global Net Neutrality" discussion.

 

Video interviews with conference participants available here.