ARCEP, the French regulator, published an update on its work on Net Neutrality for France. Following are several quotes from its press release on the new report:
"Through the Law of 22 March 2011, Parliament has asked ARCEP to provide an update on the status of net neutrality. ARCEP submitted today its report to Parliament and the Government on this issue.
In September 2010, ARCEP published 10 proposals [here] that aimed at defining a sustainable, neutral and high-quality equilibrium for the functioning of the Internet, combined with tools to ensure this equilibrium is maintained and to guarantee it if needed .. However, competition and transparency alone are not always enough Therefore ARCEP has engaged further efforts to ensure the ecosystem runs smoothly and stakeholders comply with the principles laid out in 2010.
In September 2010, ARCEP published 10 proposals [here] that aimed at defining a sustainable, neutral and high-quality equilibrium for the functioning of the Internet, combined with tools to ensure this equilibrium is maintained and to guarantee it if needed .. However, competition and transparency alone are not always enough Therefore ARCEP has engaged further efforts to ensure the ecosystem runs smoothly and stakeholders comply with the principles laid out in 2010.
- .. to track the quality of Internet access services, ARCEP will adopt a decision before the end of this year that specifies the quality of service indicators for fixed networks, which will be measured and made public, in complement of those already measured for mobile networks
- .. ARCEP has undertaken an inventory of traffic management practices implemented by operators - e.g. throttling, blocking or priority queues.-. Thanks in particular to competition, ARCEP has noticed a decrease in the use of these practices especially on mobile networks. Certain practices are nevertheless contrary to the framework set in 2010 which consists of five assessment criteria. ARCEP is therefore calling, among others, for the steady elimination of service blocking (VoIP, P2P) on mobile networks. If the market fails to make sufficient progress on its own, the current legislation gives the Authority the powers needed to intervene.
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| Source: ARCEP Report, September 2012 |
- .. the interconnection business model, namely the relationships between Internet players, is evolving gradually and can give rise to conflicts: it needs to be better understood. In light of its analysis of the current state of the market, ARCEP considers that there is no need to strengthen the regulatory framework at this stage. The regular collection of information introduced by the Authority's decision of 29 March 2012 has produced its first results this summer 2012 and allows ARCEP to keep track of these trends, to analyse them and take action accordingly.
[See related news about a recent decision given in the case of Orange-Cogent dispute over their peering agreement - "France Télécom may ask to be remunerated for opening additional capacity but it must clarify the commercial and billing relationship between its Internet access and Internet transit businesses" - here; Similar to the Comcast-Level3 case from two years ago (here).
... It is now for Parliament and the Government to determine the follow-up to be given to this report.
See "Net Neutrality" - here.
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great info :-)
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