[France]: Free's Traffic Management does not Discriminate

   

ARCEP, the French regulator, is happy with its ability to monitor ISPs for non conformance to Net Neutrality rules (see "France Implements Monitoring System to Track QoE and Net Neutrality" - here).

This follows a complaint it got against the relations between Free (ISP) and Google (with which the French government has its own issues - see "France Vs. Google (Weapon: bandwidth management)" - here) and inquiry made by ARCEP, trying to understand if users or applications were discriminated.

The agency announced it ".. closes the administrative inquiry involving several companies, including Free and Google, on the technical and financial terms governing IP traffic routing. If the inquiry did not reveal any discriminatory practices in the terms governing interconnection and IP traffic routing between the two companies, it did confirm the relevance of ARCEP’s monitoring of these issues, and its goal of providing internet users with clear information on the quality of internet access services in France" 

".. Over a six-month observation period, the enquiry made it possible to ascertain:- that traffic between Free and Google is relayed both directly, via peering, and indirectly through paid interconnection involving several international transit providers;- that Free’s interconnection and IP data traffic routing capacities are congested during peak hours, as use of the most bandwidth-hungry applications continues to rise. This is an issue that all ISPs are having to contend with. The inquiry did not reveal any discriminatory practices in the terms governing interconnection and IP traffic routing between the two companies".

".. The inquiry did not reveal that Free was employing traffic management techniques on its network that differentiated traffic routing conditions based on the type of content, its origin, its destination or the type of protocol used"

See "Net neutrality" - here.