EuroDIG Session Highlights Continued Rift on Net Neutrality Issues

Innovation and competition are the keys to an open Internet and must be the ultimate goal of every policymaker, said Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Eva Paunova, of the European People's Party and Bulgaria. Only clear net neutrality principles will achieve those goals, she said. Specialized services are not a threat to the open Internet as long as they're kept separate from it, said Luca Belli, a researcher at the Fundação Getulio Vargas Law School's Center for Technology & Science, Rio de Janeiro. ISPs say there's a clear demand for quality-of-service-based services and that's why they came up with specialized services, said Frode Sørenson, Norwegian Communications Authority senior adviser for net neutrality. But if those services aren't walled off from open access, they'll cannibalize the Internet, he said.

A distinction is needed between protecting consumer rights on an intranet, which belongs to a single access provider, and safeguarding those rights on the Internet that is the network of networks, said former MEP Amelia Andersdotter, speaking for German digital rights group FITUG (Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft). What's not being discussed, she said, is when operators use technology to make their intranet networks look like the Internet. Net neutrality is mainly a competition problem, said Telefónica Public Policy & Internet Manager Gonzalo Lopez-Barajas. Policymakers must guarantee competition in the market and that consumers have enough information about providers to help them make informed choices, he said.

Competition is essential for net neutrality but alone doesn't solve the problem, Belli said. The European market is highly competitive, with transparency rules for access providers, but some players still use anti-neutrality measures, and many people aren't aware of when their services are being blocked or throttled, he said. Belli said, if all the operators in a particular market are throttling traffic, there's no competition. If the Internet is a network of networks, competition isn't enough, he said.

The European Commission's move toward consolidation in the telecom sector is bad, Andersdotter said. The net neutrality debate has been prompted by the fact that a large percentage of Europeans don't have enough choice in access providers, she said. But when net neutrality came up in the European Parliament, lawmakers ended up being dragged into talking not about policy issues such as freedom of expression, privacy and competition, but about the nitty-gritty of business models, she said.

Most panelists criticized zero-rating practices. They breach Norway's net neutrality guidelines, Sørenson said. They harm freedom of expression, Belli said. Europe needs more vertical separation of services, not greater integration, Andersdotter said. Zero rating is wrong because it's a vertically integrated restriction on competition, she said. Telefónica's Lopez-Barajas said that whether zero rating, which is simply a commercial practice, is good or bad depends on how it's carried out.

There was little consensus around the working group's draft statement on net neutrality. Panelists and audience members also argued about whether the document should move forward as a EuroDIG first draft for further multistakeholder comment or be sent back to the working group for reconsideration. Session moderator Frédéric Donck, Internet Society European regional bureau director, said he'd like to think that "we might have the first floor of a house here." On zero rating, which Donck called the "elephant in the room," the draft said: "As no common grounds could be found on the issue of 'Zero Rating,' the working group agreed to avoid the inclusion of specific provisions aimed at framing this issue."

IANA Transition

The process for transitioning the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions from ICANN matters for the global Internet, panelists at a later session said.

A "credible plan" for the transition will send a good signal from the Internet community to the World Summit on the Information Society, said Janis Karklins, director of the NATO Center of Excellence on Strategic Communications and chairman of the Internet Governance Forum's multistakeholder advisory group. Many governments now understand that the model of community-led multistakeholder oversight can work, said University of Zurich International Fellow William Drake, a member of the ICANN Noncommercial Users Constituency.

There's greater understanding of the multistakeholder model, and the approach is beginning to prove itself, said ICANN Vice President Europe Jean-Jacques Sahel. The IANA process has united all relevant communities into one shared mission and serves as an interesting model for future Internet governance and potentially other areas of international life, he added.

Multistakeholder models have already been shown to work, said ICANN At-Large Advisory Committee Vice Chair Olivier Crepin-Leblond. The Regional Internet Registries' approach has been effective for some 20 years, said Nurani Nimpuno, Netnod head-outreach and communications. The Internet Engineering Task Force also has a mature multistakeholder approach, said Cisco Principal Engineer Eliot Lear. But Association for Progressive Communications Executive Director Anriette Esterhuysen cautioned that those successes involve quite confined areas of Internet activity and can't be assumed to work in Internet governance at large.

The European Commission, Parliament and Council agree that the multistakeholder strategy is the right one but needs some changes, EC Internal Relations Officer Cristina Monti said. There are global geopolitical implications for the transition, and Europe needs "clear signs" that the status quo won't be maintained, she said. Council conclusions on the IANA transition will be published this week, an EU diplomatic source told us.