Whether telcos have a fair shot at monetizing what happens on their networks is one of the "daring questions" the EU must ask as it looks to the future of European telecom, said Lise Fuhr, European Telecommunications Network Operators' Association's director-general, Tuesday at a hybrid Politico debate on the future of connectivity. Addressing the issue is crucial as virtualization and AI make networks smarter and empower many more parts of society, she said.
Dugie Standeford
Dugie Standeford, European Correspondent, Communications Daily and Privacy Daily, is a former lawyer. She joined Warren Communications News in 2000 to report on internet policy and regulation. In 2003 she moved to the U.K. and since then has covered European telecommunications issues. She previously covered the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration and intellectual property law matters. She has a degree in psychology from Duke University and a law degree from the University of Tulsa College of Law.
Talks on a broadcasting protection treaty remained stalled after a March 13-17 World Intellectual Property Organization Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) meeting, stakeholders said. Some "progress towards finding common ground" was made on several issues, according to the chair's summary, but there were no breakthroughs.
Regulators in Europe and elsewhere are mulling what they can do, if anything, to help "green" the telecom sector, they said. Many mobile operators have committed to achieving carbon neutrality in coming years, and EU telecom and spectrum regulators are actively engaged in determining whether they can aid that effort, they said. Mobile operators said they expect regulation but want to set the agenda.
Whether over-the-top players should pay telcos for carrying their content has been a hot topic in Europe for some time (see 2210130001), and the European Commission waded into the fight Thursday. As part of a proposal to transform the EU connectivity landscape, it's consulting on the future of the electronic communications sector and its infrastructure. The inquiry brought expected cheers from mobile operators, jeers from the tech industry.
The feud over whether content providers should pay for use of telco networks ratcheted up after Deutsche Telekom (DT) sued Meta for compensation and European internet exchange points urged the European Commission not to regulate fees. The two sides published dueling reports last year, and the EC promised to launch a consultation on the matter (see 2210130001).
Ukraine wants to become "the most convenient country in the world," Deputy Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said at an Atlantic Council online event on the nation's digital resistance. A key priority of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is turning the government into a tech company, driven by the Ministry of Digital Transformation, to best resolve citizens' problems, he said. The European Commission, meanwhile, is working to ensure mobile roaming and the availability of digital devices in the country.
Artificial intelligence systems should be safe and respect human rights, EU telecom ministers said Tuesday, agreeing on a negotiating stance on the proposed EU Artificial Intelligence Act. Among other things, the European Council narrowed the original European Commission definition of an AI system to those developed through machine learning approaches and logic- and knowledge-based approaches to distinguish them from simpler software systems. It extended the prohibition against using AI for social scoring to private actors and broadened the bar against using AI to exploit vulnerable people to those who are vulnerable due to their social or economic situation. The council also clarified when law enforcement agencies should, in exceptional cases, be allowed to use real-time remote biometric identification systems in public spaces; and added protections to ensure high-risk AI systems aren't likely to cause serious fundamental rights breaches. A new provision addressed situations where AI can be used for many different purposes (general purpose AI) and where such AI technology is then integrated into another high-risk system. The council version explicitly excluded national security, defense and military purposes from the scope, as well as AI used solely for research and development. It also set more proportionate caps on fines for small and mid-sized businesses and start-ups. The legislation needs approval from the council and the European Parliament, whose negotiating stance hasn't been finalized. The negotiating document sparked criticism from a consumer group and a member of the European Parliament. The European Consumer Organisation said ministers "reached a disappointing position for consumers" by leaving too many key issues unaddressed, such as facial recognition by private companies in publicly accessible places, and by watering down provisions about which systems would be classified as high risk. It urged EU lawmakers to stand up for consumers. One legislator, Patrick Breyer of the Greens/European Free Alliance and Germany, agreed. The Council approach is "extremely weak" on the use of AI for mass surveillance purposes, he emailed: "With error rates (false positives) of up to 99%, ineffective facial surveillance technology [bears] no resemblance to the targeted search that governments are trying to present to us."
The European Commission is under pressure to approve EU-U.S. data flows but is likely to face another legal challenge, data protection advocates said on a Thursday European Parliament Greens/European Free Alliance panel. The EC reportedly expects to unveil a preliminary response next month to President Joe Biden's executive order (EO) initiating a EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (see 2210070069) for review by data protection authorities and politicians. The EO doesn't resolve the problems noted by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Schrems II, panelists said.
Governments should never control the internet but should "preach self-restraint," said Roberto Viola, European Commission DG Connect director-general, Wednesday at a Prague hybrid in-person and virtual EC/Council conference on the future of the internet. The declaration for the future of the internet (DFI), now signed by 62 nations, says administrations will never legislate free speech, but self-restraint alone isn't enough, he said: Governments must tackle issues such as disinformation arising from Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Net neutrality rules need updating for an evolving internet ecosystem, the U.K. Office of Communications said in an Oct. 21 consultation. EU net neutrality legislation enacted in 2016 became part of U.K. law after Brexit, but because the rules constrain ISPs' activities, they may be viewed as hampering ISPs' ability to innovate, develop new services and manage their network for better user experiences, said Ofcom, seeking comments by Jan. 13. It proposed allowing ISPs to: (1) Offer premium quality packages and services, such as for people who have high-quality virtual reality apps. (2) Develop "specialized services" for content and applications that need to be optimized. (3) Use traffic management measures to manage their networks. (4) Offer zero-rating (where the data used by certain websites or apps is not counted toward a customer’s overall data allowance) in most cases. The regulator is also considering possible new laws that would allow retail packages to offer different quality standards (such as for a package that only has a specific gaming app that needs guaranteed low latency); and give ISPs more flexibility to use traffic management for specific content to address congestion. Ofcom also waded into the debate on whether ISPs should be able to charge content providers for carrying traffic (see 2210130001), saying, "While there are potential benefits to a charging regime, we have not yet seen sufficient evidence that this is needed." That's a decision for the government and Parliament, Ofcom noted. A statement is due next fall.