The European Union declaration on digital rights deals, as you would expect, with social policies. But every proposed or enacted social policy has corresponding private interests. Perhaps oddly, the new principles--if established as rules--might overturn some key elements of network neutrality principles, which have widely prohibited anything but "best effort" consumer internet access.
In other words, application providers cannot be charged money for expedited performance over access networks. Some will point to the widespread use of such mechanisms in the core network, where perhaps 71 percent of all internet traffic uses a content delivery network.
The EU initiative calls for a framework where "all market players benefiting from the digital transformation…make a fair and proportionate contribution to the costs of public goods, services and infrastructures".
In other words, big app providers who impose most of the traffic demand on access networks should help pay for the access infrastructure.
It is not surprising that infrastructure cost burden sharing is sought by internet access providers, who argue they must invest based on demand created by third parties. Says Orange, “the investment burden must be shared in a more proportionate way.”
“Today, video streaming, gaming and social media originated by a few digital content platforms accounts for over 70 percent of all traffic running over the networks,” Orange argues. “ Digital platforms are profiting from hyper scaling business models at little cost while network operators shoulder the required investments in connectivity.”
It is not a new argument. Infrastructure cost sharing has been talked about since at least 2006.
The document also calls for “developing adequate frameworks so that all market actors benefiting from the digital transformation assume their social responsibilities and make a fair and proportionate contribution to the costs of public goods, services and infrastructures, for the benefit of all Europeans”
In other words, the argument is that access providers need some form of revenue sharing with the app providers using the networks.
If enacted, such proposals would be the diametrical opposite of some strong forms of network neutrality rules, which have prohibited such forms of revenue sharing.
source: World Wide Web Foundation
To be sure, the battles over network neutrality have been framed, in part, on ensuring fairness. Part of the argument is that internet access providers should never be allowed to charge fees to big customers for providing quality of service mechanisms.
Oddly enough, most application providers do precisely that. In 2017, for example, a majority of internet traffic used a content delivery network, which is precisely a paid prioritization method. In 2021, it was estimated that paid prioritization using CDNs would support 71 percent of all internet traffic.
In other words, paid prioritization is commonplace in the internet ecosystem. What net neutrality rules prevented was any application of the same principle to retail access.
The EC “digital rights” principles might well end up overturning network neutrality in that sense.
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