Finland and Bulgaria remain to be the only two countries left in Europe who don’t take part in the violation of network neutrality principles as said in a report on network neutrality Europe presented by Austrian data protection NGO epicenter.works.
Two and a half years since the implementation of net neutrality legislation the European market was analyzed with the collaboration of Chamber of Labor.
Websites of 225 mobile users were monitored for about four months by a team consisting of five members in order to carry out the research out of 225, 186 of these users faced network neutrality violations.
These practices are shown to have an adverse effect on European Digital Market. The collected data indicates that zero ratings connect to new market entry barriers between EU countries.
Large US internet corporations are mainly benefitted by net neutrality violations. Only three European offers are among the top 20 offers.
Violation of network neutrality risks the privacy of individual users in the EU. The online behavior of the users is to be monitored in order to calculate the data used by individual applications differently. Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) equipment that inspects users’ data packets deeply is used.
This study also carried out an economic analysis indicating that zero ratings generally causes negative price trends causing mobile trends to become more expensive.
There is a downfall in steady approach by regulators in the event of trans-border neutrality. There is a refusal by some national regulators to publish yearly reports on network neutrality violations or cohere to the guidelines of European Umbrella Organization BEREC.
Every individual state has penalties for net neutrality violations within their jurisdiction. Some countries have established penalties and infringements, two years after the legislation entered force. Penalties issued range up to several million euros to a few thousand euros. Ireland and Portugal have not yet issued penalties.
The binding indication of definite upload and download speeds is overlooked by most providers. This causes a disappointing situation, specifically in Austria, as it is unclear which bandwidths the customers are promised in the contracts.