[NNagain] Re: Net Neutrality - a battle in Europe: Deutsche Telekom case shines light on 'two-speed' internet

[Sebastian Moeller <moeller0@gmx.de>]

Hi Vint,


> On 7. Nov 2025, at 12:00, Vint Cerf via Nnagain <nnagain@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> 
> Frantisek,
> how is a "fast lane" different from paying more for higher bandwidth?

Oh, the issue here is that Telekom sells data transport services to/from the whole internet to its end customers with a given maximal capacity. So customers can (and do) expect that the whole internet is accessible at that rate at least as far this is within the control of Telekom. But Telekom is notorious for not expanding its cost-neutral peering connections to the other T1 ISPs and rather let them run "hotter" than traditionally done, so that during primetime all connections reaching telekom eyeballs suffer from increased delay, jitter and packet loss and consequently lower throughput. The reason is that Telekom rather wants content providers to buy its rather expensive "transit" or "peering" products instead of using their normal transit provider. 


> The
> latter is pretty common and even understandable.

Yes, nobody considers that a violation of NN principles as this is an orthogonal dimension and the consequences are clearly revealed to the end user.

> In the US, neutrality
> meant everyone has the same access rules which includes being able to pay
> more for higher speed. The users got to determine what speed they wanted,
> not the provider. Nor could the provider (ISP) choose arbitrarily which
> services the user would get at what speed. The application providers,
> similarly, get to choose what speed and cost they can provide service. In
> all cases, the ISP does not get to dictate the speeds they offer to users
> and application providers. The rule works more or less like common
> carriage. You pay for what you get, the carrier has to offer all services
> to all parties on the same terms.

All fine... what Telekom has discovered is, that it can not selectively throttle say all traffic to/from content provider A* without running afoul of NN rules, but it can throttle ALL traffic running via specific peerings indiscriminately by running that peering link too hot. The issue is IMHO only partially Telekom's late stage capitalism play trying to extort money, it is more the fact that our regulator (and all european regulators for that matter) decided to turn a blind eye towards this "working-around" the NN-regulations.
Telekom has capable PR wizards on the case that always frame this as trying to get the big content providers to should their "fair share" iof the cost of the network build out, ignoring that it already charges its customers already for that purpose and manages to make a profit already.

Regards
	Sebastian

*) With the likely intent of selling special access to A to allow it to avoid the throttling.
 
> 
> v
> 
> 
> On Fri, Nov 7, 2025 at 5:13 AM Frantisek Borsik via Nnagain <
> nnagain@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> 
>> DT is at it again:
>> 
>> https://euobserver.com/digital/ar5da666d9
>> 
>> "Earlier this year, Austrian and German NGOs filed a complaint with the
>> German Federal Network Agency against Deutsche Telekom, alleging that the
>> internet service provider (ISP) is creating paid fast lanes to access
>> websites.
>> 
>> On Wednesday (5 November), the groups held a talk to outline their
>> complaint and why it's important for Europe's net neutrality.
>> 
>> The NGOs consists of Epicenter.works, the Society for Civil Rights, the
>> Federation of German Consumer Organisations, plus Stanford professor
>> Barbara van Schewick, arguing that Deutsche Telekom is creating a
>> two-tiered internet through having web hosts pay extra for Telekom’s
>> users."
>> 
>> All the best,
>> 
>> Frank
>> 
>> Frantisek (Frank) Borsik
>> 
>> 
>> *In loving memory of Dave Täht: *1965-2025
>> 
>> https://libreqos.io/2025/04/01/in-loving-memory-of-dave/
>> 
>> 
>> https://www.linkedin.com/in/frantisekborsik
>> 
>> Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp: +421919416714 <+421%20919%20416%20714>
>> 
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>> 
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>> 
>> frantisek.borsik@gmail.com
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> 
> 
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