On 2 September, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled in two German cases concerning "zero tariff" offers by Internet Service Providers (ISPs). The Court ruled that this practice is contrary to the EU regulation on open Internet access, for the second time in a year.

A "zero tariff" is the practice of an ISP to make free the volume of data consumed via a partner application.

In this case the CJEU points to the additional option, Stream On, offered by Telekom Deutschland to its users. Vodafone, on the other hand, offers a myriad of options under the name Vodafone Pass, which are only valid in Germany. The data consumed by the applications concerned are only taken into account when they are consumed from abroad.

Maryant Fernández Pérez, head of digital policy at the European consumer protection organisation BEUC said "When companies like Vodafone use these zero tariffs, they are essentially locking consumers in and limiting what the internet can offer them,. "Zero tariffs" are detrimental to consumer choice, competition, innovation, media diversity and freedom of information".

It also welcomed the Court's ruling that "such a commercial practice is contrary to the general obligation of equal treatment of traffic, without discrimination or interference, as required by the Open Internet Access Regulation".

The German Federal Network Agency, which filed the complaint together with a consumer association, believes that the offers "cannot be maintained in their current form". Vodafone Germany said it is "carefully examining the decisions and will update its current offer if necessary in accordance with the judgments".

The ruling is based on the EU net neutrality regulation, which was passed in 2015 and came into force in 2016. The text was criticised at the time for its weakness. The US Federal Communication Commission had taken a much stronger measure on the same subject the year of the European vote, clearly prohibiting "zero rating".

Since then, the situation has ironically been reversed. The Trump administration repealed the net neutrality measure, which his successor is trying to reinstate. In Europe, the CJEU clarified its position in September 2020 via its ruling on the offers of the operator Telenor. A decision confirmed today.

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Source : Siècle Digital

In order to accelerate the development of 5G, and in particular in the industrial world, the State is targeting €1.7 billion in public and private investment until 2025. The executive "will mobilise €480 million in public funding to support priority projects between now and 2022, and is aiming for up to €735 million in public funding between now and 2025 in order to mobilise, through a leverage effect, up to €1.7 billion in investments between now and 2025", said Agnès Pannier-Runacher, Minister for Industry, at a press conference on 6 July.

The problem for the government today is not to deploy 5G infrastructure but to accelerate the development of 5G use cases. In September 2020, the State has already selected 18 projects that will receive 83 million euros of public money, for a total investment of 260 million euros.

Three other projects have been announced and will receive €10 million of public money: a machine-to-machine communication (mMTC) project led by the engineering and consulting company Médiane Système, a network acceleration card from the Grenoble SME Kalray, and a building ventilation and heating control solution from another Grenoble SME, Adeunis.

The public funds will come from France Relance, the plan to support the economy after the Covid-19 crisis, and the 4th programme for future investments. The government estimates that this effort to stimulate 5G applications could create 20,000 new jobs by 2025, and bring the 5G market in France to 15 billion euros by that date.

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Source : FrenchWeb.fr

Five years after the adoption of the regulation enshrining net neutrality on the Old Continent, the Court of Justice of the European Union is beginning to give it a legal interpretation. It validates the analysis that "free traffic" (or "zero rating") as applied by operators constitutes a violation of net neutrality.

In 2016, the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) published guidelines on net neutrality which are binding on all its members. These guidelines make it very difficult in practice to use zero rating, even if it is not formally prohibited.

"Free traffic" is a commercial practice whereby an operator does not charge or account for the use of certain online services, even if they are used by the Internet user.

Although at first sight these offers may seem attractive, they pose various problems: the internet user does not have control over the choice of services selected. Above all, however, the zero rating could hinder or block access to rival platforms, thus distorting competition, according to the logic of commercial agreements between Internet access providers and content providers.

In this case, everything starts from Hungary with the Norwegian ISP Telenor, which proposed two access bundles with zero rating. Once the mobile data had been exhausted, Internet users could continue to use their access for the zero-rated services, while the other solutions were subject to a technical restriction by the operator.

After monitoring by the Hungarian Communications and Media Authority, it found that these subscriptions were in breach of the general obligation of equal and non-discriminatory treatment of traffic. It therefore naturally demanded that Telenor put an end to them.

However, the Norwegian ISP appealed to the court in Budapest and the latter asked the EUJC during the investigation to find out how to correctly read the European regulation establishing measures relating to open Internet access.

In the summary of the judgment, the ECJ stated that "the requirements of protection of the rights of Internet users and of non-discriminatory treatment of traffic preclude an ISP from favouring certain applications and services by means of offers which make those applications and services benefit from a zero tariff and subject the use of other applications and services to blocking or slowing down measures".

Nevertheless, is the European Court of Justice slashing the zero rating once and for all? Not really: the CJEU's call to order concerns very specifically decisions based on commercial considerations". Where measures to slow down or block traffic are based not on objective differences between the technical requirements in terms of quality of service for specific categories of traffic, but on commercial considerations, such measures are to be regarded, as such, as incompatible with the said provision", writes the CJEU Press Service.

A zero rating on a category of traffic or use may be envisaged by an operator. However, what is prohibited is selective zero rating.

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Source : Numerama

This week, the Arcep unveiled its assessment of fiber optic deployments in the second quarter. And even though the milestone was reached under difficult containment conditions, half of French homes are now eligible for fiber optic cable. In fact, 1.2 million new lines were deployed between April and June. Fiber optic coverage of the territory is progressing at a "high rate", even if "the health situation related to Covid-19 has not allowed operators to continue the significant acceleration observed at the end of last year".

Despite severe restrictions due to the health crisis, work continued at a rate equivalent to that at the beginning of the year: around 400,000 lines per month. The equivalent of a town like Nemours or Granville... every day.

This dynamic allows us to calmly envisage the "five million new lines" in 2020 predicted by Minister Cédric O. If this pace is maintained for another two years, the executive will have kept its promise to bring fiber to 80% of French homes by the end of 2022.

However, the Arcep is showing its vigilance in one particular area: medium-sized cities. Indeed, in 2018 Orange and SFR made a commitment to the government and the regulator to cover them entirely with optical fiber by the end of 2020. And with 10.5 million connectable lines, they are still a long way off. Orange covers only 67% of households in the municipalities to which it has committed and SFR 75%.

In theory, they have nine months left to complete 5.5 million lines - an almost impossible task. Arcep's only concession: the deadline can be postponed by three months following the health crisis, as provided for in the government order on the extension of deadlines linked to the coronavirus. Even with this additional quarter, "the pace of deployments will be critical over the next few quarters and the Arcep will continue to be attentive to the efforts of operators", writes the Telecoms gendarme, who clearly has no intention of slackening on the subject.

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Source : Les Echos

The fixed Internet access service provided by SFR and Bouygues Telecom was unavailable for several hours last week. Indeed, the DNS (Domain Name System) servers of several operators were affected. "The DNS servers are used by all companies. It's a bit like a telephone directory. They translate the domain name of a website into an IP address to talk to it. So they have a key role as gatekeepers. They are often among the Top 3 critical applications for ISPs," explains Ronan David, head of strategy at Efficient IP.

The inability to connect, for most SFR and Bouygues Telecom customers last Tuesday, results from the fact that you use an operator's DNS servers by default when you subscribe to its fixed Internet access service. However, they could have connected to other DNS servers by configuring the network connection of their box because the DNS servers are always ready to communicate with everyone. And this is their weakness. "Since they are by definition very open, they are also very vulnerable. They are therefore prime targets for hackers," says Ronan David.

This type of aggression is common among ISPs, but SFR and Bouygues Telecom consider it particularly virulent. According to the Dutch DDoS protection organization NBIP, the DDoS (or denial of service) attack has also affected other ISPs in Belgium and the Netherlands. It recorded volumetric peaks of nearly 300 Gbit/s in volume. A level well above the average. Ronan David confirms, "The volume of 89% of DDos DNS attacks is below 50 Gbit/s. Here, it was up to 300 Gbit/s, six times more than usual. This is completely atypical."

This was a reflection attack, for example. "In the case of a DDos type DNS attack by amplification, there is one target, the DNS server, and then there is reflection, which means that other DNS servers are used to amplify the attacks and overwhelm the target server with requests so that it is no longer available," explains Ronan David.

Were other ISPs' DNS servers used to amplify the attack? Were SFR and Bouygues Telecom specifically targeted, or was their failure a collateral damage of a larger operation? Mystery, but this prospect would be daunting for all operators.

Another enigma remains to be solved: who are the attackers? Several hypotheses can be put forward. It could be a rogue gang... Unless the objective was political: to test communications and bring down an Internet gateway. In this case, it could be hostile foreign powers.

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Source : 01net

Belarus becomes the first country in the world to legally require the adoption of IPv6. As of January 1, 2020, all Internet Service Providers will be required to support IPv6 on their network and provide an IPv6 address to all their customers.

The new law was promulgated by presidential decree on 18 September. This decree updates the previous one setting out the rules for using the country's "national Internet segment". Belarus has one of the newest and most modern Internet backbones on the European continent and local ISPs have already tested IPv6 support well before last week's announcement.

Currently, IPv6 adoption in Belarus is about 15% on average, below the global average (29%). But this is expected to increase from 2020 onwards, as local ISPs will have to support all connections.

Once enabled, clients will be assigned both an IPv4 Internet address and an IPv6 address, and connections will run fully on IPv6 if possible.

Officially approved as the Internet standard in 2017, IPv6 was designed to replace IPv4, which has almost exhausted its available address space of 4.3 billion addresses. Since its adoption, ISPs around the world have begun to deploy support, in collaboration with consumer and professional device manufacturers. A rather slow deployment, mainly because it was left to the discretion of the operators.
 

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Source : ZDNet

For the first time in France, an associative Internet Service Provider (ISP) will be able to connect consumer subscribers in FttH. Indeed, thanks to a participative fundraising campaign, Illyse raised 5520 euros. This sum represents the entry ticket to the RIP (Réseau d'Initiative Publique) of the Loire department. The associative operator will now be able to set up a collection infrastructure. It will therefore be able to connect its first subscribers in early 2019.

But that's not all, since a second level of 4114 euros has been reached. This allows Illyse to become a LIR (Local Internet Registry) and thus receive an allocation of IP addresses from a regional Internet registry (RIR).

A big victory for ISP associations that are demanding cheap activated offers. Indeed, they cannot deploy their own fibre optic network due to lack of resources. Associative operators therefore turn to the network rental of a major player to offer FttH to their members. But in most cases, prices are unaffordable.

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Source : 01net.com

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