Brussels, 02/03/2016 (Agence Europe) - Apart from a few minor exceptions, the Office of the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) does not think there is any need for any specific change in legislation governing the Internet of things. The other positions adopted during the BEREC plenary session at the end of February and presented to the public on 2 March focus on the Internet of things and net neutrality.
The Internet of things. The BEREC report assesses whether European rules devised for telephony services have been suitably adapted for machine to machine communications (M2M). Following the consultation, BEREC said that it considers that no special treatment of services in the Internet of things and/or of machine to machine communications require any special treatment, except for roaming, commutation and the portability of names. It adds that with regard to private life, BEREC highlights the need for cautious development but not a total recasting of existing European data protection rules. It concludes that there is no reason to envisage a European numeration system for M2M Communications.
OTT services. During its plenary session, BEREC also adopted an initial position on “over-the-top” services. This report of around 40 pages has the advantage of providing an outline of the definition and classification of OTT services. BEREC defines OTT as “the content, service or application provided to an end user on the public Internet”. It distinguishes three kinds of OTT services: 1) OTT-0 services, which are OTT services not considered as electronic communication services (ECS); 2) OTT-1 services, which are OTT services not considered ECS but which could potentially compete with ECS; 3) OTT-2 services, the remaining category consisting of OTT services that are not ECS and which are not competing with ECS. Overall, BEREC is recommending improved definition of an electronic communication service in an effort to ensure that it remains up to speed with technological developments and that it can prove itself over time and remain a reference about what services are covered by the framework directive on telecommunications (2002/21/EC).
BEREC rejects the idea of applying, in principle, similar rules to similar services. It noted that “before deciding on specific obligations to apply to a service, we need to take into account the objectives of these obligations and their proportionality”. BEREC also called for more powers for national regulators in this domain.
Net neutrality. In addition to these two reports, BEREC also adopted a series of guidelines at its plenary session, explaining to the regulatory authorities the way in which the new regulation on net neutrality functions (regulation 2015/2120). There is particular focus on implementation of the transition period, which allows roaming services providers to apply, from 30 April 2016-14 June 2017, supplementary costs in addition to national retail prices for the provision of regulated retail roaming services. BEREC also published its response to the public consultation launched at the end of 2015 by the Commission on the examination of the national retail roaming markets, politics on reasonable use and the viability mechanism.
The BEREC plenary session took place on 25-26 February in Rotterdam. It was chaired by the new president of the agency, Wilhelm Eschweiler (BNetzA) from Germany. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)