In disputes respectively pitting German operators Vodafone and Telekom Deutschland against the consumer association Bundesverband der Verbraucherzentralen and Germany’s Federal Network Agency [Bundesnetzagentur] (cases C‑5/20 and C‑34/20), the EU Court of Justice ruled on Thursday, 2 September, that ‘zero tariff’ options are incompatible with European Union law.
These ‘zero tariff’ options allow an internet access provider to apply a ‘zero tariff’ or a tariff that is more advantageous to all or part of the data traffic associated with one or more applications offered by partners.
In Vodafone’s case, it was a question of video and music streaming options as well as a messaging application, whose zero tariff only applies in Germany. Abroad, however, the data used is deducted from the data volume included in the users’ packages.
For Telekom Deutschland, the situation is a little different. The dispute concerned the activation of an option—for certain packages—that allows data not to be deducted from the package. However, activating this option means that the maximum bandwidth is capped at 1.7 Mbit/s.
The court thus found that these commercial practices of ‘zero tariff’ options are discriminatory and contrary to the general obligation of equal treatment of data traffic as required by the Open Internet Access Regulation (2015/2120).
As a result, these limitations are also incompatible with EU law.
See the court’s judgment on Vodafone: https://bit.ly/3yHQ0jc and on Telekom Deutschland: https://bit.ly/3BF3mPl (Original version in French by Thomas Mangin)