Wheeler Takes FCC Lessons on Net Neutrality to European Regulatory Forum

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and his staff offered the U.S. perspective on net neutrality at a workshop that was part of last week’s plenary session of the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC), said outgoing BEREC Chairwoman Fátima Barros during a public briefing on the plenary Wednesday. The briefing was streamed from Brussels.

Wheeler presented the rules “and what were the most important issues under discussion,” said Barros, a regulator from Portugal. EU official Roberto Viola also spoke and explained the steps being taken in Europe, she said. “We had the opportunity to exchange views on the impact of these regulations.” Net neutrality is “one of the most interesting issues that is now under discussion on both sides of the Atlantic,” she said.

Discussions covered special services, reasonable traffic management, empowering end-users and enforcement, Barros said. BEREC has been asked to work on the guidelines for net neutrality, she said. “This was a good opportunity for BEREC members to have some input from the experience in the" U.S., she said. BEREC wants to strengthen ties to the FCC, she said. “We plan to work more intensively together in the future on these issues.”

BEREC said in a statement that it's developing guidelines on the obligations of national regulatory agencies on the supervision, enforcement and transparency measures for ensuring open Internet access as part of Europe’s telecom single-market regulation. BEREC guidelines must be finalized in August, the group said Tuesday.

“BEREC has met with a number of stakeholders to gather views,” the group said in the news release. Topics under examination include “the kinds of traffic management practices which will be allowed under the new rules,” rules for special services, measuring Internet quality of service and “the extent to which ‘commercial practices,’ such as zero-rating, can co-exist with the new rules,” BEREC said.

“Right now … what we are doing is listening,” Barros said Wednesday.

Former Commissioner Robert McDowell, who voted against the FCC’s 2010 net neutrality order, said in a Media Institute blog post Wednesday that the agency’s moves in the area are having negative effects internationally. “China continues to advance a proposal to make a special committee of the U.N. General Assembly the dominant body to determine global Internet governance,” wrote McDowell, now at Wiley Rein. “Meanwhile, Russia has joined China in sponsoring an ‘international code of conduct for information security’ at the U.N. that would authorize Internet censorship and enshrine multilateral state control of the global network. These countries have many client states that would support them in a one-country-one-vote treaty adoption.”