EU lobby groups are championing a new complaint filed with the regulator in Germany in a bid to pressure the Commission into dropping its proposal to review net neutrality rules – framing the move as a defense against higher costs for consumers and unfair access conditions for US Big Tech.
Net neutrality rules require telecom operators in the EU to treat all internet traffic equally. However, major European operators have been pushing for changes, arguing the current rules prevent them from charging US tech giants – such as Netflix and Meta – whose platforms consume much of the bandwidth without contributing to infrastructure costs.
But critics argue that operators’ claims mask a more self-serving goal: to dismantle net neutrality for end-users and introduce premium pricing, under the guise of delivering supposedly improved service quality.
The German complaint, announced on 25 April, claims precisely that Deutsche Telekom is violating the 2015 Open Internet Regulation (OIR) by forcing online services to pay for proper content delivery to end-users. In response, EU lobbying groups are using the case to draw the Commission’s attention, claiming it highlights the EU executive’s fundamental misinterpretation of what actually needs fixing in the EU’s net neutrality framework.
This situation was already flagged in June 2024 by the EU’s Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC). The net neutrality disputes are “all directly caused by breaches of the open internet law,” Cláudio Teixeira, legal officer at the EU’s consumer association BEUC, told Euractiv. As such, there is no need for further regulation – contrary to what the Commission suggested in a February 2024 report, Teixeira added.
The grievances raised in the complaint echo concerns over anti-competitive behaviour that US cloud and over-the-top (OTT) companies have long been voicing, Maria Teresa Stecher, policy manager at CCIA Europe, told Euractiv. Similar concerns were also outlined in a blog post published on Tuesday by CISPE, the European cloud infrastructure lobby.
Both organisations are therefore calling on the Commission to refrain from institutionalising the alleged abuses by Deutsche Telekom and other larger European telecom operators in the upcoming Digital Networks Act (DNA), which is due to be published by the Commission in December 2025.
But the law violation allegations are “false,” a Deutsche Telekom spokesperson told Euractiv.
Moreover, the company’s calls for regulatory intervention targeting US Big Tech have been bolstered by former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, whose Septembre 2024 report favours the idea of “fair participation” by US tech giants in financing European telecoms infrastructure. This view was echoed by spokespeople from both Deutsche Telekom and Connect Europe – the EU lobby representing the largest European telecom operators, of which Deutsche Telekom is a member – in comments to Euractiv.
(aw)