Hello [Vorname] [Nachname]
These past few days I attended the 13th BEREC Stakeholder Forum in Brussels and returned with very mixed, somewhat frustrated feelings. BEREC stands for «Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications» and is effectively the club of the various national regulatory authorities of the EU countries. The Swiss ComCom is also a member.
The task of a telecoms regulator is to balance the market structure of telecommunications, i.e. to ensure that alternative Internet providers have a fair chance on the market. Around 25 years ago, almost everywhere there was only one monopolist per country that could offer telecommunications services – this was known as the «incumbent».
When you break up a monopoly, it's in the nature of things that the market share of the former monopolist gradually decreases from the original 100%. It is therefore understandable that the incumbent uses all legal and sometimes illegal means to maintain its market share. This happens on OSI layers 1 to 3.
As you know, we at Init7 have been involved in various legal disputes – mostly against Swisscom – for over a decade and have already achieved a number of successes. The best known is certainly the fiber optic dispute (OSI Layer 1): With the help of the Swiss antitrust authority, the Competition Commission WEKO, we were able to prevent the incumbent from being able to build the fiber optic network in a monopoly network topology, which would have prevented innovation competition for many years.
However, we are also in an ongoing dispute at layer 3. Quick background: a provider has a technical monopoly on Internet access via its end customers, and this technical monopoly is abused in many places, especially by incumbents. Our case is called «interconnection peering» and has been pending for 13 years - currently before the Federal Administrative Court again, as Swisscom has appealed ComCom's recent ruling to the next instance. Our case has met with great interest in the BEREC community and is mentioned prominently in its report from summer 2024 (Annex 1, page 40).
BEREC and the various national regulators are therefore well aware that various incumbents in Europe are illegally abusing exclusive access to their end customers by only opening it up completely against payment. Nevertheless, our interconnect peering case seems to be almost the only one of its kind that can successfully stop this abuse – if it ever comes to a conclusion after more than 10 years.
The prevailing doctrine in the BEREC community seems to be that it is better to observe, wait and see, arrange for a further assessment and then bottle up the result in a soft-edged, worded report that eventually rots away in a drawer. Instead of finally taking tough action – the power that a national telecoms regulator should have. Everyone at BEREC is fully aware that the behavior of Deutsche Telekom in particular, but also of various other incumbents, is illegal and harmful – against people, against innovation and also against net neutrality. Nevertheless, little or nothing happens. This is frustrating and grueling.
If you've read this far and understood almost nothing, it doesn't matter. We at Init7 will continue to fly the flag for a «not broken internet» and fight against the destructive forces: incumbents abusing their monopoly, idle regulators with their laissez-faire doctrine, law enforcement with their insatiable appetite for warrantless surveillance of people and companies who believe net neutrality is a «quantité négligable» when it comes to their own profit. The fight sometimes resembles tilting at windmills and is mostly pro bono, but we are unshakably convinced that you can't give up halfway. If you want to support us, please recommend our «not broken Internet» to your friends and acquaintances – that is the best form of recognition for us.
Fredy Künzler, Internet activist
