Thomas Lohninger: Net Neutrality in Europe

preroll music

Herald: Actually, we have two
consecutive talks of half an hour.

And as they’re both on the
same more-or-less topic

we’ve decided to junk
them. One is right now,

that’s Thomas Lohninger from
Austria, my home country.

And the next one is Fredy
Kuenzler from Switzerland.

And they’re both talking about the same
problem. You know the old Churchill

saying: “There’s two things you
don’t wanna know exactly, that’s

how do they make sausages,
and how do they make laws?”.

Well, actually, you do wanna know
exactly how they make laws!

Otherwise you find yourself
with a law you don’t want.

And a sarco enemy can avoid a banger,
but you can’t avoid a law.

So Thomas here is gonna tell you
about the fight for net neutrality

in Europe. And let’s have a big
hand for Thomas Lohninger!

applause

Thomas: Hello and thank you,
everybody! Good.

So, let’s dive right in. We have a lot of
ground to cover for the past 3 years

which have to fit in the next 30 minutes.
So I’m gonna talk fast at the end,

so that we have a little bit more
time for the outlook in the future.

The subtitle of this talk is ‘Alea iacta
est’, so ‘the dices have fallen’

which in fact is not really true.
We now have legislation

in Europe for the first time, binding
legislation for net neutrality

in all 28 member states. And this
talk will be about the history

of this legislation and how civil society
played a huge role in this law.

But still the law that we have
now is really ambiguous;

so the fight is not over. There are next
steps to come which will actually give it

real meaning, and influence what net
neutrality we’ll actually have in Europe.

A little bit of introduction: So,
net neutrality in principle is

the universality of the network.
As you see here

we’re all interconnected
over the network and…

the basic foundational principles
that boil down in these days

– in the age of deep packet inspection
and discriminatory pricing –

net neutrality boils down to
discrimination protection.

And it’s basically preventing
ISPs to establish

new discriminatory business models.
This was also the starting point

for this European legislation called
‘Telecom Civil Market’. It’s a regulation;

that means it’s directly applicable
in all 28 member states,

not like a directive. It doesn’t have to
be transposed to national legislation,

it’s already a law in all 28 countries.

And the responsible commissioner, back in
September 2013, when it was introduced,

is this old lady, Neelie Kroes.
Audio/Video playback starts

Neelie Kroes: It is a fact that we are all
connected or we want to be connected.

So this package is essential for
Europe’s strategic interests,

for Europe’s economic progress.
It is absolutely crucial

for the telecom sector itself.
And, of course, for citizens

who need full and fair access
to telecom services such as

internet, and such as mobile services.
Audio/Video playback stops

Thomas: “Such as internet”…
This is also the spirit of this whole law.

You have internet, which is kind of
neutral, and then you have other stuff.

Like specialized services, which you
could basically translate in your head to

‘net neutrality violation’, or ‘paid
fast lanes’. And if you look

at the original Commission proposal,
which they put in front of us, they had

really weird language, like “within
the contract that you enter into

with your ISP you’re not allowed to
discriminate”. But if the contract states

that you have discriminatory pricing,
or different speeds for different types

of applications that would be legal, under
the original Commission proposal.

The Commission had a 3-fold
strategy: It used the election

to get the Parliament to adopt
this regulation really fast,

to put it in a hurry, to rush this
thing through before the elections

in May 2014. It used a populist
element which was roaming.

If you have heard any coverage about
this legislation it was probably

about the roaming part. That Europe
would abolish roaming charges

which was actually kind of a fuzzy deal.
You will still have Roaming charges

but you will have different names and
different forms. But that was something

which made it essential for all
MEPs, for all parliamentarians

in the European Parliament to
pass this legislation really fast.

And they used bizarre and complex
language as you’ve just seen:

the whole regulation was full of that.
And the fourth point is

that in their language, in the PR
strategy, they were always claiming

to support net neutrality. We see the
same thing with Guenther Oettinger now,

the successor of Neelie Kroes, he’s also
saying that he supports net neutrality,

but in fact he’s doing the opposite.

So what have we done, once this
regulation was in front of us?

We started to write amendments
in a wiki. Actually it took us

only a month to come up with
the first improvements for this text.

And I also said that I wanted
to give some ‘lessons-learned’.

The first lesson-to-learn if you want to
influence European policy is: Come early!

The earlier you are on the table, the
earlier you start talking with officials

about a subject the more influence
you will have on the process. So

if you want to influence legislation don’t
look what is in the calendar next month

– look what is in the calendar in 3 years.
Then you have a good chance

to really make a difference. And we
had the ‘savetheinternet’ campaign

which was actually launched here
on that stage, 3 years ago.

And the talk with Markus
Beckedahl at 30C3.

And the website basically
followed a simple idea.

Translate attention into political force.
Give people something to do.

And provide actionable items – it’s the
second lesson that you can take away

from that. You have to give
people something to do.

Otherwise they will not care about
the subject. Otherwise they will

not get really involved.
They will not feel like they have

a part in whatever political
issue you wanna raise.

And emboss these
actionable items actually;

translate the attention and the will
of the citizens into something

that’s in front of the officials,
in front of the parliamentarians.

In our case: calls, faxes,
tweets and emails.

These were our actionable items; and

here I also want to thank Michael
Bauer who was the core developer

of all the contact-your-MEP
tools of savetheinternet

besides the Pi phone from
laquadraturedenet who sadly deceased

with a heart attack this year. And…

applause

But without him we never would
have made it in such a good time.

He developed the whole contact
suite in like a week or so.

He was a really brilliant person.
So the fax thing was really cool.

We sent around 40,000 faxes to the
parliament[arian]s, 20,000 of which

were already also received by them. Here
again, I want to thank the ISP Kappa

who sponsored us all those faxes
for free, for the first round.

We didn’t have to pay for any of them.

So third lesson is: be creative.
So faxes were a novel thing,

It wasn’t done any time before.
And so they were really influential

because suddenly you would have
a physical token of a citizen’s will

in the office of the parliamentarian. But
like every creative campaigning idea

only works once or twice now the
Parliament has switched to

an electronic fax delivery.
So this idea no longer works.

At least not so efficiently.
So you have to adopt fast.

This is the process in the
European Parliament.

You have these several committees
which all adopt their opinions

on the legislation. And then the whole
thing goes into the leading committee

– the Industry Committee in this
case. And then to plenary.

Here I wanna thank Petra Kammerevert,
German Social Democrat.

It was like the only MEP that sticked with
us, from the beginning to the end.

She was really fighting like hell.
And she was one of the good guys.

One of the bad guys is [Vera] Pilar del
Castillo, the Rapporteur down there,

in the ITRE committee. As
a Rapporteur she has a lot of power

over the process of this legislation
in Europe. And she was really

working against us wherever she could.
And also working against the opinion

of the European Parliament. So she was not
really negotiating to get the good deal

that the parliament adopted in plenary
in first reading. She was really working

to get what the telcos and Telefonica
are wanting. And so in the plenary

we actually managed to get amendments
through. Before that, it looked quite grim

but we had those amendments
which got a majority

and which brought us the victory.
Because this legislation is now passed

and published in the journal, I’m now
also at liberty to speak a little bit more

about what is the background
of it. And actually,

as you have here in this email
from a UK Social Democrat,

the text came from civil society,
which in fact is true.

When we drafted this text there were
like 3 things that we had to do.

We had to fix all loop holes. We had
to change as little as necessary,

so only minor text changes.
Every word is costly.

And we couldn’t use any politically
loaded phrases. So we had to come up

with totally new language. Which
would solve all problems but still

get a majority which in fact
we managed to achieve.

There was also a bigger majority…
applause

So that’s us celebrating
after the victory. And…

that was big fun. So fourth lesson

to take away is: Be clear about
your demands with politicians.

You will not succeed in asking
for stuff that you will not…

that is impossible for the politician.
You have to ask for something

which is realistic. And in their eyes
getting a good text in first reading

was realistic. But there were many
formality arguments in second reading.

Which worked against us, and
at the end broke our necks.

One was that the parliament is
not really emancipated from

the other institutions. Council has much
more power. So the member states

really can make demands and draw red lines
that the parliament is not really willing

to step over. And ‘second reading’ also
means that you need an absolute majority

for any amendment. Not just a simple
majority. So half of all MEPs

and not just those who
are present at the vote.

But it’s not all just the first reading:
here you have a basic idea of

how laws are adopted in the European
Union. With the Commission on top,

the Parliament at the left and the member
states in the Council on the right.

And we had savetheinternet
campaigns for all of those steps.

And basically when the Commission adopted
their proposal that was of course

anti net neutrality at its best.
The Parliament fixed it,

the Council reverted it and really came
up with a text that was partly even worse

than what the Commission
originally wanted.

And then those 3 institutions sat
together in the most intransparent way

you could imagine… and came
together and made a new text.

And the agreement here, in trialub (?),
that was actually reached

at 2 AM with everybody almost
asleep, everybody like:

“Okay, let’s fix this, let’s fix this…”.
And the Liberals,

the Greens, the Left, all of them were
already out of the room. They were saying:

“Okay, no deal, we’ll continue
after the summer break,

let’s just not continue any
more discussion!” And then

the negotiator from the Social Democrats,
Patricia Toia, she was already standing

in the doorway with her
handbag in her hand.

And then she agreed to this proposal.

Because the Conservatives gave her some
concessions on Roaming, then she agreed,

to the shitty net neutrality. So that’s
it actually what it boils down to,

at some stages. And it was [Pilar del]
Castillo who was driving this compromise.

So we had a really bad text
which was on the table.

And agreed between all 3 institutions.
But then it would still need

to go through Parliament.
And we had to ask ourselves

over the summer break: “Is this text
worse than useless?” Should we really

fight for amendments, or
should we fight for deletion?

This was a huge argument
within the savetheinternet coalition.

And even I was sympathetic
with both sides.

But at the end we thought
this text is better than

e.g. what the US had in their first
net neutrality law. And therefor

it’s worth fighting. Because maybe there
are countries, like Austria, like Germany,

like the Netherlands that have or
would adopt good legislation.

But many other countries would not.
And so, in the sense of the European Union

we thought: “Better have this compromise
for 28 instead of just a few good laws.”

And then something really magical
happened. Because finally we got support

from the US. We had Barbara van
Schewick, the world’s leading expert

and scientist on net neutrality
speaking out in support for us.

So did Lawrence Lessig, so
did Sir Tim Berners-Lee, and

many other supporters. And we also had
companies getting involved, start-ups

and big internet companies like Wordpress.
And we also had venture capitalists

that urged the parliamentarians to
really adopt these amendments,

make this a clear legislation. Because
otherwise they would stop investing

into European start-ups. Because I would
not get money into a business model

which might not work in a few months.

And also in Germany we had big
support from the media authorities,

the Landesmedienanstalten, and the
Association of German Journalists.

Many others. But really, what we
didn’t do here, we didn’t come early.

This was all a last-minute action. The
real traction this whole thing gained

one week before the final vote!
And that was too late.

If we could have had this traction,
this media coverage beforehand

then it might have turned out differently.
But what you can take away from that is

that we have to broaden our movement.
That we really have to go

out of the net political nerd bubble.
We have to reach other people.

Digital rights issues are
broad civil society issues.

And we have to treat them as such.
Go to the churches. Go to the journalists.

Go to whomever is willing to listen, and
make your cause, and broaden the movement.

And we had really creative
actions like here in Barcelona.

Our member Xnet had this nice projection
on the building of Telefonica.

But at the end it didn’t work. We
failed in Second Reading. And I have

to speed up a little bit and explain you
why this is not the end of net neutrality.

I know this was in the media quite
heavily. And if you look at it binarily,

of course this is a loss for us because
we campaigned for amendments

and we did not succeed. But still
the text it’s now on the table.

The biggest problem
is that it’s ambiguous.

But it has some good parts in it. And one
word of advice: you have to keep in mind

that the US also needed two
approaches to get this right.

The first net neutrality laws were
even worse than what we have now.

There is clarity that this is now
applicable – not only to fixed line

but also to mobile internet. And at least
we’ll see no longer commercial blocking

in Europe. You could still have state
blocking, so like censorship lists

from any public authority. But
you could not e.g. block Skype

if you are a mobile operator and want
people corner into using your own roaming.

There is intentional ambiguity, and all
the big questions about net neutrality and

paid fast lanes. And so the real decision
is now left to the unelected regulators.

And to the unelected judges. We
most certainly expect court cases

in front of the European High Court.
And this means huge legal uncertainty.

Which is really bad. Not only for
citizens but also for business.

So there are 4 big subjects
we have to cover.

That are still in the debate now with the
European regulator that’s now tasked with

giving this law actual meaning.
Specialized services…

as I said you could translate it in
your head with ‘paid fast lanes’

and ‘not net neutrality’ or with ‘those
services that really have nothing to do

with the internet’. That has to be our
goal here. There are 5 safeguards

in the regulation that we have to apply
right and then we can still achieve

that goal. But the regulators… like
these are the 28 organizations

in Europe that are tasked with
regulating the telecom markets.

They are not doing anything else than
reading laws and applying them

on the market. And that’s one of the
questions they asked us in the hearing.

So would it be okay to have internet
services as specialized services?

And you can see how really vague and
ambiguous this law is, if this is

the basic question that they’re asking us.
Similarly with zero rating, the practice

of commercial discrimination. If some
data packages cost more than others.

Again, we have some sort
of safeguard here.

But ‘commercial practices’ is the corner
word here. Because zero rating

is not mentioned in the whole legislation.
‘Commercial practices’ – and that’s

the funny part. They’re asking us
– the regulators asking civil society –

what in our understanding ‘commercial
practices’ actually means. And

from our perspective there are 2 ways of
seeing it. Either it means ‘zero rating’

in which case it has to be prohibited. Or
it means anything else in which case

e.g. it could mean ‘interconnection’.
That applies perfectly to the legislation.

But in that case this whole topic would
be left for national legislation.

So the Dutch net neutrality law
could still outlaw zero rating,

or Germany could adopt a new law
which would prohibit that practice.

A very important point which was
sadly not so much discussed

is traffic management. There is
a risk that ISPs could introduce

a class based CIF system to manage
congestion, e.g. That would look like:

“Okay, we have all video streaming
applications in one class

and we prioritize them. But we don’t
prioritize telephony applications,

because although they also are
delay-sensitive they are

against our own business models, and
therefor we are not prioritizing them.”

Class-based traffic management has another
big problem. And you can look at the UK

where this is a common practice.
If you want to throttle file-sharing

and you have some gaming applications
that look similar like file-sharing

you could end up with
throttled gaming applications

which make the games unusable.
And so in the UK you have now

standing committees between game
developers and ISPs like Plusnet

and before they have a rollout of a new
game they have to sit down and agree

on the technical characteristics,
so that the game actually works

in the British internet. And this is
the total opposite of innovation

without permission.
And from our understanding

traffic management always has to be
as application agnostic as possible.

So: only look at the header, don’t
look in the contents of the package,

don’t make any differentiation
between applications or services.

And there’s also a problem: If you
look at the content, if you want

to treat encrypted traffic differently
there is a risk that all encrypted traffic

could end up in the slow lane.

In principle this is what we want to
achieve. Be as application agnostic

as possible and then only allow
traffic management based

on technical characteristics where it is
really necessary and proportionate

and you cannot solve the problem
in any other way. And then only

if this is not sufficient you could
resert to a class-based system.

Transparency – we will see
some big change here

when it comes to advertised
and real speeds of internet.

So if this regulation enters into force
and if the transparency provisions

are applied correctly you will no
longer have just up to a certain

Megabyte [per second] of internet; instead
you will have a minimum, an average

and a maximum bandwidth which
has to be stated in the contract. So

more accurate information
for consumers. Now,

this is the organization that is now
tasked with making actual sense

out of this legislation. So this is the
umbrella of all 28 regulatory authorities

in Europe. Like Bundesnetzagentur
in Germany, or RTR in Austria.

All those come together under
the umbrella of BEREC; and

they now have until the end of
august, according to the regulation,

to come up with actual guidelines
that give this text real meaning.

And if we look at the timeline this
is basically our work programme

which we’ll have to fill with life.

The parliament adopted the
regulation in October; and

it was published in the journal on
November 26 which gives us the 9 months

of time we now have. And there
was a stakeholder hearing

from civil society; I could
participate for EDRI; and

we basically sat down with the regulators
and gave them our interpretation

of the text. But just so did also the
content application providers

like the public broadcasters,
or internet companies;

and so did the telecom industry. So
now they have to strike a balance

between those 3 stakeholder groups.

We’re now at a point where the working
groups are drafting the guidelines.

Really weird fact: the whole
regulation will enter into force

at the end of April. Although the
guidelines are not applicable there.

And nobody could answer the
question what this actually means

if there would be a case, in this
period between April and August.

So this working draft will
then be voted in plenary

at the end of June, and then we’ll
have 20 days of public consultation.

You’ll have 20 days to say
what you think about

the new net neutrality in Europe.
Which is ridiculous. And then they have

roughly a little bit less than two months
to analyze all this feedback,

and to redraft the guidelines.
So the more feedback they receive

the fewer time they’ll have to actually
redraft the whole thing before it’s

finally voted in the extraordinary
plenary within BEREC.

So that it can be published.
So let’s focus on those 20 days.

In the US we had several months of
consultation and 4 Mio. comments.

In India it was 28 days.
Still 1 Mio. comments.

And they are continuing. They all have
another consultation up and running

right now. And now in
Europe we have 20 days.

So this is the comparison that we face.

And this also means for European
civil society and all those people

who care about the internet – this is the
time line, and this is the opportunity

that we have. We can look at the US.

This is an analysis of the comments
that were given to the FCC

when they first asked for
opinions about net neutrality.

And there is now a huge collection
of scientific papers,

visualizations and everything
about this huge record

about the topic of net neutrality.
So you can see that there are

so many issues that – also organically –
that people commented [on].

You have very few templates in here.
So out of these 4 Mio. comments

many of them are actually people sitting
down, writing in their own words

what they think about the subject.
How it would influence their business.

How it would influence their education.
How it would influence the network

that they are running. And you
have many interesting stuff like

“you need net neutrality
for the American Dream”.

And the idea behind that is also a
“maybe we can take some advice

from the US, here, for Europe”.
That America is America

because you can connect to different
opinions. At the core of net neutrality

you have the equality of the network.
And this was preserved here

with the new rules in the US; and we
should really take advice on that.

And that’s also why we as
savetheinternet coalition

will come up with a new version
of the website. That will

support the consultation and
extend it, not just in the 20 days

but for a longer time period. So that
more of you have the opportunity

to have an actionable item, to do
something for this legislation.

And to really have your say.

In the remaining time I would like
to step a little bit out of Europe

and follow the motto
of this year’s Congress,

and look a bit at the global issue.

You see now there’s… many
legislation are actually discussed

or already in place. It varies greatly
in the amount of safeguard

that it provides for citizens. And thanks
to Andre Meister from netzpolitik.org

we have a little collection of all the
billboards and advertisements

in Latin America about zero rating.
So let’s have a look how this is

seen in Peru, in Chile and other
countries. You have here

free social networking which
is huge advertisement donors.

And you have full internet
with this websites.

And we’re not speaking about nerdy stuff.
This is like a selling proposition,

that you can have these services for free,
therefor buy my SIMCard, buy my internet.

And it goes on and on like that. But it

gets really ugly if you look at
what’s happening in India right now.

Facebook has this program called
internet.org which is basically

a gated community which gives
poor people without any access

to the internet just access to
Facebook and a few other sites.

And Facebook is now on the
offensive. They are asking citizens

to lobby the regulator
against net neutrality.

They’re really challenged in that, and
you could see that Facebook was

fast responding because
the public pressure in India

amounted to companies, and
telecom actors and also politicians

publicly denouncing this
program. I can only quote

one of the founders of
savetheinternet.in, Nikhil Baba.

He said yesterday that the only question
that he would ask Mark Zuckerberg

who is always on the forefront
to defend his program:

“Why is he just giving
these free basic services

with just a few selected hundred sites

instead of giving them the whole
access to the internet?”. If you give

the bandwidth that’s reserved for these
programs just freely to everybody

so that they can use them in whatever
way they want you would achieve

exactly the same commercial
interest for the telecom providers.

And there are similar programs from
Mozilla and also from other Indian ISPs

that just give people 3 months
of a few megabytes

to get them hooked on the
internet. If this is just the idea

to bridge the digital gap by getting
people some sense of our internet

that could be easily done by that way.

We have to look at the challenges for
the global net neutrality movement.

This issue is far from just
a Western debate right now.

And we always have been wondering in the
Digital Rights movement how it would be

if Google or Facebook would be
on the other side of our debate.

If they really would fight against us.
We can look at the global south.

It’s first happening there. So

that’s the end of my talk and also
my time. I want to thank you.

I want to urge you to keep fighting;
net neutrality is not lost in Europe.

It’s more like we now have
a really ambiguous law.

The responsibility lies now with the
regulators. So we are in a way

at a point where the US was in 2014. And
now we have to do a similar mobilization.

We have to do a similar form
of argumentation to get it right.

And savetheinternet is
a coalition of 12 NGOs,

and we don’t have one fixed hub, but
there is a lot of development going on

in Austria. And we’ll also have a workshop
today at 6 PM at the EDRI assembly

at Noisy Square. If you want to get
involved, if you have a special interest,

a business, or are an ISP, then
please participate in this workshop

to get the new savetheinternet
as best as we can. Thank you!

applause

Herald: Okay, we gonna do something
unorthodox today. We gonna have

the next talk right onto this one.
Please – flying change of people

who wanna come and leave! Because
the two talks are related we’ll have

Ten minutes of Q&A after the next talk.

So here’s – das ist jetzt eine
Schwietzer Angelegenheit –

this is the gentleman from
Switzerland, Fredy Kuenzler!

Fredy: He speaks Fribourg dialect!
laughter

Can you believe that? Fribourg –
and pretty good actually!

Herald: We both agree that buffering
sucks, so please, let me have a hand

for – Fredy Kuenzler!
applause

applause

Fredy Kuenzler: Thank you! My name
is Fredy Kuenzler. Gruetzi mitanand’!

I was thinking whether to have the
talk in Swiss German or in English…

Herald: Sorry, excuse me for a moment -
Fredy: Never mind.

Herald: This is unorthodo… when you
leave, please leave in peace, and quiet.

Okay? And give him a chance.
Fredy: laughs

So Swiss German would be an option for me.

English, because you know the
Swiss don’t speak proper German.

My six year old digital native

is telling people rather proud that his
Dad invented the fastest internet

in Switzerland. It’s called Fiber7.

applause
Thank you.

While we went to Greece for vacation,
I was in a target conflict,

because I had to explain him
why he couldn’t watch YouTube.

I mean Greece, you know
it’s maybe a bit difficult,

but as a matter of fact, here
in Hamburg it’s not any better.

I’m next door in the hotel InterCity
and they offer “free Wi-Fi”

with 256 kbit/s.
laughter

If you want 5 Mbit internet,
you pay 8 Euros extra,

per day. So this is where we are in 2015.

A few words about me: I’m
married, one son as I said.

He was born 2009. He was
able to unlock the iPhone

with the age of 17 months.
No one showed him how.

laughter and mumbling

My early connection
with digital techniques

was about 1978 when I was
playing with these chips 7400.

Who knows them? Raise
your hand. – Few, thanks.

Later on I did an apprenticeship as a
Fernmelde- und Elektronikapparatemonteur.

And I started to do
IT business about 1991.

Then 1996 – almost 20 years ago –
we started with Linux stuff.

My first Linux was Suse 4.2.

In the year 2000 we started with Init7
and later on I became president

of the SwissIX association.
This is an association

which runs an Internet Exchange. I had
also my time in a startup called Zattoo.

It’s a network architecture
OTT IP Television.

Besides, I need a hobby, so I’m also
a politician for the Social Democrats

in my city parliament, already 8 years.

Then I started with the other
hobby, Fiber7 as you know.

Oh besides, I was also working
in an internet expert group

of the Social Democrats Switzerland.
There the internet paper

was adopted earlier this month

by the national Delegiertenversammlung.
I don’t know what this is in English.

So, Buffering sucks! Ladies and Gentlemen,
this talk is not about Deutsche Telekom.

It’s not about peering. It’s not about
interconnection. It’s about these

thousands and millions of youngsters out
there which want to watch YouTube

in HD resolution without buffering.

So let’s quickly look at the reason why
YouTube and all the other video buffer.

It’s usually lack of bandwidth.
If you have a 2 Meg DSL

or if you have an InterCity
free Wi-Fi with 250 kilobits;

so HD video is not possible.
Sometimes they have old PCs,

so CPU power is an issue –
these days no longer relevant.

Wi-Fi quality sucks sometimes.
This is rather an individual issue.

And sometimes we have an over-subscription

of the shared node –
mainly in cable networks.

Streaming source can be too far
away. If you stream from the U.S.,

it doesn’t really go well.
That’s why we have so many CDN,

Content Delivery Network systems,
close to the end users.

Then adaptive streaming
can be an advantage,

but also disadvantage. You cannot
turn it off. When you watch HD

and the connection sucks
you just cannot keep it on HD.

It just drops to SD or lower
resolution. It works, yes.

But Claire Underwood in
low-res is not so cool.

Routing algorithm issues – sometimes
it’s a mismatch of client and server.

If your client is assigned to the
wrong CDN server, then it’s also slow.

Anycast routing is a trick sometimes.
And, last but not least

and the most important thing:
It’s over-subscribed interconnections.

We go back quickly to the
old days. The caller pays.

When you call your mother-in-law
and you talk with her

– well, she talks to you for 45 minutes
and you say hello and goodbye –

you still pay the call.
laughter

So with YouTube it’s not any different.

You click YouTube and then YouTube
talks to you for hours maybe

and then you say goodbye, basically.
So is the broadband customer

calling the YouTube server or is it vice
versa? Is the YouTube server calling

the broadband customer? Probably
it’s the broadband customer who calls.

But still the data is flowing
from the server to the client.

But the client is causing the traffic,
because he is requesting the traffic.

And if we look at the structure of
the internet, we have basically…

(doesn’t work here, red
button is dead, never mind!)

…we have the end user to the right.

We have – here is the provider network

and the end user is only connected
to the provider’s network.

On the left side we have all the content
in the internet. We have the media

and video and streaming
and Torrent and… you name it.

But there is always only one
way going to the end user.

It’s the yellow marked interconnection
points and there is no way around them.

This basically means, the provider
can monopolize the end customer.

At least as long [as] he is
connected or subscribed.

There is no alternative way.

So this gives the provider

a position of power.

On the other hand these
interconnection points used to be

– for a long period of time – so called
Zero Settlement interconnections,

and they are basically the
foundation of the internet.

Without Zero Settlement peering,
without interconnection

the internet wouldn’t exist as we know it.

The broadband provider,
mainly the incumbent,

the ex-monopolist,
or large cable operators,

they tend to become more
and more restrictive

to provide sufficient
interconnection capacity.

Not upgrading interconnection
to the requirements

is very common these days and
it’s a passive aggressive behaviour.

So many providers – to name
a few: Deutsche Telekom –

they just do nothing. They just wait.

And the end customers are suffering.
Buffering is very common, especially

during prime-time.
This is basically what the topic of…

…the main topic of this conference is:
It’s a gated community. The provider

creates a gated community
for his own end customers.

So as I said before:

The data is flowing from the server,
from the video server to the end customer.

It’s about 50 times more
traffic flowing to the client

and the usual traffic ratio we have

for a broadband provider is 1:5
or 1:10. So they’re pulling about

10 times more traffic
towards the end customer.

Then we have this interconnection
policy. So they don’t do anything.

As I said before, they just over-subscribe

the existing interconnection.
And if you want to upgrade you have to

have a traffic ratio of
about 1:1.5 to 1.3.

But no video stream service
can deliver traffic

and also maintain the traffic ratio.
No content provider can.

So all they can do is: They can
pay money to get upgraded.

And if they don’t pay,
data is stuck in congestion

and their clients are suffering,
seeing the buffering sign.

Large broadband providers, such as
the incumbents and cable providers,

they want to get paid twice.
They are able to force the money

due to the temporary
monopoly – as I explained.

And they can ask money from the end
customer and on the other hand

also from the content.

This is called double-sided market.
And if they don’t pay,

the content is not paying, this is what we
see. And sometimes – as a side note –

the end customer pays,
but still sees this.

But IP interconnection would be cheap.

The business cost per broadband
customer is just a few cents per month.

And if the provider would invest
this, people would be happy.

On top content providers are easy to deal
for peering or provide cache servers etc.

So please talk to our community
fellows of Akamai, Apple,

Amazon, Facebook, Google,
Limelight, Netflix.

T is not Telekom, it’s Twitch.
And Zattoo, and a lot of others.

So traffic congestion is costly.

I took a random Google
search and was looking for

how much traffic is actually costing.
And “Die Welt” showed the result:

“Staus kosten in jedem
Haushalt 509€/Jahr”.

So my assumption was:
If traffic jam is costing money,

then probably data traffic jam
is also costing some money.

But I figured that no one was
really exploring that field, yet.

So I thought I’m going to do
a little “Milchbüechlirächnig”

laughter

applause

When I was a child, the milk man came
every morning and we just put our order

into the Milchbüechli and he put the milk
into the box outside of the house.

By the end of the month, we went to the
shop and paid our Milchbüechlirächnig.

So this is my quick calculation: We have
about 30 million broadband connections

in Germany. I assume that everybody is
waiting for one minute accumulated

while watching Netflix, YouTube,
whatever. Probably this is far too less.

Who thinks one minute is fine, or –
who thinks one minute is not enough?

Oh, ok, so let’s stick with one
minute for the calculation.

And I also assumed that 5€ / hour waiting

is a good salary. So if you
think, 5€ is not enough,

you can adapt the calculation.
This is called “Reservationslohn”.

I have no clue what it means,
but this was on Wikipedia,

for time when you take
a job or refuse a job,

how much would be the
value for the spare time.

So this is my calculation: If you wait one
minute per day, this is 6 hours per year.

If you multiply this with the 5€,

every broadband customer
would lose 30€ per year.

This sums up
– with 30 million broadband subscribers -

to 900 million Euros per year. This is the
economic damage in Germany per year.

applause

As we can assume that a large
part of the buffering is caused

by the insufficient interconnection,
especially during prime-time

when everybody wants to watch
Netflix. This is also a result

of the restrictive peering policy of the
incumbent and large cable operators

and the ability for them to
force some extra money

out of these double sided
market power as I explained.

They probably would gain a few
millions. I don’t have exact figures

but I assume it’s probably
some 10..20..30 millions per year,

they could force through
this market power.

On the other hand we have the damage
of 900 Million Euro per year and I mean

this is like a – how do you
say that? – Imbalance.

So my conclusion in democratic
countries like [in] Western Europe:

The economic gain of a multibillion
company at the expense

of the general public is
commonly not tolerated.

The next question is basically following
the previous talk of Thomas:

When will the regulators wake up
and force every market participant

to cooperative peering and interconnection
because the end user is suffering,

the public is suffering.
Zero Settlement peering – as I explained -

is rather common.
Of course the incumbent,

the Deutsche Telekom lobbyists
would tell otherwise, this is clear.

The unbalanced traffic should no
longer be used to refuse peering;

and also disputes about the
interconnection should be resolved

rather quick. My case against
Swisscom is taking years already

and still no end… no light
at the end of the tunnel.

Then, last but not least we should
have broadband providers…

must be committed to the interests
of their own end user customer base.

As I said, Telekom managed to get paid
twice because of their market power;

and other Telecoms, such as
Telecom Hungaria or Swisscom,

they use Deutsche Telekom and
their market power as a leverage

to force their also
restrictive peering policy;

and the regulators so far don’t do
much. I quote here Marc Furrer,

this is the chief of ComCom Switzerland:
“Nur ein fauler Regulator

ist ein guter Regulator”.
laughing

Thank you! Questions?
applause

Herald: Okay, thank you Fredy; and
let’s have Thomas back up on stage

and we’re gonna take questions, please.

There is actually more than the
[number of] mics I said before,

there is two right up on the top
and there is three in each aisle.

So if you please line up if you have
any questions to ask; and please

speak into the mic, we need
your questions on tape,

and those who are leaving
now: Do it silently please.

Okay, first question, over there!

Question: I have a question for
Thomas: From your talk it sounds

like you did a lot of work. Can you
tell us a little bit about the budgeting,

that goes into having a team like that?

T: Yeah, so, SaveTheInternet
is a coalition of 12 NGOs

which have all their independent
budget. There is no fixed budget

for the work that we have
been doing as a whole.

All of them have transparency
reports. So I can not really speak

for the budget of EDRI or accessnow. The
organization where I am based in Austria

got a grant from the media democracy
foundation from 10.000€;

and money from Netflix, 10.000€ also.

And we used both for development
and paying for the faxes. Because

in the second round of the fax tool
the provider that it was referring to

was no longer paying.

Otherwise the funding in general about
Digital Rights in Europe is awfully low.

So if you compare it to the U.S.
where you had double-digit millions

going into the lobbying it is
ridiculous what resources we have

here in Europe; and we are thinking
about making a donation tool

for the new SaveTheInternet;
but again, that’s complicated

because you have 12 NGOs with
very different activity scales.

Like some of them do a lot, others
not so much. So how would you divide

the money? These are unresolved questions,
that we are working on right now.

If you wanna support us with independent
funding, then just donate to

the individual organizations.
EDRI, Initiative für Netzfreiheit,

are probably the ones I would mention
most, because they have done

most of the work; accessnow as well,
but they generally have a lot of funding

from the U.S., so I don’t think
they need it that much.

Q: But to summarize, I saw a picture of
your team. I saw all the work you did.

You did that for 20.000€?
T: No. I never got a Cent.

I was paid by EDRI for 4 months
when I was working in Brussels

within BEREC for the first reading;
but otherwise this was mostly free time.

I got my expenses covered for travel
but other than that I am doing this

in my spare time. Also now I’m employed…
applause

…I work for Data Protection NGOs,
so they are allowing me to do

a lot of my stuff also for Net Neutrality.

Herald: We’re all elephants. We do it
for peanuts. Okay, No.1 go ahead!

Mic 1: Yeah, hello! Hi Thomas, thanks
a lot for your work, that’s great.

I have a question about the involvement
of the business, the angels

and the companies: What is the
reason, what do you think

why they came so late into
this discussion in Germany.

What probably can we do to change
this in the future because

I think that’s a… they
are great allies in this fight.

Thomas: That’s… you’re asking
exactly the right question.

Sadly, in Europe you have no
organized voice for startups

or for SMEs when it comes
to Digital Rights issues;

and you would have to work with them
to get them involved in the debate.

They were really late to the party
and then, again, mostly activated

through U.S. networks. So the connection
between the civil rights scene here

and the business scene, particularly the
one which is organized in Brussels

with European umbrellas is very weak.
So everything you can do there

to strengthen this connection
would be great.

But I don’t have those business
contacts. I got a few people involved

in the first reading stuff but we’ll
definitely need more people that

act as multipliers to get more
companies involved, particularly now

when we enter into a new phase
with the BEREC guidelines.

We no longer need the loud arguments of…

…of many people, we need more the
arguments from the business side,

from the universities, from those people
who run networks. These arguments are

better suited to make
a difference with the regulators.

Fredy: And to add: Don’t underestimate
the influence of the lobbies,

of the big names, the Telecoms
and the liberty globals…

They have a lot of money and they
try to influence the politicians

as good as they can. They do
a good job from their perspective.

Thomas: You can be sure that the Telecoms
will have people for all 28 regulators,

now continuously lobbying for an
upcoming 9 months. The question is:

Who is in our team?

Herald: OK. Thank you. Is there a question
from the internet? While we’re at it?

Signal Angel: Yes, there is a question,
it is: Whether peering providers

should differentiate between
virtual private network traffic

and public traffic; and where is the line

between internal network
and the public internet?

Fredy: What should I say… this is
difficult question, I mean… Basically,

if you over-commit your backbone
then there is always plenty of traffic…

or plenty of capacity. So there is…
there shouldn’t be any differentiation.

Networks should provide enough
capacity and then we’re good.

A common argument from the big names:

“Oh we are investing millions and millions
and millions in broadband expansion”,

but unfortunately they stop investing
right at the end of their own backbone

so they don’t invest any money
beyond their little percentage

of the total investment
for their interconnections.

Herald: Okay, there is
another question at No.1?

Mic 1: I have a question about buffering:
So the most of the content in the web is

delivered over TCP/IP and…
will changing the media

to something like UDP which has
lower overhead over TCP/IP;

will that change the situation?

Fredy: Not really.
Mic 1: No?

Fredy: No. It won’t help. I mean
packet loss is packet loss

regardless whether it’s TCP or it’s UDP.

Herald: OK, that was a short answer. Next
question please. Please talk into the mic.

Mic: So when I came here, this
year, I had the impression that

at digital subscriber line connections

not only bandwidth is bad but also the

ping [time] gets up way high.
Of course, I mean,

at home I have Fiber7 nowadays
so I just thought I got spoiled

by fiber connections but I noticed
that ping times went up

from, well, couple of years ago 60-80 ms

from sites in your neighborhood
more or less

to nowadays 80-160ms.
Where is the problem there?

Fredy: Well, the latency
is directly related

if the provider is not delivering
enough bandwidth,

then ping goes up that’s
a normal behaviour of TCP.

Mic: So the problem is also
at the interconnection sites?

Fredy: Probably yes, most likely,
you can find out if you do traceroute.

Then you see where… well,
there is a long presentation

how to interpret traceroute properly.
If you look for “Nanog traceroute”

you should find this lecture. But that
would probably give some indication.

Mic: Alright, thank you.
Herald: Thank you. Next question from

the internet, just in between and
then we’ll go back, go ahead.

Signal Angel: “Is Netflix a gated
community by itself?” and

“Are you sure that their interest
will align with the movement

of net neutrality in the long run?”

Fredy: We should differentiate
between Netflix content

and Netflix interconnections. So for
the content I probably would say:

Yes. But I am not the expert. This would
be then layer 7 in the OSI model.

I am talking here on layer 3,
this is content agnostic.

Netflix, they are one of the good
guys because they really help

to deliver the packets. I know
them personally a few fellows

from the peering community.
They are the good guys, definitely.

Thomas: Just also to answer this
question for the European debate,

Netflix was one of the good guys in the
U.S. and they also supported of course

the European movement. But again, they are
so big that I wouldn’t really trust them

as an ally because they could
also pay, they could also survive

in a double sided market and for them
in the growing emerging markets

like Europe where they just have started
it’s probably risky to allow for this

new type of anti net neutrality business
models; but in the consumer side

where net neutrality is seen as an end
user issue I think so far their interests

mostly align. On interconnection they
have their own interests, of course.

Fredy: So I can say: Netflix is
definitely paying Deutsche Telekom,

otherwise no single Deutsche Telekom user

would be able to watch any
movie on Netflix! So! For sure!

Herald: Okay, we are short for
time so please, last 2 questions.

One, no.2 first. Keep it short,
please. Talk into the mic.

Mic 2: Regarding the first talk: What
is the… do you have an explanation for

the behaviour of the European Commission
in behave of the net neutrality debate?

I especially think of the behaviour
of Guenther Oettinger

who repeatedly said his ridiculous lie

of “net neutrality kills” and
he repeated it again and again

even if there was no reason
behind it. And do you

have an explanation for this behavior
of the Commission, and Juncker and this?

Thomas: For that argument, we had this
great YouTube video “net neutrality kills”.

If you search it you will find it or
“Netzneutralität tötet” in German.

That deconstructs this argument of
Oettinger. But in general, and you can

go back to the previous commissioner
Neelie Kroes that I showed.

Our sole suspicion is that the deal
was that the telecom industry

has to give up a little bit of their
profits when it comes to Roaming,

but on the other side they gain a lot
of future profits on the abolishment

of net neutrality. And so it was like:
“Okay, we need a populist argument”,

Neelie Kroes also needs a quick
win at the end of her career.

And this was again like you take
a little bit there and put it there

for the Telecoms industry. And Oettinger
is a big industrial favour guy,

he is always for big business.

Herald: Okay, short for time,
last question, No.1.

Mic 1: Hi, so what strategy should an ISP
use when their capacity on their backbones

is fully loaded? Like first-in-first-out
or what is your idea about that, because

the capacity is limited, so when there is
so much traffic that everything is stuck.

Fredy: Upgrade!
Thomas: Yes, invest in the network!

Fredy: I mean, sorry, a 10G port is now
some 3000€ including optic and cross

connect. It’s not that much. Upgrade!

Herald: Okay, thank you!
Let’s have a hand!

applause

Fredy Kuenzler, Thomas Lohninger.
Thank you very much! And goodbye.

postroll music

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