Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications Launches Net Neutrality Guidelines

The Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) has published its Guidelines to National Regulatory Authorities (NRAs) on the implementation of the new network neutrality. BEREC’s mandate to produce the Guidelines stems from the Telecoms Single Market Regulation on open Internet access. The Guidelines provide guidance for NRAs to take into account when implementing the rules and assessing specific cases.

After meetings with European-level stakeholders in December 2015 and a workshop with high-level academic, legal and technical experts in February 2016, BEREC launched a six-week public consultation on the draft Guidelines, closing on July 18. The number of 481,547 contributions received before the deadline was unprecedented for a BEREC consultation, and coming from diverse categories of respondents: civil society, public institutions and independent experts, Internet service providers, content and application providers and other industry stakeholders. The BEREC Office has processed the contributions received, and BEREC has conducted a thorough evaluation of the contributions, updating about a quarter of the paragraphs in the final Guidelines. The Guidelines are published together with an accompanying consultation report summarising stakeholders’ views submitted and how they have been taken into account. Given the high volume of contributions the consultation report had to focus on a summary of the main topics and comments put forward. All non-confidential responses will be published separately by September 30.