Stefan Mileschin

Because the EU still has those

Europe’s top court says that zero rating, where mobile operators exempt data associated with specific services, such as Spotify or Facebook, from counting toward users’ overall data caps breaks the EU net-neutrality law.

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled against the German providers Vodafone and Telekom, saying their “zero tariff” options broke the EU’s net-neutrality law—legislation designed to ensure that operators treat internet traffic equally, without favouring certain online providers owing to commercial considerations.

The EU's net-neutrality law was slammed as being too weak and did not explicitly ban zero rating, which was illegal in the US. The following year, the EU’s telecom regulators issued guidelines that said zero rating would be allowed as long as operators slowed down all services, including the zero-rated services, when customers hit their data cap.

In 2020, in a case involving the operator Telenor Hungary, the Court of Justice confirmed the regulators’ interpretation of the law; it said the carrier could not be allowed to block or slow down traffic because it wasn’t covered by a zero-rating deal. All traffic needed to be treated as equal.

However, that ruling did not kill off the practice of zero rating. Operators such as Telekom (still the largest shareholder in T-Mobile US, its American spinoff) and Vodafone continue to offer add-ons that let customers listen to music services, stream video, or use social media without it counting toward their data caps.

https://fudzilla.com/news/53479-zero...eutrality-laws