Policy Observatory

The OFCOM report sheds light on international roaming, previous and new phenomena in relation to consumer and youth protection, net neutrality, as well as the challenges in relation to fast broadband coverage which is as comprehensive as possible. The Telecommunications Report 2014 concludes that the current Telecommunications Act does not provide adequate responses to many questions and should be revised, and proposes a two-stage procedure for this. Regarding the Confederation’s majority holding in Swisscom, the report calls for this to be maintained for the time being.

Letter from the Minister of Economic Affairs to the House of Representatives regarding safeguarding public interests in general, and national security in particular, in the event of a takeover of a telecommunications company like KPN, airing out the Dutch government’s concern and baselines in similar takeovers of key IT companies in the Netherlands.

All forms of communication - including digital communication - are to be protected under the Constitution. The privacy of correspondence and the privacy of the telephone and telegraph will be replaced by the privacy of correspondence and telecommunication.

The European Commission published on 6 May its strategy for 2020 and the setting up of the Digital Single Market. Several important digital issues are concerned by this agenda: from copyright to crime, from telecommunications to VAT harmonisation. While La Quadrature du Net welcomes the Commission's engagement with these issues, it does this only with caution as previous attempts were harmful to the protection of fundamental rights.

The European Commission's strategy already started with the proposal on personal data protection and the proposal on telecommunications. These two currently negotiated regulations raise serious concerns on the risks they represent to a number of fundamental principles of the Internet and the right of personal data protection.

The Dutch Department of Economic Affairs issued guidelines on net neutrality for the Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM). These Net Neutrality Guidelines serve as a basis for the enforcement by ACM of the net neutrality rules in Article 7.4a of the Dutch Telecommunications Act (Net Neutrality Act).

The MEPs adopted during the second reading the regulation on the measures concerning access to the internet modifying the 2002 Directive on telecommunications. The totality of amendments proposed by the MEPs promoting net neutrality has been rejected.