“We don’t see a real problem, as assessed by the Commission itself, in terms of IP interconnection. We don’t see the reason why this dispute settlement, which was also alluded last year in the background of this discussion, would be necessary.”

“It’s a little strange to try to promote connectivity targets by consolidation (…) Instead of closing the digital divide in terms of connectivity, which is not certain at all, you’ll just create another digital divide in terms of affordability and that’s completely wrong.”

“There’s some kind of sloppiness in the use of some important concepts in the White Paper, which may prompt to hasty conclusions and even counterproductive results, in some cases, on the market.”

“Competition is not only about big players (…). The ecosystem is made up of lots of small players, and additional regulation could also be harmful and detrimental to [them].”

“We think that market consolidation, which is a way to get scale, can drive competitiveness in the market because having more customers in the same network would enable higher returns for the industry without the need to increase prices.”

“We think that price is not the only competitive element of the market. There are other issues that drive the welfare of consumers.”

“Trying to form a policy out of asking the wrong questions to begin with, [is] inevitably going to lead to having the wrong answers, and that is a significant concern. I don’t think network fees are in any way positive.”

“When you pick winners or champions, you make losers of all the other people in the market. As a small SME player, where do I fit in that grand vision of Europe with consolidated players? I’m out of the picture, and so are the customers I serve.”

“Any kind of interventions, such as network fee type of measures, would create this kind of two-speed interconnection model where the large players would benefit and the smaller ones would be left out, both smaller ISPs but also smaller infrastructure companies, like ourselves.”

“Before we go into any kind of decisions from the new Commission about what to do with any of these [White Paper] recommendations, there needs to be much more consideration of the impact on everybody.”

“More money paid in network fees would mean less money to invest in European content, which in turn means less European content available and or lower quality content available to consumers. (…) Ultimately, this would hurt European consumers (…).”

“If small or new VOD providers have to negotiate with only one or two dominant players in the marketplace for carriage (…) there’d be a concern about unequal bargaining power (…).”

“The White Paper sort of reads like the European Commission did hear the critique against the fair share narrative last year, but they failed to listen to it.”

“One way of reading this White Paper is (…) that the [EC] seemingly doesn’t like competition. (…) The EU is quite well equipped for the future precisely because we have a competitive communications market that allows us as citizens to make the most of that online world and services.”

“Free and fair competition has risen as the ultimate driver of innovation and of consumer welfare (…). If we have a system that works (…) there’s two things you can do. You can either encourage the continuation of the same model or try to repair what isn’t broken.”

“I just feel like Groundhog Day a bit. Here we are again, discussing the same problem, even though under a different light. From our perspective, it does seem a bit forced that this White Paper would still leave this door half closed, half open towards (…) network fees.”