internet lab | Podcast Season: 1 / Episode: 10 - 15-12-2022

1:1 with Francesca Musiani
French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS)

Episode Highlights

00:00 Intro

01:29 Q1 - How do you interpret the relationship between users accessing more content and services online and the impact this may have on telcos?

05:01 Q2 - What are the inherent dangers (if any) of Big Tech being requested to pay for the network of telcos?

10:10 Q3 - Do you think it is appropriate to compare the contribution of Big Tech and telcos in infrastructure, as suggested by some?

15:15 You have 1 minute to deliver a message to the powers that be in the EU on the 'fair contribution' discussion: make your case.

17:19 Outro

Key Quotes

"There has been the assumption that content providers are causing traffic on broadband networks (...) broadband users are requesting this traffic, however, they do already pay their broadband providers to deliver this traffic to them."

1 / 11

"Forcing content providers to pay broadband providers for delivering traffic to their subscribers, would basically just result in broadband providers getting paid twice for the same service."

2 / 11

"[Europe would] go against a number of net neutrality regimes that have been established in other parts of the world."

3 / 11

"Proposals to charge content providers for access to broadband subscribers are not new: they have generally been rejected as problematic."

4 / 11

"Adopting [network fees] would really (...) harm Europe's Digital Agenda, because it would go against its commitment to openness, and would really cause problems and break this competitive market for peering."

5 / 11

"Content and service providers are the key actors whose services and content drive (...) the demand that Europeans have for broadband access."

6 / 11

"Broadband providers do receive quite substantial benefits from the efforts of content providers to create content that (...) broadband [subscribers] actually want."

7 / 11

"[Network] fees actually are unlikely to increase investment in infrastructure from telecoms, and there are bigger barriers to deployment than lack of funding."

8 / 11

"[Network fees] will probably make Europe more vulnerable to attacks, because of a lack of [infrastructure] investment."

9 / 11

"This current proposal [on network fees] (...) can drastically undermine net neutrality in Europe and the world."

10 / 11

"There is no reason why Europe should not continue to lead by example (...) and avoid setting (...) a critical precedent with this proposal, one that would go against the net neutrality regulation it has chosen to uphold in the past several years."

11 / 11

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About Our Guest

Dr. Francesca Musiani | Associate Research Professor - French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS)

Dr. Francesca Musiani is Associate Research Professor at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). She is Deputy Director of the Center for Internet and Society of CNRS, which she co-founded in 2019. She is also an associate researcher at the Center for the sociology of innovation (i3/MINES ParisTech) and a Global Fellow at the Internet Governance Lab, American University in Washington, DC.

Francesca is the author, with Ksenia Ermoshina, of Concealing for Freedom: The Making of Encryption, Secure Messaging and Digital Liberties (April 2022, Mattering Press), and (co-)author and editor of numerous other articles and books. She is vice-president for research of Internet Society France, has collaborated with the French Parliament (2014-2015) and the French Council for Audiovisual Media (2015-2018), and is the recent co-author of a study on Internet fragmentation for the European Parliament (2022).

Relevant Resources

29 Internet experts and academics send a Letter to the European Commission urging to abandon the “Sending-Party-Network-Pays” proposal

European Parliamentary Research Service - Panel for the Future of Science and Technology - Study | 'Splinternets': Addressing the renewed debate on internet fragmentation

Dr. Francesca Musiani

1:1 with Francesca MusianiFrench National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS)