internet lab | Podcast Season: 1 - Episode: 6 / Release date: 17-11-2022

1:1 with Thomas Lohninger
epicenter.works

Episode Highlights

00:00 Intro

01:09 Q1 - How do you interpret the relationship between users accessing more content and services online and the impact this may have on telcos?

02:18 Q2 - What are the inherent dangers (if any) of Big Tech being requested to pay for the network of telcos?

05:16 Q3 - Do you think it is appropriate to compare the contribution of Big Tech and telcos in infrastructure, as suggested by some?

09:45 You have 1 minute to deliver a message to the powers that be in the EU on the 'fair contribution' discussion: make your case.

11:01 Outro

Key Quotes

"The content that we see online is the reason why people buy Internet access. It's not as if the networks of telecom operators are so great by themselves."

1 / 10

"There is no free riding, everybody who is either using or offering a service [online] has to pay for that."

2 / 10

"The net neutrality protections that we have in Europe, give everybody with an Internet subscription, the right to offer new services of their choosing."

3 / 10

"Telecom operators (...) not only want to get money from their own subscribers, but also (...) from the services that their subscribers are accessing. So basically a double sided market where they get paid for doing one thing, just double."

4 / 10

"[The fair share idea,] would really give the telecom operators the luxury of making money by basically just sitting on their hands."

5 / 10

"Experiments with (...) how [the Internet] has worked for the past decades are very dangerous and should not be done lightly (...) without any public consultation, any listening to regulators, any due diligence, that would just be really dangerous."

6 / 10

"Data that's sent to European networks is requested by paying Internet customers, people in Europe that are already paying to use that service."

7 / 10

"When we make [Big Tech] pay, they will be the only ones that can pay. And they will be the only ones that have the service quality that distinguishes them from all of their competitors, which is the worst thing that Europe could do."

8 / 10

"Back away from the ETNO ideas, because there are now so many stakeholders who have raised their concerns, that it would simply be a very captured European Commission if they would go along with that idea."

9 / 10

"If European politicians don't want to follow the example of Donald Trump, and abolish net neutrality, (...) we need to rethink this whole debate and hopefully come back to a more factual discussion about real problems on the open Internet."

10 / 10

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About Our Guest

Thomas Lohninger | Executive Director - epicenter.works

Thomas Lohninger was a programmer and anthropologist in his former life. Digital rights had been his hobby until it became a job when he intensively accompanied the EU Net Neutrality Regulation as Policy Advisor for European Digital Rights (EDRi). Thomas was one of the driving forces behind the www.savetheinternet.eu campaign and has a strong work focus on net neutrality, data protection, and mass surveillance. Since 2010 he has played an active part at epicenter.works and since 2014 he is the executive director of the association. He also writes on Netzpolitik.org, is a regular guest in the Podcast Logbuch:Netzpolitik and a non-residential Fellow of the Center for Internet and Society at the Stanford Law School. Since 2019 he is in the board of EDRi and since 2020 Vice President of the EU umbrella of digital rights NGOs.

Relevant Resources

Net Neutrality: Myths from the Telecom Industry and Responses from Civil Society - A Guide to the Debate about Network Access Fees aka. “Fair Share” (November, 2022)

epicenter.works

European Digital Rights (EDRi)

Savetheinternet.eu

Center for Internet & Society (Stanford Law School)

Thomas Lohninger

1:1 with Thomas Lohningerepicenter.works