The BIPT is publishing the fifth annual report regarding the monitoring of net neutrality in Belgium.
Some highlights:
- At the beginning of this reporting period the increase in Internet traffic due to the covid- 19 pandemic stabilised and no significant new peak in Internet traffic was observed. However, the BIPT kept organising periodic discussions with the main operators in the sector as well as a reporting by the latter.
- The BIPT performed a fact-finding survey regarding “unlimited” Internet offers on the Belgian market, to which a fair use policy (FUP) or another form of data restriction applies. Such combination seemed to occur often. The BIPT also found that in some mobile tariff plans with an “unlimited data” offer, a high percentage of users faced the FUP. In the next reporting period, the BIPT will determine whether measures must be linked to the findings and if so, which ones.
- The BIPT also analysed the data on data consumption of all mobile offers of Proximus, Telenet and Orange Belgium that contain a zero rating component. On the basis of this analysis, the BIPT considered that additional interventions were necessary towards these three ISPs. Among the proposed options, all contacted ISPs chose to open their zero rating platform to all competing applications within the same category.
- By and large the BIPT is of the opinion that there are no major reasons for concern in Belgium as far as open Internet access is concerned:
- No cases of service or application blocking in the network have been found.
- the BIPT did not receive any complaint concerning the observance of Regulation 2015/2120.
- As for the end-users choice, the mobile data volumes included in the ISP offers, not only for mobile products but also for “fixed” Internet, increased once again, in order to meet the changes in the data traffic.