The public consultation by EU telecom regulator Berec on its draft guidelines for enforcing the net neutrality regulations received almost half a million responses, Berec announced. Berec said it is working on processing the responses in order to incorporate the feedback in its final proposal, which should be submitted to the regulator's board on 25 August for a vote. Berec will organise a press conference in Brussels on 30 August to present the final guidelines.
Berec was tasked with writing detailed guidelines for national telecom regulators on how to enforce the neutrality rules which took effect at the end of April in the EU. In particular, the guidelines will outline how regulators should view traffic management techniques by internet providers and so-called 'specialised services', which are allowed to derogate from the rules in order to support certain business or public sector services and applications. The draft from Berec has already been heavily criticised by operators, saying the guidelines are "overly prescriptive" and go beyond Berec's mandate and the intentions of the legislation.
