Austrian regulator RTR announced that toperator A1 must change its zero-rated daa offer Free Stream to make it compliant with network neutrality requirements.
A1's tariff Free Stream offers selected streaming services without charging for the data. The regulatory commission TKK examined the tariff and concluded that A1 may offer Free Stream. The product itself does not violate the EU's net neutrality regulation. However, the operator has to make some changes in the way traffic is shaped.
So far, A1 has been throttling the speed of the streaming services covered by the Free Stream service. Users could download videos only at limited speeds and watch videos in a lower resolution. Putting consumers at a disadvantage for these services was found to violate network neutrality regulation, which explicitly bans such traffic management measures in the data streams of end users.
As the Chairman of RTR Johannes Gungl said, TKK's decision is not only about consumers, but also provides a guarantee for the offer of streaming providers in the long run, because "why should a platform not provide unrestricted videos in high resolution when it wants to."
Zero rating itself was not the subject of the decision. Not using data for certain services (from the data limit) is not explicitly forbidden by the net neutrality regulation and can be admitted within certain limits.
The TKK's decision is in line with the positions of regulators of other EU member states.
