The Norwegian Communications Authority (Nkom) said it sees no reason to take action against Telia Norway's zero-rated Music Freedom service, following an analysis by Nkom in terms of EU net neutrality rules. Nkom said it has critical comments to make on several factors, but has concluded that there are no grounds to intervene at this point in time. The watchdog added that it will closely follow the development of zero-rating in the Norwegian market.
Nkom said that zero-rating limits people's choice and increases entry barriers for content and application providers. Zero-rating means that selected content and applications does not count towards the data cap, typically in mobile subscriptions.
Telia introduced Music Freedom for a wide selection of its mobile internet access subscriptions in June 2017. Nkom said one of is concerns is that Music Freedom is being offered by an ISP with considerable influence on the mobile internet access market. Another concern is that the content and application providers covered are relatively limited to larger and well-known ones.
Nkom added that zero-rating limits choice in particular because of the relatively small data caps in proportion to the price offered in Norway compared with other countries.
The scale of zero-rating practices is increasing on the Norwegian market but its scale is still limited in the mobile internet access market, and alternative offers without zero-rating are available to end-users. For these reasons, Nkom has come to the conclusion that there are no grounds to intervene at present.
The scale of zero-rating has increased markedly in the national market after the European net neutrality rules replaced the Norwegian net neutrality guidelines. This increases the need for Nkom to follow-up zero-rating offers in the future.
If zero-rating practices in the market do not function satisfactorily, especially if the scale increases significantly, it is likely that Nkom would have to reassess its analysis.
Nkom refers to the decision of the Norwegian parliament, Stortinget, to seek to maintain the Norwegian net neutrality policy within the framework of the European net neutrality rules. This will define the premises for Nkom's assessment of zero-rating in the market over time.
