INTERVIEW DE VINCENT TEISSIER, COGENT

Yes, of course. An internet transit operator is first and foremost a telecommunications operator that operates a network, generally a fiber optic network that is usually global. Its role is to interconnect with as many networks as possible to provide internet connectivity to its customers. The customers of a transit operator are, on one hand, internet service providers, because an ISP in a given country offers internet access to its end users but itself needs to access the internet, which it does through the transit operator. On the other side of the chain, there are also service providers and online content or application providers who want to distribute their content, applications, and services worldwide.

Yes. As a transit operator, we may have a somewhat different perspective on net neutrality compared to other traditional players. For us, net neutrality is a matter of traffic flows. To respect users' free choice, traffic flows on the internet must flow without restriction. They must flow without restriction between end users on one hand, and between end users and online service, application, and content platforms on the other. As soon as someone in the chain, particularly the internet service provider, influences these traffic flows, there is no longer net neutrality. The stakes of the net neutrality debate are multiple. First, they are economic. Some internet service providers, especially those from European incumbent operators, face a dilemma. They see a decline in their traditional access revenue while needing to invest in networks to carry growing internet traffic. When they try to replace these declining access revenues with revenues from new services, often by vertically integrating into content and online applications, the internet subjects these same services to global competition. So they tend to intentionally degrade the quality of their internet access services to steer end users toward their own content platforms and services rather than those available on the internet. This seems natural from their perspective, but it raises economic questions about the global competitiveness of services offered to end users, and it also poses risks of crowding out competition in the online application and content market by leveraging their quasi-dominant position in the internet access market. There are also societal issues. Do we really want to limit innovation and the development of new services and activities on the internet for essentially economic reasons that benefit a few national champions? Do we really want to limit end users' free choice, or even their free expression? Do we want to build a high-speed highway that leads to a dead end—the access provider's own service platform—without giving access to the global internet? That is a real question. And if access providers were to impose usage restrictions for technical reasons, the least they could do, it seems to us, would be to inform end users of these usage restrictions, if they are technically necessary, which remains to be demonstrated.

Yes, there are technical issues. We often hear about practices like throttling traffic flows, limiting speeds, or limiting volumes within ISPs' networks. But we less often hear about problems at the interconnection with other internet networks, particularly internet transit operators. It turns out that ISPs from the incumbent operators I mentioned earlier limit interconnection capacity between their network and the network of internet transit operators like Cogent, whenever the transit operator sends them more traffic than they receive. In other words, transit operators allow ISPs' customers to access the content of their choice. This poses a real problem, and it is all the more paradoxical because transit operators contribute to the success of the internet by providing access networks and online applications, content, and services with the bandwidth and flows necessary for the development of their activity, ensuring their global distribution under economic conditions that are compatible with the model of innovative internet startups. In a way, one could say that transit operators are the guarantors of net neutrality.

It seems important to us that public authorities establish clear rules, particularly for net neutrality regarding interconnection between networks—specifically between those same incumbent access operators and internet transit operators. The terms of interconnection are crucial. Transit operators can offer ISPs more efficient interconnection terms than content platforms could. Current legislation already imposes obligations for interconnection between operators to deliver end-to-end services under quality conditions satisfactory to the end user. If this proves insufficient, the European regulator should specify the terms of interconnection within the framework of net neutrality. It seems important to us to act upstream, before traffic flows even enter the ISPs' networks, to prevent the risk of distortion of competition, or even a dominant position in the field of electronic communications and related markets.