Peering: Consumer advocates mobilize against Telekom's "network brake"

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Deutsche Telekom customers repeatedly complain that some websites do not load, audio or video streams are bumpy or even break off. Software downloads? Yawningly slow. Demanding online gaming: not even a thought. Online forums are full of them: the updates when setting up a Windows 11 laptop for the first time took five to six hours, for example. One gamer complains that the Eve online servers are located in England and that the traffic often has to pass through the network in the Netherlands. Tracking the data packets showed that Deutsche Telekom had massively delayed everything.

The civil rights organization Epicenter.works, the Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte (GFF), the Bundesverband der Verbraucherzentralen (vzbv) and Stanford professor Barbara van Schewick want to do something about this and have launched the Netzbremse campaign. They write on the website: “Telekom is creating artificial bottlenecks at the access points to the Telekom network.” Financially strong services that pay the telecommunications giant “get through quickly and work great”. Content providers who cannot afford this “are slowed down and often load slowly or not at all”.

According to the consumer protection activists, this means: “Deutsche Telekom decides which services we can use without any problems, thereby violating net neutrality.” They are therefore planning a complaint to the Federal Network Agency (BNetzA), which monitors compliance with the EU regulation for an open Internet in Germany. To this end, they are looking for further customer testimonials, relevant measurement data or information from whistleblowers.

Only those who pay are well connected

The background to the Internet problems is Telekom's peering policy – i.e., the interconnection of Telekom with other networks and larger data exchange nodes. Without such interconnections, an Internet access service could not function at all. If you were only able to access a provider's own network, it would not be a superordinate Internet.

The generally established peering practice is that a network operator creates more capacity if there is a risk of congestion on the data highway. In most cases, no money is involved, as the expanded connection is in the interests of all parties. However, some very large operators deviate from this principle for monetary reasons.

Everyone in the industry knows that “you have to pay Telekom for Internet traffic that you send or receive via them”, complained Dutch network expert Rudolf van der Berg years ago. The former German monopolist offers the majority of the world “overflowing network nodes”. Only those who conclude costly special peering contracts with the company get good connectivity.

The network brake activists also accuse Telekom of deliberately degrading connections to be able to cash in. Telekom is the only German provider to ask end customers and online services to pay, i.e. to collect twice. This contradicts the requirements for a “neutral, free and fast Internet – for all”.

Telekom: “Technical incomprehension”

“The accusations made are false and demonstrate a lack of legal and technical understanding,” Deutsche Telekom counters. The company is not violating net neutrality, nor is network access for its own customers being impaired. On the contrary, the Group wins all network tests and was recently awarded – as “provider of the best Internet” for the 17th time in a row –.

Thomas Lohninger from Epicenter.works does not want to be fobbed off with this. “The problem is widespread and has been known for years,” he emphasizes to heise online. Telekom customers are suffering from the artificial bandwidth shortage and their freedom of choice is being violated.

“We will set out the details in our written submission to the BNetzA, which will be submitted in the coming weeks,” Lohninger announced. “We will then also make our views known in detail.” Telekom likes to respond to criticism with insinuations: “When we criticized their stream-on offer in 2017, we were also accused of not knowing our way around. The ECJ proved us right at the time.”

“Dominant market players”

Thomas King, Chief Technology Officer at the world's largest Internet exchange De-CIX in Frankfurt, confirms challenges in peering without naming Telekom: “We are currently observing a trend in which large market players are increasingly using their dominant position to monetize not only their Internet access business for private and business customers, but also network interconnection with often smaller networks.”

As a result, previously free peering between different network operators and, for example, content delivery networks (CDNs) or Internet service providers (ISPs) is becoming chargeable. Not all CDNs or ISPs can or want to afford this type of “paid peering”. This development impairs Internet quality, especially for private users.

“Free public peering remains essential to ensure high quality for private customers,” emphasizes King. However, the market for interconnection is fundamentally self-regulating, which has worked very well, at least so far. The insider emphasizes: “We at DE-CIX stand for a free Internet and are therefore generally in favour of as little intervention by higher-level authorities as possible.”

Frederic Ufer, Managing Director of the industry association VATM, which brings together competitors of the market leader, welcomed “the fact that the 'netzbremse.de' campaign is taking a detailed look at Telekom's actions. We are also receiving complaints from VATM member companies.” Further developments will therefore be monitored closely.

The broadband association Breko pointed out that Telekom is campaigning for a data toll at EU level. If such a cost-sharing scheme for the big tech companies were to be introduced after all, this – would have tobenefit “all companies that invest in modern networks”, for example via a fund –.

Jürgen Bering from the GFF recently explained at a conference of the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) that the campaigners had already received over 100 individual user complaints on the subject. In the EU, the right for end users to obtain information from the internet, regardless of origin or destination, is enshrined in law with net neutrality. The regulatory authority “perhaps needs a little push”.

(mki)