Net neutrality: alliance files complaint against Telekom

Deutsche Telekom is drawing sharp criticism from an alliance from civil society: together, the Austrian digital rights organization Epicenter.works, the German Federation of Consumer Organizations (vzbv), the Society for Civil Liberties (GFF) and Stanford professor Barbara von Schewick have filed a complaint with the Federal Network Agency. Telekom is creating "artificial bottlenecks at the access points to its network", the alliance announced on Monday.

Peering and transit

The background to the complaint is Telekom's peering and transit practice, which in the opinion of the complainants violates the European legal framework. This concerns the question of the conditions under which data traffic enters those sub-networks that ensure access to the end customer. With a good 17 million fixed network contracts and almost 70 million mobile phone contracts in Germany, Deutsche Telekom is the clear market leader in this country. In the view of the critics, it can control which applications from which providers work smoothly for customers and which do not.

"Deutsche Telekom is the only Internet provider in Germany that artificially reduces and increases the cost of interconnecting its network with the rest of the Internet to maximize profits," says Thomas Lohninger from Epicenter.works. "The prices announced by Telekom for interconnection are many times higher than the market price." The suspicion that Telekom is creating a so-called two-sided market through artificial scarcity, in which both connection owners and providers are being asked to pay, is nothing new.

Telekom: "Accusations inaccurate"

The accusations are "inaccurate and demonstrate a lack of legal and technical understanding", explained a Telekom spokesperson. "We are certain that the Federal Network Agency will also find this to be the case and are looking forward to a review." For months, the complainants had only collected a few unverified allegations. Considering the large number of customers, this is already significant, according to the Telekom spokesperson.

With the complaint it has now submitted, the alliance is relying on a report by the Joint EU Regulatory Body of the telecoms regulators, which was published at the end of 2024. The report cites pseudonymized examples, some of which the regulators consider to be possible violations of European net neutrality obligations.

The supervisory authority for the telecommunications sector must now examine the extent to which the alliance's complaint against Deutsche Telekom is actually justified and the behavior is to be classified as unlawful. The alliance is calling on users via its website to join the complaint and, if possible, to contribute their measurement data. (akn)