The telecommunications companies, short Telcos, demand a weakening of net neutrality. Otherwise, 5G would not be possible.
More and more games are moving towards mobile. Either through an additional app like in Black Desert or as a standalone game, such as Pokémon GO. Thus, we MMO players are also affected by the demands of these companies.
These include well-known names such as: Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, and Nokia. In total, there are 17 that sent the 5G manifesto to Brussels. In summary, it states that the existing regulations on net neutrality are not suitable for a technology called “Network Slicing”.
What is 5G?
The G ultimately stands for a “technology generation”; 3G means UMTS, 4G LTE, and 5G NGMN.
They all mean the same thing: data transmission via mobile communications. And each generation is correspondingly faster than the previous one. 5G is still in development; it’s only expected to be available in 2020. Nevertheless, it is already being presented at trade fairs; for example, Telekom achieved up to 70 Gbit/s connection speed.
As work is still ongoing, they turned to the EU. Some of the demands are still normal and to be expected. For example, the need for a uniform regulation of emission limits for electromagnetic signals. However, it is also mentioned that with the existing regulations on net neutrality, 5G would be financially too risky.
What is net neutrality?
Net neutrality ultimately means that service providers may not favor or disadvantage any service. A company like Netflix cannot try to get particularly “fast channels” by paying money to the providers. This way, “smaller companies or startups” still have a chance to compete with the big giants.
The regulatory authority BEREC has proposed a draft that aims to guarantee net neutrality and does not please the Telcos very much. Because according to this proposal, it is prohibited for providers to block customers’ access to parts of the internet.
Let’s take Entertain from Telekom as an example. This is a video streaming service. During throttling periods, Telekom did not count the volume of Entertain. There was no need to worry that using this service would reduce internet speed. Unlike offers from competitors: Amazon Video, Netflix, Maxdome, etc.
According to the BEREC draft, this would be prohibited. If an internet provider offers its own service, comparable offers from competitors may not be excluded or otherwise diminished in quality. Such a rule is, according to the telecommunications companies, too restrictive for 5G.
