BEREC: Draft report on over the top (OTT) services says ‘there is no need of necessary level playing field between telecom operator and internet-based competitors’. Submissions open until 2 November

The Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) has opened a consultation on its draft report on OTT services, published yesterday. The consultation will close on 2 November. The draft report considers that companies that offer OTT telecom-like services such as Skype and Whatsapp, should not be necessarily regulated as claimed by traditional telecom…

European Commission seeks stakeholders’ views on online platforms, intermediaries, data, cloud and collaborative economy

The European Commission opened a public consultation on 25 September on “regulatory environment for platforms, online intermediaries, data and cloud computing and the collaborative economy”. The consultation represents a unique opportunity for online operators to present their views to the European Commission during the preparatory stages of upcoming EU policy and legislation. Indeed, the Commission…

The European Commission has published its final report on standards terms and performance criteria in service level agreements for cloud computing services

The European Commission has published its final report on standards terms and performance criteria in service level agreements for cloud computing services. The study was carried out by time.lex and Spark from January 2013 to June 2015. The study aimed to identify the rules governing Service Level Agreements (“SLAs”) in different Member States and to…

Advocate General’s opinion on personal data transfers under the EU/US Safe Harbour scheme

The European Commission’s Decision 2000/520/EC of 26 July 2000 (the “Decision”) holds that personal data transferred from the EU to the US under the EU/US Safe Harbour scheme is adequately protected. On 23 September 2015, the Advocate General (the “AG”) advised the European Court of Justice (the “ECJ”) to decide for the invalidity of the…

Tim Cowen quoted in Bloomberg BNA’s Electronic Commerce & Law Report on damage caused by the slow moving pace of the European Commission’s antitrust investigation of Google

Bloomberg BNA’s Electronic Commerce & Law Report quoted Preiskel & Co’s Tim Cowen on the slow moving pace of the European Commission’s antitrust investigation of Google. Tim Cowen expressed the view that the Commission is taking a great deal of time to gather evidence, which does not work very well for fast-moving markets. According to…

Daniel Preiskel and Natalia Porto were interviewed by Lexis®PSL on market consolidation across the mobile networks

With the recent announcement of a string of high-profile mergers and acquisitions in the telecoms sector, Daniel Preiskel and Natalia Porto were interviewed by Lexis®PSL on the effects and challenges of consolidations in the industry. The full content of the interview was published on Lexis®PSL In-house Adviser on 11 August 2015.