European developments July 2017
Out-Law reported that new European rules on the portability of online content services will come into effect on 20th March 2018. The rules are designed to improve EU consumers' access to online content that they have already subscribed to when they are temporarily present in another EU country; see this previous post for further background.
The European Commission opened a call for proposals under the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) to stimulate and support the deployment of European Digital Service Infrastructures (DSIs) covering eInvoicing, eTranslation, Europeana and public open data. Up to €24 million will be made available to meet the needs of public administrations, businesses and citizens in their cross-border activities. The deadline for submission is 28th November 2017.
The Commission also launched a public consultation on transformation of health and care in the Digital Single Market. It investigates the need for policy measures that will promote digital innovation for better health and care in Europe to feed into a new Policy Communication to be adopted by the end of 2017. The consultation is open until 12th October 2017.
ENISA, the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security, published the findings from its latest cyber crisis exercise: over 1,000 participants from all 28 EU Member States, along with Switzerland and Norway, joined last year in a simulated crisis which lasted for over 6 months, culminating in a 48‑hour event on 13th and 14th October 2016.
Analysys Mason suggested that to implement 5G network slicing in the European Union, operators will need to work closely with regulators to find an efficient way to agree that the enhanced quality of service (QoS) is necessary, to monitor the performance of Internet access services, and to understand whether slices cause any detrimental impact on that performance. Network slicing is a form of network virtualisation in which different services with different needs can be provided with different performance characteristics (such as latency, priority, or throughput) on a single physical network.
Speaking at the Digital-born Media Carnival in Montenegro, Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) Chair for 2017 Sebastien Soriano emphasised that European rules on net neutrality can no longer be rebutted and that national regulators and BEREC should make sure that the rules are properly and consistently implemented across Europe.
The European Commission published annual country open internet reports from national regulators; see this previous post for details of Ofcom’s UK report.
