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The European Commission presented its long-awaited Digital Networks Act (DNA) on Wednesday, unveiling reforms meant to modernise the European Union’s telecom sector by reorganising the bloc’s fragmented rules.
The Commission wants to accelerate the rollout of high-speed fibre and 5G, and reduce dependency on foreign tech. Yet the final proposal appears diluted, and has left both the telecom industry and big tech dissatisfied – highlighting the difficulty of reconciling Europe’s ambitions for an unified single telecommunications market with the bloc’s political realities.
At the heart of the tension is the issue of whether tech giants like Google and Netflix should help pay for the networks that carry their data. After intense transatlantic pressure, the Commission backed away from imposing direct “network fees.”
Instead, it proposed a voluntary conciliation mechanism to settle disputes, a move dismissed by telecom operators as a “continuation of the status quo” and criticised by the tech industry as a “backdoor” to the imposition of fees in the future.
A coalition from the creative industry gathering stakeholders from the cinema, sport leagues, music, video games and TV sectors called Creativity Works! also echoed those worries.
“Any mechanism that intervenes in commercial arrangements between creative content providers and telecom companies risks having unintended consequences on the significant investments in creative and cultural works.” wrote Ann Becker, the head of Creativity Works.
She told Euronews that the initiative could threaten the European creative sectors and their ability to provide diverse content and services to European consumers.
Tech Commissioner Henna Virkkunen told reporters that she believes that the “cooperation” approach is working, but kept the door open for future changes.
“Of course if we see that something is not working and there’s big problems then we will have to always think that how we are fixing the things,” she said.
The DNA also pushes for greater EU-level coordination, notably through a single authorisation for satellite networks like SpaceX’s Starlink and harmonised rules for managing radio spectrum.
While intended to create a true single market for connectivity these centralising measures are likely to face resistance from member states wary of ceding control and revenue.