Earlier this year, Austrian and German NGOs filed a complaint with the German Federal Network Agency against Deutsche Telekom, alleging that the internet service provider (ISP) is creating paid fast lanes to access websites.
On Wednesday (5 November), the groups held a talk to outline their complaint and why it's important for Europe's net neutrality.
The NGOs consists of Epicenter.works, the Society for Civil Rights, the Federation of German Consumer Organisations, plus Stanford professor Barbara van Schewick, arguing that Deutsche Telekom is creating a two-tiered internet through having web hosts pay extra for Telekom’s users.
The EU net neutrality law, “prohibits ISPs from treating traffic differently for commercial reasons. And that's exactly what's happening here,” said professor of net neutrality law van Schewick.
Net neutrality is the principle that ISPs should treat all internet traffic equally, regardless of where the data is going, and the activists see the Deutsche Telekom case as a reason why Europe needs these rules.
Typically, when a person connects to an online service like Netflix, the ISP connects to the network hosting the service, and the data flows freely. As traffic increases, the ISP and the host work together to increase capacity, so every user gets the same fast connection.
However, citing customer service complaints and first-hand accounts, the NGOs allege that, instead of increasing traffic capacity for free, Deutsche Telekom will ask the host network to pay them a fee to increase capacity, which is against the industry standard of free data exchanges — but not unheard of.
The main issue arising from this practice comes from Deutsche Telekom's sheer size and dominance in the German domestic market, as it controls 40 percent of the ISP market, according to the telecom consumer website DSLweb in its 2025 Germany broadband report.
Internet platforms want Deutsche Telekom's customers to access their services without interruption, meaning the company can leverage their vast user base to make companies pay for access; the big players can pay the fee, while smaller ones cannot.
“This systematically disadvantages European companies and cements the dominance of large American platforms,” pointed out van Schewick.
In the real world, the outcome of the alleged problem looks like a slowly loading webpage for services that don’t pay.
This practice, NGOs say, is in direct violation of the EU net neutrality law, because it is creating commercial fast lanes that will unequally affect how data flows through the internet.
The EU codified the bloc's net neutrality principles with the Open Internet Regulation in 2015, and the European Court of Justice slightly expanded these rules in rulings from 2021 ; requiring ISPs treat data equally, irrespective of content, application, service, sender and receiver.
The experts illustrated why these rules are important.
“It becomes a question of democracy, if I can pay in order to have my information reach people, in comparison to others that cannot pay that money” said Jürgen Bering from the Society for Civil Rights.
Bering highlighted how restricting connectivity hurts rights to free speech, and information.
Thomas Lohninger, from Epicenter.works, said net neutrality “impacts people's daily lives, their education, their economy, and their rights to participate in a lively democracy.” He added “net neutrality is an essential right in our information society.”
Despite Deutsche Telekom's practices, however, the European internet remains largely open and working, under current regulations.
The Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications found in 2024 that this market was functioning well and run by competition, with limited regulatory intervention.
Although these rules could be reexamined under the proposed Digital Networks Act, which aims to update regulations, coming during a wave of initiatives aimed at increasing Europe's competitiveness.
“The upcoming DNA aims to deliver on those ambitions by proposing a modern, simplified and more agile regulatory framework that supports innovation,” said a commission spokesperson to EUobserver.
The experts urged the commission to keep the current rules.
“We do believe that existing net neutrality law gives us everything we need to tackle this problem,” said Lohninger
EUobserver reached out to Deutsche Telekom for comment, but they did not respond in time for publication.
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Owen Carpenter-Zehe is a junior reporter from the US at EUobserver, covering European politics.
Owen Carpenter-Zehe is a junior reporter from the US at EUobserver, covering European politics.