EU Plans To Extend Some Telecom Rules To Web-Based Providers

The European Union is planning to extend telecom rules covering security and confidentiality of communications to web services such as Microsoft's Skype and Facebook's WhatsApp which could restrict how they use encryption, reports Reuters. From the report: The rules currently only apply to telecoms providers such as Vodafone and Orange. According to an internal European Commission document seen by Reuters, the EU executive wants to extend some of the rules to web companies offering calls and messages over the Internet. Telecoms companies have long complained that web groups such as Alphabet Inc's Google, Microsoft and Facebook are more lightly regulated despite offering similar services and have called for the EU's telecoms-specific rules to be repealed. They have also said that companies such as Google and Facebook can make money from the use of customer data. Under the existing "ePrivacy Directive", telecoms operators have to protect users' communications and ensure the security of their networks and may not keep customers' location and traffic data.Reuters adds that the exact confidentiality obligations for web firms would still have to be defined.

If it looks like a phone company.

[currently_awake]

If your business is providing phone service, you should be regulated as a phone company. The law should not change because "over the internet".

Re:

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Keep your regulations out of my voluntary exchange and contracts.

The trouble happens when your deal is no longer voluntary in practice, because the service is becoming essential to normal life but the service provider(s) available to you are all imposing undesirable terms so you have no option to choose an alternative.

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[mishehu]

Except what layers of the OSI model do Vodafone and Orange provide, and what levels of the OSI model do Google and Microsoft provide? Perhaps the confusion you are experiencing is due to the fact that you are referring to Orange and Vodafone as "telephone companies". That is a legacy term which is, for all intents and purposes, anachronistic nowadays. Even TFS refers to them as "telecoms". But they are not the same as Google and Microsoft.

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[mmiscool]

The problem with doing this is the cost. Google and Skype offer there services for free in many cases and use on the data extracted from those services to make money. To regulate in a different manner where profit from offering those free services goes away could impact consumers in the end negatively.

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[Reaper9889]

Well, you are not allowed to sign your self into slavery, so there are business deals you cannot make. Is privacy a good enough reason to make a transaction illigal? Note that Europe cares more about privacy than the US, so the culture might matter for the answer.

Also, you can call peoples phones through skype, so it is not really clear that all involved people will know that their conversation is used for ads. Is that fair?

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[Opportunist]

What is a "phone service"? The wire? The signaling across it? The logic behind the signaling? The protocol stacked on top of the logic? The application that uses that protocol? Do I have to provide only one of them? Some of them? All of them? When does it start being a "phone service"? When you can make phone calls? Great, then I just provide the cables, signals, logic and protocol and am not subject to regulations yet because you have to put an application on top to be able to make that call.

So when should

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[Richard_at_work]

Virtual Network Operators (companies which sell an end user service but dont operate any equipment themselves, rather lease service off of actual telecoms companies) are still covered under these rules, so if you are providing the service over the internet then I dont see why you shouldnt also fall under the rules...

Including Wiretaps?

[jjoelc]

How about the requirement that telcos allow for and assist in lawful wiretaps? The trouble with accepting part of the regulations is that you have to accept all of them, not just the parts you like.

Re:

[jjoelc]

Damnit, should have read the entire thread, others have already asked this much better than I did...