Slovenia’s regulator AKOS has deemed the country’s two biggest operators - Telekom Slovenije and Si.mobil – guilty of contravening net neutrality legislation set out by the Electronic Communications Act.
It has been found that Telekom Slovenije and Si.mobil zero-rated traffic from particular services – respectively, the music streaming service Deezer and the cloud storage service Hanger Mapa. This means that customers were not charged for using a set limit of data on these services, meaning that end users were more likely to use them than competing services.
In this way, zero-rating particular services essentially encourages their use, thereby offering them preferential treatment. Telekom Slovenije and Si.mobil have been given 60 days to cease zero-rating traffic from any particular services.
The ruling apparently settles recent debate in Slovenia over whether zero rating was technically illegal according to the Electronic Communications Act. Slovenia is one of only a very few countries that has enshrined net neutrality in its national legislation regarding communications.
