Reporting Policies of ISPs: Do General Terms and Conditions (GTCs) Match with the Reality?

Abstract

Technological progress allows Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to carry out network management practices in a discriminatory fashion without being detected by their customers. This creates an opportunity that providers will exploit this information asymmetry in an opportunistic way by blocking and/or throttling certain services and applications without informing their customers in an adequate fashion that their Internet service is a restricted one. The main objective of this paper is to investigate the extent to which reporting policies – as implemented through the General Terms and Conditions (GTCs) – of selected ISPs match with the display of discriminatory behavior by those ISPs as shown by Grove & Agic, (2012). Our analysis examines whether ISPs in Europe and the USA are informing their subscribers adequately about discriminatory traffic management. We, thus, analyze GTCs, signed between ISPs and their subscribers by applying a cross-country/provider approach, focusing on three main aspects of the contractual agreement: (1) availability of service, (2) obligations of the customers and (3) the contractual agreements concerning any intervention in services by ISPs. First results show that no significant evidence of contractual transparency regarding the actual adverse deployment of Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) and similar traffic management tools by the ISPs could be found. This supports the general goal to promote transparency regarding ISPs´ traffic management routines by suggesting compulsory rules that should oblige providers to make more accurate statements in terms of their general business practices. For policy makers, this is yet another factor that needs to be taken into account regarding potential regulatory interventions in this field and an explicit network neutrality stipulation may be required in order to safeguard the openness of the Internet and protect consumers´ basic rights of information and well-grounded choice.