The share of smartphone and mobile/wireless broadband plans with unlimited data volume continues to grow, gigabyte allowances of finite data volume plans continue to grow – but overall monthly prices continue to fall.

5-year mobile service revenue trends for 143 operators present in EU28 & OECD markets. Finnish operators that executed ‘unlimited everything’ strategies were the undisputed champions of the 4G era.

Are there any remedies that can remove the short and long term competitions concerns entirely?

Four months after Deutsche Telekom announced the acquisition of Tele2 by T-Mobile in the Netherlands and few days before the parties notified the 4 to 3 mobile merger to the European Commission Tele2 unexpectedly increased prices.

As we asserted back in 2015 the merger mandated so called ‘capacity’ MVNOs did not become effective competitors.

The gap between gigabyte prices in the 4 to 3 consolidated Austrian & German markets and prices in 4-MNO markets where no consolidation has taken place had substantially increased by September 2016

This is the first empirical evidence of the pro-competitive benefits of real net neutrality rules that ban price discrimination (zero-rating) – it leads to lower internet usage prices and higher volume caps!

On the 27th January 2015 ACM, The Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets has fined Vodafone for violating the Dutch net neutrality law.

On the 27th November 2014, last Thursday, on the European Council the representatives of the 28 EU Member States discussed, among other topics, the proposed Europe-wide regulation of net neutrality. The Dutch representative stressed that the regulation should explicitly ban vertical price discrimination of specific internet services, content and applications. Slovenia, Hungary and several other Member States have endorsed the Dutch proposal and asked for the explicit ban of price discrimination in the context of the net neutrality regulation.