What is the actual dispute? I can't isolate it out from the whine of Meta saying DT are baddies (which maybe they are but I can't find where they say that).
For a very long time, there were substantial issues with getting traffic from Hetzner to Deutsche Telekom for similar reasons. At the time, when you rented a server at Hetzner you could actually pay extra to get 'premium' routing to Deutsche Telekom though Core Backbone (AS33891), which did make the ransom payments (unlike Hetzner itself).
They were also hard at work undermining net neutrality for a while by zero-rating some companies on their mobile network until they were stopped by courts.
I'm not sure what's going on in this specific case, but I'm not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.
This would go against Net neutrality principles but I don't see any facts which support those claims by FB. So it's not clear what this is all about when it seems it broke down during contract renegotians.
This seems dubious though given the German market is extremely well regulated. Also I've never heard of a provider requesting payments for delivering externally hosted services. Maybe some special cases might exists for things like Netflix bandwidth tunnels with ISP's but that's usually a request from the service provider to have special traffic lanes.
Edit : DT customers are being limited.
It ran this same shakedown routine on an academic network in the middle of the pandemic.
It's run this against Hetzner.
It's the same playbook that Comcast/Verizon/Time Warner used vs Netflix/Cogent/League of Legends in 2014.
https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2024/09/a-deutsche-teleko..."
* https://web.archive.org/web/20151208135240/http://wiki.hetzn...
The reputation of DT(AG) is not good:
* https://old.reddit.com/r/networking/comments/3uuulg/this_is_...
* https://old.reddit.com/r/networking/comments/1fpe8p9/meta_de...
Meta is ending its direct peering relationship with Deutsche Telekom due to the company's actions that undermine net neutrality and put the open internet at risk.
Deutsche Telekom is using its market power to potentially restrict its subscribers' access to internet services that do not pay the company additional fees, creating a de facto paywall.
Importantly: This is Facebook complaining, hoping to pressure Deutche Telekom through public humiliation. They have peering agreements elsewhere where strict access to Facebook without open Internet access is allowed. So if shutting down open Internet access benefits Facebook, they're happy.
1. DT no longer peers with Facebook for free, and Facebook isn’t willing to pay? A bit more latency for Facebook users using DT, probably a small drop in Facebook visits from DT due to that, but overall, big whoop.
2. That + DT throttles Facebook traffic aggressively in retaliation? That would count as “undermining net neutrality principles” and bad in general. But it’s the kind of thing that already happens in a lot of places generally speaking (don’t know about Germany specifically), and we should push telecom and/or antitrust regulators to prohibit it, but I’d say there’s no urgency here.
3. That + DT sells customers some sort of “Internet except without Facebook, pay more to get Facebook” or “Internet except with slow Facebook, pay more to get fast Facebook”? That would officially be a Very Bad Thing, worth boycotts and other kinds of shouting from the rooftops.
The post is very very unclear about what’s actually happened. The actual court decision is about something like 1, but the talk of a “de facto paywall” would imply 3. Overall, I feel trampled by a Gish-galloping cavalry regiment here.
The problem is DT keeps its transit routes congested or artificially limits how much traffic a transit provider can deliver.
So now when FB moves to transit, will DT widen those connections or will it keep them narrow to try to make Facebook's applications get terrible enough performance that Facebook will pay DT.
It's a showdown. DT wants to get paid twice for the same service, once by its subscribers and once by every app and website on the planet.
https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2024/09/a-deutsche-teleko..."
This isn't quite correct, and thats why I was complaining about the article missing essential information because it's really misleading and makes you think that that is what is happening.
It turns out what happens is Meta wanted is a price cut of 40% on a contract with DT, DT was only open for 16% and decided to move to a different provider. Also (and here other sources where also a bit unclear) there was some curt ruling which boils down to yes the prices from DT are legal and Meta has to pay if they continue to use it (which they did while trying to get a 40% price cut). What is unclear here is who sued for what. FB trying to force lower prices by ab(?) using net neutrality laws? DT suing because FB not paying for continous usage of the service while discussing a new contract? Something else? Did they sue or was it a declaratory action? etc.
Most important this might not have as much to do with net neutrality as it seems.
Net neutrality is about not unfairly prioritizing some traffic over other traffic. It's also somewhat about you not having to pay every network provider your traffic goes through. But it is _not_ about content providers not paying at all for network traffic, they still pay the provider which connects them to the internet for traffic the same way you as a private person do (just probably much less).
And that is where they wanted a 40% price cut as far as I can tell. And that is also where they then moved to a different provider by now and where they don't have to pay DT for traffic flowing from their new provider through the DT network to customers (as far as I can tell).
So if you look at it from that perspective it's FB trying to abuse net neutrality by labeling traffic from their servers as transit traffic (but also some articles say the judges said it doesn't matter weather it's transit traffic or not in that case, which makes it even more unclear what exactly the curt case was about, probably some contractual clauses in their previous contract in which case it probably really doesn't matter)
* Contract law: Meta lost a court case about a contract for IP-Transit with DT. This is legit and correct - they continued using the private interconnect and by german law this requires you to pay. This is clear cut.
* Telekom peering policy / brigandage: DT is the only major provider that is not present at any IX in Europe. They don't do any public peering. My local small ISP has better IX connectivity than DT while having 1/100th of the userbase. They require from hosters/content providers to sign contracts with them that are very overpriced (about 10x more than regulary private peering deals). They basically use their market power in germany (40% of internet users using their network) to force any internet service into buying an expensive contract with them.
This is a thing that should be regulated via the german regulator or EU wide. If other ISPs act like DT any server hosting provider needs to pay every bigger ISP for access to their customers and this would be the end to the internet as we know it. That's why it's a big topic. But legally DT can do it at the moment and they act like this for over 10 years now. There were older disputes with a big german hoster Hetzner, Init7, Level3... now Meta is playing on another level and hopefully that bully behavoir from DT stops and others follow suit and these overpriced contracts stop.
then I would agree that the combination of unusual high prices for direct commit + absence on IX or in general not enough bandwidth for "fair" cross network pairing is indeed effectively undermining net neutrality and needs to be stopped
through IMHO it's a bit of an oversight of Meta to not be very clear about it, missing information in their article and other articles starting their reason section with 40% price cut doesn't make them look good