This piece originally appeared in Bloomberg Law.
A settlement between Netflix Inc. and SK Broadband Inc. for network usage fees in South Korea concludes a five-year dispute that’s seen as a bellwether for fair share proceedings underway in the US, India, Thailand, Indonesia, the Caribbean, and Brazil.
A European Commission inquiry on the future of connectivity infrastructure revealed that Netflix is the primary contributor to traffic on fixed networks, and the cost to provision the traffic growth of 20% to 30% year-over-year exceeds benefits of content delivery networks and compression technologies.
The EU consultation is a roadmap to the Digital Networks Act with a “fair contribution mechanism” including duty, dispute resolution, and arbitration elements highlighted in the Korean context.
