Thank you.
My name is Nico Riecke and I'll give it to Lucas to start it off.
Hello everybody and welcome.
I'm very glad to be here.
Thank you for the organizers to invite us to this talk.
I'm very happy to see that there are a lot of interest to DMA because we have been working
already on this for some time and I would like to contestalize all the problems that
we already started hearing here about interoperability, about security, about having access to infrastructure
from the telecom perspective because together with Nico we would like to prompt you with
our experience on advocacy on routers.
And I think that contestalizing this example on routers and router freedom in Europe can
help us to understand a little bit better what expects us when we start dealing with
smartphones from the DMA perspective.
So let's talk about end user control of devices, this contestalization about the DMA and telecom
and then I will give the word to Nico so he can tell us our experience with router freedom.
So the first question I would like to ask us, do we have control of our devices?
Devices are becoming ubiquitous, we are using that for everything in life but I have the
feeling that we are losing control over our devices.
We cannot change the battery, we cannot uninstall the programs, we cannot even install programs.
Today people call it side loading but in laptop we cannot, we don't call that side loading
because we are just downloading and installing.
But well big tech now says to us that if we wanted to install something outside Dev Store
we needed to side load.
This is not good for software freedom but let's talk about that.
So I think that we are losing a little bit control of our devices and here are some key
aspects of gatekeeper control of our devices.
They are imposing online accounts us so if we wanted to use our devices they say first
you need to create an account with me.
And then I think when I bought my Android phone I was prompt, the first thing that I
showed in the screen was you need to create an online account.
Then when we use our smartphones we are already trapped into vendor lock-in because we have
no access to third parties repositories and app stores.
And this is really key because on these repositories is where we can find apps and we can exercise
our software freedom in order to populate our devices with our software.
And last but not least we are not free even to uninstall software that comes to our devices.
And we check that sometimes on drive devices or iOS devices there are a list of apps there
that is draining our battery and they are doing stuff because it's proprietary but we
don't have access to the source code so we have absolutely no clue what is happening there.
So based on these facts I think that we are losing control of our devices.
And therefore some questions that I would like to prompt the audience and perhaps in
the coming moments of the workshop we need to answer is that how we can re-empower users
to have control of our devices.
So we already heard that DMA is a very important piece of that and I believe so I think DMA
is crucial but we need to go further.
First, we need to recognize that devices or ecosystems are mostly proprietary.
So the largest two operating systems smartphones they are proprietary, Android and iOS they
are proprietary.
And therefore being that and since they are so large we are calling the gatekeepers due
to the monopolistic power over termination bottlenecks.
So basically everything that we needed to do with this device we need to go through this
company.
That's why we are calling a monopoly over the term features of these devices such as
one example operating systems, browsers and app stores.
And of course we hear them since they have this power of devices they can hinder interoperability
and they exercise type controls of APIs, apply proprietary standards that we heard today,
hampering functionalism, block access to drives and hardware.
So in the FSFE, the Free Software Foundation Europe we have been working on a concept that
we call the device neutrality.
And this we want to re-empower users and to give control over devices back to them by
software freedom, eliminating vendor lock-in and giving end users control over data.
And last but not least I would just quickly because I'm a lawyer and I would like to point
to what is happening nowadays in the EU, right?
So for 10 years we have been working on the open internet regulation also called the net
neutrality regulation.
And this regulation had very clear rules over internet access devices.
So it applies to routers, modens and other internet access devices.
Then in 2018 there was a reform of the telecom law in Europe called the European Electronic
Communications Code.
And it then implemented some rules over iOS, over operating systems and apps and also to
network operators.
But now comes the DMA with rules over devices and operating systems and apps.
And in order to contest to allies all these challenges I would like then to give the word
now to Nico, I'm sorry, so we can learn a little bit how DMA can connect to that from
the perspective of routers.
Okay, as a case study, yeah, yeah.
Routers of freedom, well, my wife and I were really excited.
We got our first house, we were moving in together so we had to prepare for the move
and one of the things we had to do was get an internet contract.
And we didn't think much of it, we were doing some comparisons and said okay we got this
contract.
It was some all in one provider and you could recognize it from the box, it was an all in
one box, it was a TV, telephony and internet.
But also outside of being a box that did everything, it was a modem, a router and it
did so badly.
It filled quite a bit of times at a certain point, it filled entirely and we had to wait
three days without any of the services to get a replacement.
But after another failure getting dropped out of an internet call I said okay this is
it, I'm going to get a router myself so I know I can trust it and it's reliable.
But I found out that this internet provider didn't really support that.
It was all to me because previously it was on a telephone network connection and they
were even advertising that you could use your own router and modem and some of my friends
were doing so.
Also if you would call them for support they say are you using your own modem?
They would just assume there was something you could do but not with this provider.
So that was all then I learned about router freedom and of course there's a lot of benefits
here on the slide.
Some personal but also some in the grander scheme of things like competition and creating
a healthy ecosystem of devices.
Now internet providers put up quite some barriers to prevent you from exercising router freedom,
the ability to choose your own modem and router.
Some of them actually have some technical merit.
For example the telephone network is laid out differently than a coaxial network.
If your modems are doing bad things on a television network, the coax network, as the lines are
shared you might interfere with the devices of your neighbors.
But that of course is why we have standards.
If your device is compliant and the standard you can get one from the store, plug it in
and it will work and there's no reason to deny you those freedoms.
Actually one of my FSV friends said oh it works just fine.
I have these and these devices running at some friends.
I could really recommend to use your own router and get the freedom you want.
So it wasn't really a technical barrier.
Now at the FSV we've been at this for 10 years as Lukas said and we keep an interactive
map keeping all the states and working with regulators to ensure that router freedom is
actually achieved.
One thing in 2015 is that we had the EU net neutrality act and it was like yeah, Inno
says users should be able to replace or change their device.
So you think okay router freedom everything is good but not unless the regulators regulate.
That's the main thing and that's why we have this map to keep up with the regulator and
the state.
Now about two years ago in Belgium there was a consultation about modemvrijheid, a freie
modemköser, basically the ability to choose your own modem.
There was a consultation and I saw this like okay we have to get in on this even though
I'm from the Netherlands, I care about this, I can do in Dutch.
We got a different volunteer, some from Belgium, and together with Lukas we responded.
We were quite alone initially not having other parties that had the technical knowledge
to go through this legislation and have the community behind them.
But eventually through a survey we were able to actually engage the crowd and come over
the argument and we achieved router freedom.
So shortly here are some examples of people in our community using their routers at home
to also establish the practice of router freedom.
There's also benefit of free software on routers but that's something else.
And myself I now happily using fiber with my own router and Lukas if you want to wrap
it up.
Yeah, so yes, so it's a big win when we have router freedom and we fought against the operators
that and they always came to say that interoperability is a problem, security is a problem.
But with router freedom we could prove that this cannot be a problem and I hope that with
our discussion with DMA we can bring our experience and say that we can also overcome this problem.
Thank you very much.