Current approach to preserving the open and neutral character of the Internet in Croatia

The 2009 European regulatory framework contains new tools that can be used to deal with the network neutrality problems. The framework has been fully implemented into the Croatian legal system. In this paper those new available legal tools are briefly presented together with the two guidelines produced by BEREC, the organization of European regulators. Application of the tools and the guidelines in Croatia will be discussed. The current HAKOM´s approach to preserving neutral and open character of the Internet will be presented. This paper is the first presentation on the applicability of the tools from the new regulatory framework in Croatia and the strategy of the national regulator with respect to the network neutrality. In 2011 HAKOM, the Croatian national regulation authority, held public consultations on Internet and network neutrality. After the analysis of the responses received during the public consultation and the analysis of the situation on the Croatian market HAKOM´s decision was to firstly look into measures from the new regulatory framework that can help enhancing the transparency related to information provided to the user of access services. Also, HAKOM decided to start evaluating the quality of provided broadband Internet access, so that at a later stage, if necessary, other measures like minimum quality of service for Internet access service could be investigated.