 I'm very glad and very honored to be here again. This is my third time in the FSCon and it's a pleasure to talk about this very important topic because it concerns our freedom. It concerns our ability to choose and to use our own internet equipment. So today I would like to talk with you about router freedom and why there is some issues within the reform of telecom law. So this talk will take from the principle of the policy and legal developments. Until now we have been pleasure hearing a lot of technical details in the previous talks but now it will be focused more on policy and legal developments and I would like to bear with mind and this concern all of us in Italy here where we are and also in Europe. Well my contacts are on the screen so after this talk if you have some questions if you want some feedback or some follow-up please feel free to reach me. So today we will talk about what is router freedom and what is the concept of technological necessities and why this is a problem for our ability to use our own routers and modens in Europe. I will give overview about what is going on with router freedom in Europe and perhaps most importantly how you can contribute and how you can help us guaranteeing your ability to use your home router in your home because this is what is in danger today. So just to contextualize what is happening in the European level I would like to propose food for thought here. Imagine that you are moving to a new home. So besides of having all these kind of problems in finding a proper moving company you need to get all your contracts done. There's a lot of things going on and you have to of course well get energy running you have to need water running your telephone running your internet running in your home but then suddenly you receive the email you received some information from the electricity provider it says that your freezer your microwave your toaster or any other device in your home it's not compatible with the electrical line and now you are puzzled because well in my previous apartment in the same city everything was working and why I cannot use my own freezer or toaster or microwave it complies with the standards of the European well framework what is that but the electricity provider said no I'm sorry our plugs it's not compatible with your equipment so you cannot use it. Moving forward the same provider does not allow you to use your TV set your smart lamps or Bluetooth gadgets smart home devices and now you are in this position to say well why is that all these devices were working perfectly in my previous home and in the same city I just have another provider and now I'm stuck in this position so you cannot understand like this well perhaps maybe some of you think this situation is a little bit far-fetched well I would like to say that no it's not far-fetched at all because right now in Europe with the reform of telecommunications law internet services providers well in some cases they can prohibit consumers to use their routers based on technological necessities well and just to give a practical example my colleague Max here and me we have some issues in Germany when our providers they were like not allowing us to use our own routers and but coming a little bit back what's the difference of this kind of device the router device that we use to connect to the internet to the other type of device that we use in our home well it's our liberties our freedom to choose the device to use our that we wanted to to have in our home well but let's then recapitulate how we reach the the situation this very bad situation that we have right now right let's start for the beginning in 2015 we had a piece of legislation in the EU very nice piece of legislation called the open internet or net neutrality regulation and there this is an European law saying that users have the right to use a modding or router of their choice okay however then we had a huge debate in Europe saying okay this is not a policy or legal issue this is also a technical issue and therefore we need some technical documentation technical implementation for some guidelines that will very precisely codify when the network the private network of end users will begin and when the network of internet service provider will begin so in 2020 in 2020 we have the BRIC guidelines on the NTP NTP means network termination point so is this point where the two networks the private and the public begin and finish so and now the problems begin because in these guidelines it's written that ISPs can impose their own routers on end users based on technological necessities and yeah and here things start to not go in very nice for end users and we will see what does that mean right now right so according to these guidelines and BRIC just you to know is the European regulator so network regulator so all the activities involve internet international connection they have the utmost authority to to regulate these things on Europe so they listed a bunch of technological necessities they saying if our internet service provider says that due to interoperability between the public network and the router or perhaps simplicity of operation or perhaps network security and data protection ISPs can say look to end users to consume as they say I'm sorry you are not allowed to use your router you have to use mine but for me this sounds quite strange and I don't know for you because remember then from the previous slides well my router serves me very well I installed my router and my router complies with standards my route my router complies with security standards and now I just because one internet service provider thinks that my route can be problematic I'm not allowed to use a router and perhaps you know that router is a very piece of equipment it's a gatekeeper of all our internet connection so all the data that pass our personal data work data that we use pass through a router so in order and this track is all about the security so it's important for us to know what is running inside our router and that's why we at the free software foundation Europe we believe in router freedom so router freedom its ability for all people to use their own routers of course it's not only a question of freedom of choice but is also a question of privacy in data protection because when we run the software and we control all the parameters in the road we can of course be more or less sure what has how is our equipment is running and of course security is a fundamental aspect also running our devices these are of course and on the individual level but also in the social level under market level when we talk about router freedom well we have the question of competition and also compatibility right because if ISPs they impose just some few models just some few routers on end users on consumers well we have a problem with competition right because Europeans manufacturers perhaps today are in a worse position with other types of manufacturers so there is a individual level and also a social level when we talk about that and of course we have been engaged with decision makers all over Europe to to bring to their attention that router freedom is extremely important not only for consumers but also for for manufacturers we have been successful already and I'm very pleased and honored to say that several countries already implemented router freedom as a principle as telecommunications law for example Germany Italy well done the Netherlands and Finland so I'm very happy to to know that those countries they already understood how this is important and they established this principle in the legislation in this cure code you if you want you can access to this map that we prepared it is a money touring map and it tells you all the information in each country so for those that also are hearing us on the stream the internet you are most welcome to check our monetary map and check what is the situation in your country however there is some also some issues that we need to to clarify even though there are some countries implemented other countries not an implemented it we want to understand what are these technological necessities what are these isp's the internet service providers they are choosing as technological necessities sometimes it's hard for us to to read contracts on native languages and that's why you can help us right so here there is a link to our survey there is a end user survey that we are running for all Europe and there you can tell us what are your problems with router freedom if you are isp telling or you cannot use because of compatibility you cannot use because well I don't know I'm in bad mood and I don't want to allow you to use our router so tell us take part in our survey and you help us a lot okay so this presentation is short but I really would like you to join our fight join our advocacy for router freedom and thank you very much and I hope you are to hear your questions hi I'm Gianluca Boyano I want to ask in the past I was involved to hack some router arm base at door something else and I I just seen that the main issue was the ADSL part on many of consumer router especially the broadband one so what about these concerns what about the efforts that are done in this specific ADSL reverse engineering I suppose if we can hope in this thanks oh yeah thanks a lot for the question yes um from my perspective from the the policy perspective that we have been working usually the ISPs when we are dealing with DSL they are sometimes we can find issues but they that's not the main concern at least in in several countries in Europe the problem I just wanted to highlight we are seeing the future that providers of fiber fiber they have been quite conservative and quite restrictive right now so even though some ISPs have some more permissive policies about ADCL and DCL they are very more restrictive with fiber so yeah this is an issue that we have been facing