The Internet works remarkably well because its architecture has evolved through open technical standards, clearly defined roles, and decades of collaborative innovation.

Policymakers can—and should—regulate communications markets where appropriate. But effective regulation depends on understanding how the Internet actually works. When laws or regulations misunderstand the technical architecture of the Internet, they risk creating unintended consequences that reduce performance, increase costs, and ultimately harm users.

That is why the Internet Society has filed a statement of intervention before the Regional Administrative Court of Lazio supporting Netflix’s appeal against Italy’s Resolution 207 (an English version is also available).

Adopted by the national communications regulator, Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni (AGCOM) in August 2025, the resolution reclassifies content delivery networks (CDNs) as public electronic communications networks (ECNs), extending telecom-style authorization obligations to CDN operators.

Our submission provides the court with independent technical expertise on why this reclassification is inconsistent with both the law and the Internet’s technical design.

What Resolution 207 Gets Wrong

One of the Internet Society’s advocacy priorities is defending the Internet’s open architecture. The Internet works because different parts of the ecosystem perform different functions while working together through open standards and interoperable technologies. Each part serves an important purpose, contributing to an Internet that is faster, more resilient, and more efficient.

This distinction is fundamental to how the Internet operates. Effective Internet governance depends on understanding these different roles and ensuring that regulation reflects the Internet’s architecture rather than treating fundamentally different technologies as though they perform the same function.

The resolution reclassifies CDNs as public electronic communications networks under Italy’s Electronic Communications Code, which implements the European Electronic Communications Code (EECC). However, the code defines an electronic communications network as a transmission system that conveys electronic signals. Its defining characteristic is the transmission of data across communications infrastructure.

CDNs perform a fundamentally different role. They operate at the application layer of the Internet, improving the efficiency, performance, and resilience of online services without themselves providing transmission services to others. And even when CDN operators run their own private networks, they connect to their own servers and do not offer connectivity to third parties.

This distinction is widely recognized across the technical community. Standards organizations including the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) consistently describe CDNs as systems that optimize the delivery of content over existing communications networks—not as communications networks themselves. Even AGCOM’s own description of CDNs recognizes that they consist of geographically distributed servers designed to optimize the delivery of content to end users.

Italy’s Electronic Communications Code reflects this distinction as well. As their name suggests, content delivery networks deliver content. They do not operate the transmission systems the law was designed to regulate.

Getting this distinction right matters. When regulation applies telecommunications rules to Internet infrastructure that performs an entirely different function, it risks creating unintended consequences that undermine the efficiency, resilience, and openness of the Internet itself.

Why Italian Users Would Pay the Price

This case is essentially about the quality of the Internet experience people rely on every day in Italy. By placing content closer to users, CDNs reduce the distance data must travel, improving page load times, reducing buffering for video streaming, supporting responsive online services, and helping networks cope with traffic spikes and cyberattacks.

If CDN operators are required to comply with telecommunications-style obligations in Italy, they may need to reduce or relocate their local infrastructure.

The consequences would be felt by Internet users, businesses, and public services alike. More content would need to travel over longer international routes, increasing latency, raising network costs, and reducing resilience—overall greatly eroding the quality and speed of Internet connections. Services that depend on fast, reliable connectivity—including telemedicine, online education, cloud applications, e-government services, and interactive gaming—would be among the first to experience the effects.

A regulation intended to expand oversight could instead reduce the quality and resilience of the Internet available to people in Italy.

Why This Matters Beyond Italy

Resolution 207 also has significance beyond Italy’s borders. For several years, large telecom operators have argued that content providers and CDNs should help pay for network costs, in proposals that would introduce network usage fees, broadly known as “fair share.”

The Internet Society has consistently opposed such policy proposals, which are also in conflict with net neutrality. There is no market failure to correct; both sides already pay for their connectivity, and voluntary collaboration through peering, transit, and server deployment already works. In fact, the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) has confirmed this more than once.

This debate is now playing out at the EU level through the Digital Networks Act (DNA), a sweeping telecoms reform aimed at replacing the current EECC. As we wrote in January, while the European Commission’s proposal for the DNA avoids explicit “fair share” obligations, it sets up a regulatory machinery, including conciliation mechanisms, cooperation guidelines, and mandated reviews, that could harden into de facto payment obligations over time.

Resolution 207 fits this pattern. Reclassifying CDNs as public ECNs brings them within the scope of interconnection dispute resolution. This is exactly the mechanism that telecom operators have proposed to try to compel so-called “network usage fees.” Whether or not AGCOM intended this, the reclassification would seemingly open the regulatory path for such payments.

Our Message: The Internet’s Open Architecture Is Good for Users and for Business

Our statement of intervention supports Netflix’s appeal by helping the court understand how CDNs actually work and why the distinction between transmission networks and content delivery is fundamental to how the Internet works. We hope this technical context will assist the court in evaluating Resolution 207 and its implications for Internet users.

More broadly, this case highlights why effective governance of the Internet must be grounded in technical expertise and a clear understanding of how the Internet works. As policymakers consider new approaches to regulating digital infrastructure, protecting the Internet’s open architecture will be essential to preserving an Internet that remains open, globally connected, secure, and resilient.

We encourage our global community to continue identifying proposals that could affect how the Internet works, engaging with policymakers, and helping ensure that the governance of the Internet is grounded in technical expertise and a commitment to the foundational principles of openness which have made the Internet such a transformative success.

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