Internet companies in Israel may soon be required to publish data on browsing speed. This emerges from a discussion held in the Knesset’s Economics Committee, chaired by MK Yaakov Margi . During the discussion, there was also a demand that service providers be fined for speeding.
But the actual situation is far from these proposals and probably difficult to change. The Knesset presented a document from the Knesset’s Research and Information Center (MMM) according to which the two major infrastructure companies – Bezeq and Hot – can sell their Internet packages with a significant and prominent indication of the maximum speed provided in the package, but provide the additional important figure, minimum speed, The contract and in a very inconspicuous manner.In addition, nothing prevents them from providing customers with a speed closer to the minimum than the maximum speed at which the price is set.
In Bezeq, for example, the minimum download speed at a connection of 15 megabits / second is 1 megabit / second, at a connection of 40 megabits / second the minimum is 20 megabits / second and at a connection of 100 megabits / second the minimum is 40 megabits. / Per second – but the upload speed required for video calls for work and study from home is 0.01 megabits per second at all connection speeds. Hot is the minimum speed at all connection speeds – 100, 200 and 500 megabits.
At the hearing, HOT’s director of regulation, Keren Yahav , noted that the companies actually decide what the minimum speed they want to sell to subscribers is, because in Israel there is no regulated legal definition for the speed below which the connection can not be considered fast. In the United States, for example, since 2015, a minimum connection speed of less than 15 megabits / second eliminates the possibility of displaying a connection as fast.
The director general of the Israeli Internet Association, Yoram HaCohen , and the deputy director general of the Ministry of Communications, Maimon Shmila , mentioned in the discussion that there is currently no way to improve the situation, since there is no organized tool for measuring actual surfing speed. However, Shmila noted that the Ministry of Communications will soon publish a hearing to develop orderly metrics for browsing speed, and is even considering requiring companies to publish customers’ actual speed data by region, so that anyone who wants to connect to a particular company can know in advance what speed they will actually get.
