Regulation of Infocommunications Services and Providers

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The NMHH’s supervisory activities are aimed at ensuring that subscribers have access to reliable electronic communications services that comply with statutory requirements and there is effective competition among service providers in the electronic communications market. Supervisory procedures may be brought upon request, or ex officio by the NMHH at its own discretion. Supervision includes market surveillance as a separate category, where the NMHH verifies compliance with the legislation comprehensively, covering a number of service providers, and assesses the results of this verification in a consolidated decision as part of the procedure. Furthermore, it may make proposals for possible amendments to the legislation. General official supervision, on the other hand, usually involves monitoring a specific area related to service provision or investigating a specific case based on a request.

Each year, the NMHH publishes a supervisory plan setting out the supervisory checks and inspections it intends to carry out in relation to electronic communications services in that year.

Annual Supervisory Plans

Supervisory plans typically include:

identification of the service providers or activities to be inspected;
the objectives of supervisory procedures and the risk areas identified;
priorities based on findings from previous years (e.g. poor practices by service providers, consumer complaints).

Supervision of Infocommunications Services

Verification of Compliance

The NMHH monitors and verifies that electronic communications (e.g. mobile, fixed-line, internet) service providers comply with the legislation and provide their services as set out in their general terms and conditions. If it detects a breach, it can take action by:

requiring the termination of unlawful conduct;
imposing a fine;
ordering the publication of a notice or official disclosure;
even suspending or prohibiting a service in serious cases.

Management of Requests, Complaints and Reports

The authority may also bring procedures on the basis of reports from subscribers or users when a subscriber or user detects a violation of a law falling within the NMHH’s competence. Subscribers can initiate a supervisory procedure in their own case by submitting a request if they believe that their service provider has violated the law in any way.

The NMHH Prepares an Annual Rep

The principle of net neutrality (open internet) means that internet access providers must treat internet traffic on the basis of equality and may not unreasonably block, throttle, modify, restrict or prefer traffic based on its content, the application or service the user intends to access, the source of the traffic or its purpose.

What does this mean in practice?

Service providers may not arbitrarily pick and choose among types of traffic (for example, they may not throttle traffic for certain websites, applications or video services that compete with their own services);
They may not give preference to certain content or services (for example, by providing „faster bandwidth„ to certain applications in exchange for payment);
They may not prevent subscribers from accessing lawful online content or using lawful applications.

However, the provision „unreasonableness„ also means that there are certain exceptions permitted by law, for example:

protection of network security and integrity;
management of temporary network congestion;
compliance with a requirement imposed by law or by a court.

Annual Reports on the State of the Open Internet

The NMHH produces an annual report on the state of the open internet in Hungary, covering:

how the authority assessed compliance with open internet rules by internet access providers;
any illegal traffic management practices;
any conduct detected violating subscriber rights.

As the national regulatory authority, the NMHH ensures that end-users can effectively exercise their rights and service providers comply with the rules on providing open internet access.