The Federal Network Agency has prohibited Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone from marketing their “Telekom StreamOn” and “Vodafone Pass” mobile phone tariffs.
From July onwards, they may no longer be sold, as the supervisory authority announced on Thursday.
Existing contracts must be completed by the end of March 2023 at the latest.
According to the authority, the so-called zero-rating tariffs or zero-tariff options violate net neutrality.
Because with them, certain services and applications - such as video or music streaming - are not counted towards the monthly data volume.
The President of the Federal Network Agency, Klaus Müller, said he assumes that the ban on these offers will have a positive impact on the German mobile market.
“We expect that the providers will now offer tariffs with higher data volumes or cheaper mobile flat rate tariffs.
Consumers will benefit from this.” While flat rates have been widespread in the fixed network for some time, this has not yet been the case in mobile communications.
The Federal Network Agency pointed out that the European Court of Justice had already decided on September 2, 2021 that the zero-rating tariffs were incompatible with the principle of equal treatment of data traffic.