My biggest impression so far is that the EU legal and bureaucratic apparatus is positively labyrinthine. I pity the poor internet service providers trying to make sense of ambiguous, poorly written directives. It seems like the EU imposed these requirements without much reflection and with only a very minimal amount of input from the public or members of industry.
The directives seem to be written with the mistaken idea that the ISP market looks like the mobile phone market, with only a few, large providers. Of course, if small ISPs are driven out by the costs of trying to comply with the directive, then that’s what the ISP market will look like.
I’d bet that the regulation for mobile phones is just as poorly done. That’s probably why phone service in Europe is so insanely expensive. Any idea how much internet service costs in Europe? Poorly thought out regulations like these tend to result in much higher prices.