Call of duty: converting the demand for digital taxes into law

European mobile markets are undergoing a structural shift: rising data usage, declining revenue per user, saturating subscriber penetration and sustained investment requirements have made operator scale increasingly important. Europe remains the least concentrated major mobile region in the world, with operators being structurally subscale compared to global peers. This gap has widened during precisely the period when scale matters most.

Saudi Arabia is a leading country in digital transformation, with mobile connectivity playing a central role in supporting economic growth, innovation and Vision 2030. This study assesses Saudi Arabia’s mobile quality of service (QoS) and market status in a global context, with a focus on digital infrastructure benchmarking, 5G development, public policy, QoS obligations and alignment with international best practice.

Different approaches to net neutrality regulation serve as a natural experiment, allowing us to empirically assess real-world impacts. We find no evidence of net neutrality regulations increasing internet content diversity or consumer welfare. The lack of clear evidence on the benefits of regulation combined with unintended negative impacts on operators call for a re-evaluation of existing net neutrality regulations.