The European Electronic Communications Code (EECC) defines an Interpersonal Communications Service (ICS) as a service that enables direct, interactive exchange of information between a finite number of people, where the participants themselves choose the recipients. The EECC categorizes ICS as one of the three branches of an Electronic Communications Service (ECS).
Subcategories of ICS
The EECC divides ICS into two subcategories:
- Number-Based (NB-ICS): Services that connect to the public telephone network using numbering resources, including traditional calls, SMS, and VoIP services with phone numbers.
- Number-Independent (NIICS): Services that work entirely over the internet without phone numbers, such as WhatsApp, Signal, Teams chat, and their peers.
Exclusions from ICS
The EECC excludes certain communication features from the ICS definition:
- Ancillary Features: A communication feature that is merely a minor ancillary part of another service falls outside the ICS definition. This carve-out keeps in-game chat, comment threads, and dating-app messaging from turning every product with a text box into a regulated telecom service.
- Functional Boundary: The more central and standalone the messaging becomes, the harder the exclusion is to sustain.
Regulatory Impact
The ICS classification has significant regulatory implications:
- Security and Consumer Protections: The ICS classification subjects modern messaging services to security duties and consumer protections under the EECC.
- Interoperability Framework: The Digital Markets Act (DMA) builds on the ICS definitions to establish an interoperability framework for digital platforms.
- Market Entry: For product and compliance teams, especially at CPaaS providers and platforms adding communication features, knowing which side of the ICS line a feature sits on is the first question of EU market entry.