ComReg reform ?

Solair

I was just thinking about a few ideas for reforming ComReg or creating a meaningful and useful regulator.

It seems to me that ComReg is pursuing two seperate roles:

I) Regulation
ii) Research of a highly academic nature into obscure areas of telecommunications policy.

If you read their website there are constant articles about things like IP telephony numbering schemes etc etc.

I would argue that ComReg's market regulation division should be pared down into a smaller unit and that another entity to carry out ongoing policy research for the development of telecommunications is setup.

ComReg's board should include:
1) Very senior legal people with expertise in commercial and competition law. i.e. either senior council with competition law experience or perhaps a senior high court judge.
2) Business interests i.e., representatives taken from the likes of IBEC.
3) A representative of IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland.
4) A number of end user consumers.

(Civil servants should be kept to a minimum in terms of policy making roles)

It should then stick to regulating the market and insuring fair play and leave the policy development to the new body.

As it stands, I feel comreg's a joke of a regulator but it does seem to do a whole lot of academic research!

Anyone any other suggestions?

bealtine

Solair wrote:

ComReg's board should included:
1) Very senior legal people with expertese in commercial and competition law. i.e. either senior council with competition law experience or perhaps a senior high court judge.
2) Business interests i.e. representatives taken from the likes of IBEC.
3) A representative of IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland.
4) A number of end user consumers.

5 Ireland Offline


Agreed, the one issue missing is funding for Comreg.
An indepenent regulator should be that : independent.
The funding should come from the state not from the "industry".

netwhizkid

ComReg is a disaster and should be dissolved in my opinion. Other countries have decent regulators with smaller budgets and less staff. They serve nothing only to create spin to look good for the corrupt government and play everything into the hands of €ircon. Ironically if they weren't privatised at all things would be slightly better because at least a Public Monopoly is better than a Private one, not that any monopoly is good but still at least their would be control of the network.

dahamsta

netwhizkid wrote:

ComReg is a disaster and should be dissolved in my opinion.

Yup. Beyond repair. The deceit and incompetence is endemic, the only way to repair ComReg is to sack and replace the entire staff, so they won't have the chancer mindset rub of on them.

adam

damien

Just wondering are you going to come out and campaign for ComReg reform or do you want IrelandOffline to do this on your behalf or is this another hypothetical thread about shoulds and coulds and woulds?

Solair

I don't see any harm in discussing the issue and bouncing some ideas around.