EU Regulators - new powers?

bk

There is an article on TheReg here about mobile phone companies roaming charges, but the last two paragraphs look interesting for us:

It has also been reported that operators may evade punishment altogether because in July the EU gains new regulatory powers in 18 telecom-related market segments that will make it easier for Brussels to influence or even override deals made by member states' telecoms watchdogs. This means that instead of fines being imposed by the EU Competition Commission, local telecoms regulators could be compelled to implement price caps and other tools to control the sector.

In February, when Monti and Information Society Commissioner Erkki Liikanen provided guidance on the future of telecoms regulation in Europe, the pair said that the European Commission would encourage national regulators to impose new rules on mobile operators. Of the 18 market segments named by the EC for national regulators to intervene, restrictions on international roaming and call origination and termination costs were listed as top priorities, alongside broadband rollout and local loop unbundling.

Does anyone know how will the new powers of the EU regulators effect Ireland and bb in particular. The EU regulators have always been sympathetic to our case, will they now have the power to do something about it?

Dangger

Details of the transposition of the EU law you are referring to are covered in this meeting report IrelandOffline had on the 3rd of May 2002 with Aidan Hodson and Ann Walsh of the Department of Communications who are responsible for the transposition of the new access directives which will come into effect this July in Ireland.

Aidan explained that the deadline set by the EU for the transposition of the new directives into Irish law was the final deadline and that the Department hope to be finished the transposition well before the deadline. He agreed that there was no mention of flat rate in the new legislation, but pointed out areas in the new legislation where it could be covered, in particular, article 12 section 1 of Access Directive, which states:

"A national regulatory authority may, in accordance with the provisions of Article 8, impose obligations on operators to meet reasonable requests for access to, and use of, specific network elements and associated facilities, inter alia in situations where the national regulatory authority considers that denial of access or unreasonable terms and conditions having a similar effect would hinder the emergence of a sustainable competitive market at the retail level, or would not be in the end user's interest. Operators may be required inter alia: to give third parties access to specified network elements and/or facilities, including unbundled access to the local loop."

In addition, Article 9 enables regulatory authorities to require an SMP operator to publish a reference offer for particular services and Article 13 governs NRA controls over pricing.

We mentioned that the provision of "capacity based charging" is required at this level of legislation also. Its importance was noted by Aidan and Ann. We mentioned the problem of dispute resolution and that the policy of intervention by the ODTR only after a breakdown of negotiations was just not working. Ann said that there was comprehensive legislation covering this in the Framework directive article 20.

There are 5 new directives:

Framework Directive

Access and Interconnection Directive

Authorisation Directive

Universal service Directive

Data protection Directive

I will investigate the status of the Irish transposition of the directives, it will be interesting to see what benefits ComReg may reap from them. As they are recently publically persuing Eircom over partial circuit issues it may hint that they feel that they will become more empowered to do their work this July, which is the deadline for the directives to be in place.

highlight

Basically in the new framework there are a couple of major changes. Instead of one market (telecoms) there are a number of relevant markets of which broadband is one. The regulator must do a market review to establish dominance in each relevant market and designate an operator with Significant Market Power. Then the regulator must choose from a list of access obligations which ones are applicable in that market (currently they all apply automatically but this is amended in the new framework). Such obligations might be interconnection for example. Then the regulator can apply conditions in respect of that obligation - such as cost orientation etc (currently these all apply automatically as well)

DSLinAbsentia

But ultimately, won't this be population density-based? I mean, unless France Telecom or Deutsche telecom come into the market embracing us as part of their larger family, won't we always be buggered on price?

Dangger

According to the Financial Times, new regulations for Europe's troubled telecoms industry are likely to be delayed for several months. The new telecoms package, the result of several years of negotiations, is intended to give the European Commission the right to overrule national regulators -- a key step toward ensuring a common approach in the fragmented European market. France has said it will miss the July deadline for passing the legislation into national law, Germany and Belgium are also likely to be late, while the Netherlands may not be able to pass the rules this year.

Come on Ireland!