A message from Europe
European telecoms regulation rules have been in place since 2002 and are now acknowledged to be dated. A reform of the way the sector is overseen was agreed to in principle in November last year and must now become law in all 27 member states by May next year.
The industry is worth around €290 billion across the EU, and 4 per cent of the jobs throughout the union exist directly from the sector.
One criticism of the European project has often been that decisions are taken too far away and have little effect on residents here. However, the European Commission suggests that as business becomes increasingly global, the cost of keeping in touch will come to the forefront.
The sector was liberalised across Europe in 1984 and the price of telecoms services has fallen by an estimated one third during the last decade. Across the community there are very few operators providing pan-European services. One reason for this, perhaps, is that national regulators have not always been consistent in their priorities.
By next May, consumers will have the right to change their fixed or mobile operator while keeping an existing phone number within one working day. The change currently takes an average of 8.5 days for a mobile number and 7.5 days for a fixed line.
National regulators, meanwhile, will be able to require operators to keep their communication networks separate from their service branches. That kind of separation can improve competition in markets while maintaining incentives.
Using the 800 MHz band, rural Europeans should be able to access a wireless broadband network where a fibre infrastructure is too expensive. Seventy per cent of rural Europeans have access to traditional broadband, compared with 93 per cent in urban areas.
The reform programme is four years in the making. As early as 2007, the Commission suggested a review of the framework. Those proposals then made their way to the Parliament and Council. The former agreed the proposals in May 2009 and in November the package was officially adopted by the council.
A new European telecoms body, BEREC (the Body of European Regulators of Electronic Communications), will replace the more informal co-operation between each of the national regulators which currently exists in the European Regulators Group (ERG).
BEREC decisions will be taken, as a rule, by majority of the heads of the 27 national telecoms regulators. Ofcom broadly welcomed BEREC but said that its creation was only one step toward “improving the consistency and quality” of regulation across the EU.
The Irish regulator, Comreg, pointed out that the body will also have a role to play regarding decisions with cross-border implications.
Comreg’s John Doherty is the first president of the body. Elected in January, he will be in place for 12 months. Although it will not be at work fully until 2011, at this point its chief role is to monitor the sector and encourage best practice across the community.
The digital dividend
As agendaNi reported previously (issue 34 pages 40-41), the digital switchover will free up the 800 MHz band, currently used for terrestrial broadcast, for high speed wireless internet services.
It is estimated that using that band will be around 70 per cent cheaper than through the radio frequencies which are currently used by third generation mobile technology.
Lower costs will make the band more attractive to operators which the Commission hopes will improve the geographic coverage of wireless broadband.
Radio spectrum management is still the responsibility of national governments but co-ordination at EU level, the Commission says, is increasingly needed as most new wireless applications are open to the mass market services; the single market allows for that. In short, the new devices need to be able to work in all EU countries.
