Seite drucken27.02.2008
How best to boost competition - and at the same time investment - in the telecommunications sector was the key issue discussed at an Industry committee public hearing on the telecoms package on Wednesday. MEPs, national regulators, telecoms operators, new entrant companies and academics debated the Commission's proposals for a framework directive for electronic communications and for a European Electronic Communications Market Authority.
"There has been progress since the first telecoms package",
acknowledged Viviane Reding, Commissioner for Information Society and Media, at
the start of the meeting. However, she immediately added, "serious
problems of competition" persist. "Eighty percent of fixed access to
consumers is still in the hands of incumbents", she explained, adding
that "We do not have full infrastructural competition" and
"every mobile operator has a monopoly on their network". This, she
argued, "is why we need to regulate on access". Some internal market
issues, concluded Ms Reding, just "cannot be solved with current
instruments".
Increased competition through functional separation?
"Many concerns are dramatically overstated, are a myth", stressed Ed
Richards of British national regulator, Ofcom, which has already imposed
functional separation -- that is the separation of the transmission
infrastructure from the content provided -- on the UK telecoms market. The
claim "that functional separation has decreased investment in
infrastructure in the UK" is "the opposite of the truth",
explained Mr Richards. He concluded that "functional separation should be
available to national regulators as potential remedy but not as an automatic or
imposed choice".
Wolfgang Kopf, of Deutsche Telekom, explained that the "biggest challenge
for European telecoms operators is the lack of growth of European
markets". He emphasised that "new tools such as functional
separation are the wrong signals for new investments". Carlos López
Blanco, of Telefónica, agreed that "functional separation is an
unnecessary remedy" which has the effect of "confusing the
sector" and "neither benefits competition nor consumers".
However, Mikael Grape of Tele2, a company with "15 years of experience in
breaking up monopolies", stressed that "mandatory functional
separation is a must to ensure competition today and in the future".
Malcolm Harbour (EPP-ED, UK), EP rapporteur on the universal services
directive, said that the example of Japan showed that "the more
competitive markets are, the more investments are made". Pilar del
Castillo Vera (EPP-ED, ES) who is drafting the EP report on the European
Electronic Communications Market Authority (EECMA), added that "it is
especially mobile services where we will see additional growth in the coming
years". Rapporteur on the framework directive Catherine Trautmann
(PES, FR), wanted to know whether the "shared ownership" model would
be a way to promote investment.
Taking the roaming regulation as an example, András Gyürk (EPP-ED, HU),
stressed that "in the interest of the whole sector" the telecoms
review should include a sunset clause providing that regulation should
automatically expire after a given period of time. Mr Grape, however,
answered that "for deregulation and going for competition law, it is way
too early".
More transparency and better informed consumers
Citing media reports on "telecoms operators who intend to block consumers'
access to services", Reino Paasilinna (PES, FI), stressed that openness
and transparency are currently diminished. "Consumers simply are
cheated", agreed Commissioner Reding, who said that informed consumers
"must know what they're buying and at what price" in order to
"communicate seamlessly" across the internal market.
Do we need an Electronic Communications Market Authority?
The Commission's proposal foresees that the tasks of the European Network and
Information Security Agency (ENISA), which will cease working in spring 2009,
will be transferred to the new authority. "We have to be prepared when
there are the next attacks to our backbones", argued Commissioner Reding,
which is why, in her view, ENISA should become the third pillar of the new
European Electronic Communications Market Authority.
The proposal for a new authority is "hardly in line with the transient nature of sector-specific regulation", said Andrea Renda of the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS). Arguing against "new authorities without clear competences" which lead to "organised irresponsibility", Jorgo Chatzimarkakis (ALDE, DE), proposed that the European Central Bank (ECB) model be applied to the electronic communications market. "Sometimes you have to close the door", said Erika Mann (PES, DE) about ENISA, adding that she had expected the problems with this agency right from the beginning, due to its limited powers.
Procedure: Co-decision -- Committee vote: 26 June 2008 -- First reading
in plenary: July 2008