Agreement on changes to the regulation of telecommunications

Ever since its presentation at the end of last year, this so-called telecommunications package has fought against relatively negative reception not only on the part of EU member states and telecoms operators, but from European Parliament as well. The European Commission as the submitter of the proposal significantly contributed toward achieving a compromise.  Parliament deputies agreed with significant changes to the proposed regulation system, adopted a lot of amendments and pushed them through in the first reading in late September. The Commission then reacted on the comments by extensive amendments to its original proposal. The current attitude of the Council is a realistic base for achieving an agreement with Parliament in the second reading, which is planned for late March so that the final negotiations and approval phase of the new regulatory framework takes place under the Czech chairmanship as one of its priorities.

The main target of the telecommunications package is the completion of the uniform internal electronic communication market and simultaneous improvement of the position of approximately 500 million market users. The reform should bring not only enhanced and cheaper communication services to consumers, but also better protection of privacy and personal data and strengthening of security. The package supports the requirement for greater transparency of services and their prices, the obligation of operators to provide relevant information to end users and the ability for consumers to change suppliers more easily – for example a one-day period is assumed for cases of “number transferability”. The proposal also places significant attention on making access to electronic communication easier for handicapped users.

In principle, European authorities have agreed on a crucial element of the reform, which is the necessity to improve the existing regulation of the industry. The European Commission emphasizes in its proposals that the existing fragmentation, the non-uniform approaches of regulation authorities of individual EU member states, their non-independence from the state and industry and lack of coherence during implementation of EU standards negatively affect not only the market, but also technological development; a typical demonstration of such a situation is the fact that telecoms operators avoid the provision of supranational pan-European services. The concrete form of the new regulation system, for example the issue of establishing a European regulatory body, its powers and relationship to the Commission or the extent of independence of national regulators, represents the most complicated points in the existing negotiations. Therefore, the Council approved at its meeting a compromise proposal consisting of transforming the existing European Regulators Group (ERG) into a new authority named the Group of European Regulators in Telecoms (GERT) whose main role will be assisting in the uniform application of EU rules, supporting cooperation between national regulators and the Commission and provision of expert consultancy.

The ministers also adopted a compromise proposal concerning digital dividend, which is the use of the radio spectrum released by transfer to digital transmitting, for development of wireless broadband Internet. They supported what is termed the “functional separation” as an extraordinary remedy that regulation authorities of individual EU member states may impose on the dominant operator to renew conditions for economic competition; this consists of the obligation to separate the networks infrastructure from the provision of electronic communications services and the creation of separate divisions.