The CompTel/Ascent Alliance added Guatemala, El Salvador, Venezue...

question whether those countries will live up to higher obligations under the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) concluded recently. In its “additional” comments filed in the U.S. Trade Representative’s (USTR’s) annual review (CD Jan 8 p2) of all U.S. trade agreements on telecom products and services, the Alliance said Guatemala had violated obligations under the Reference Paper due to: (1) Lack of procompetitive regulation and competitive safeguards. It raised concerns the Guatemalan govt. and its telecom regulator (SIT) hadn’t taken steps to prevent the anticompetitive behavior of incumbent fixed network operator Telgua and its subsidiary mobile PCS network operator Sercom, which it said had been taking advantage of their dominant market position to the detriment of new entrants. (2) Failure to ensure interconnection. The Alliance said Guatemala had failed to ensure Telgua provided “timely” and “sufficiently unbundled” interconnection on “nondiscriminatory terms.” (3) Lack of an independent regulator. The Alliance criticized SIT for failure to prevent anticompetitive behavior by Telgua and for being “slow to respond, if at all, to requests from competitive carriers to act against Telgua.” (3) A fixed-to-mobile price squeeze involving mobile virtual private network offerings. The Alliance accused Guatemala of violating the GATS Annex on Telecom by failing to ensure Telgua provided access to public telecom networks and services on reasonable and non- discriminatory terms and conditions. The Alliance expressed concern that the situation in El Salvador -- which had been active in promoting a competitive environment for new entrants -- was “changing dramatically for the worse.” It said that country had violated the Reference Paper by failing to ensure competitive safeguards were in place to prevent its incumbent fixed line carrier CTE Telecom from renegotiating interconnection agreements with competitors to “make the terms more favorable to CTE Telecom.” The Alliance accused El Salvador and Venezuela of violating the GATS Telecom Annex by failing to require the incumbent to provide nondiscriminatory access to the public switched network and cost-oriented interconnection. It said that failure also could be viewed as a violation of the countries’ obligations to prevent anticompetitive conduct, as required by the Reference Paper. It said Venezuela had failed to live up to obligations to allow market access for transmission of packet-switched data, such as Internet service. In New Zealand, the Alliance cited 2 major barriers to competition: (1) High mobile termination rates. It urged the country’s Commerce Commission (ComCom) to take formal action to reduce the charges, which it said were among the highest in the Asia Pacific region at about $0.23 and more than 14 times higher than the rates paid to terminate calls on fixed networks in New Zealand. (2) Discriminatory pricing for local access leased lines. The Alliance urged the USTR to encourage New Zealand’s govt. to reject recommendations issued late last year by the ComCom that declined to require these cost- oriented practices: unbundling of the local loop, bitstream access to the incumbent’s DSL services, and pricing and nondiscriminatory access to local leased circuits. CompTel also raised concerns about a “troubling development” in France where the National Assembly earlier this month approved measures, with full govt. support, that limited the power and independence of the French telecom regulator (ART) by “severely circumscribing” its authority to regulate France Telecom’s prices. The Alliance urged the USTR to closely monitor that situation and take any necessary actions to ensure France’s compliance with its WTO commitments.