EU Telecom Rules Review Heads List of Meek’s Priorities
Telecom regulators expect to play a key role in a 2006 review of Europe’s new e-communications regulatory framework (NRF), the European Regulators Group’s (ERG’s) incoming head said in an interview. Kip Meek, chief policy partner at the U.K. Office of Communications (Ofcom), vowed as ERG chmn. to keep an “overwhelming focus” on substantive issues related to the review. A particular matter Meek wants to pursue is the amount of harmonization appropriate in national methods for deciding when to regulate a given market (CD Nov 14 p6).
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Issues on regulators’ minds include what to do about next generation networks (NGNs), Meek said. But he disputed a comment, made at last week’s Ofcom NGN conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, that regulators’ thinking on NGN is fuzzy enough to justify a moratorium on regulation.
Decisions can’t be made because NGN standards aren’t final and telcos haven’t firmed up investment plans, but regulators can guess at what regulation might look like, Meek said. Ofcom has dealt with the issue to an extent by enshrining certain principles -- such as that NGN products should be offered on an equivalence-of-access basis to competitors -- in its settlement with British Telecom. Nevertheless, said Meek, regulators “are still not certain what we're regulating.”
Asked to predict whether video-over-mobile phones will be regulated, Meek said Ofcom is happy with mobile industry self-regulatory initiatives on content. The EC would like to revise the TV without Frontiers directive to regulate content over other platforms, including mobile telephony, but Ofcom has doubts about the proposal, he said.
Competition from mobile services will mean fewer fixed-line regulations, said Meek. The ERG is watching the emergence in the U.S. of multiplatforms, but in Europe regulators fret more over fixed-to-mobile competition. Despite a generally competitive European mobile market, international roaming charges remain a “difficult area” for the ERG because of the continuing chasm between costs and roaming prices.
For now, regulators are closely watching fixed-line markets to ensure incumbents aren’t discriminating against competitors. They also want to make sure dominant telcos don’t use NGN as an opportunity to re-establish monopoly powers, Meek said.