European Union (EU) competition ministers Fri. kicked back for further negotiation a proposed regulation some telcos say unfairly discriminates against them. The provision at issue, Article 5a, was floated by the Dutch presidency this month as part of several amendments to a 2001 regulation on sales promotions in the internal market. The regulation aims to remove barriers to the use and commercial communication of sales promotions within the internal market by harmonizing provisions such as what information promoters must give consumers about their offers, an EU official said; it also lets promoters follow their domestic law when running cross-border promotions. But telcos said last week Art. 5a could harm their industry and should be clarified and put out for public comment.
European telcos and ISPs last week joined civil liberties advocates in denouncing a proposal by France, the U.K., Sweden and Ireland that communications services providers (CSPs) be required to hold Internet and telephone traffic data up to 36 months to assist law enforcement agencies. In comments submitted to the European Commission’s (EC’s) Information Society and Justice & Home Affairs Directorates, industry groups said the EC hasn’t justified imposing the heavy burden of data retention. They urged the EC to consider instead data preservation, which would allow CSPs to collect only data needed for specific law enforcement cases. The movie industry, however, said data retention was needed in the fight against piracy.
Ireland’s telecom regulator earlier this week ordered ISPs and telcos to block direct calls from 13 countries where autodialing scams are bilking Irish consumers out of thousands of euro. The Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg) said it has received many complaints about rogue autodialer programs and modem hijacking that change Internet dialup settings to international numbers. In extreme cases, a spokesman said, small businesses were hit with phone bills of 10,000 and 18,000 euro. The blocking begins Oct. 4. ISPs have also been directed to alert users to the problem of autodialers, ComReg said. Most of the countries are in the South Pacific. ComReg may be the first national regulatory authority to take such an action, the spokesman told us, though several Canadian telcos and British Telecom have voluntarily decided to block some premium rate numbers. The regime -- which will run 6 months -- is “exceptional and unusual,” the spokesman said, but given the scale of the problem, and the failure of a public awareness campaign to stop the scams, it’s necessary. The blocking doesn’t mean the “Cook Islands [a country targeted] will be cut off from Ireland,” he said. ComReg will now create a “white list” of legitimate numbers that, once confirmed, will be able to be called, the spokesman said. ComReg has received more than 350 complaints this year, he said, and its action was prompted by both public and political concerns. In addition to the Cook Islands, the countries involved are Norfolk Island, Sao Tome and Principe, Tokelau, Diego Garcia, Wallis and Futuna, Nauru, Tuvalu, Comoros, Kiribati, Solomon Islands, Mauritania, and French Polynesia.
A British member of Parliament (MP) Mon. challenged the U.K. telecom regulator over claims that British Telecom (BT) is hurting small providers. In a posting on his website, George Young, who represents N. W. Hampshire, said he has twice asked the Office of Communications (Ofcom) about recent hikes in BT’s wholesale prices for some broadband products. Now, Young said, he regards it as “very urgent to have a clear statement” from Ofcom explaining how its decisions are intended to benefit industry and its customers. In Aug., BT announced higher prices on IPStream broadband office (end-to-end) products, saying it has a “regulatory obligation” to maintain a margin between those products and its DataStream offerings, which let large ISPs buy local access from BT but provide connectivity over their own networks (CD Aug 16 p4). Ofcom later issued a “margin squeeze” ruling requiring the spread. The increased IPStream costs have riled small- and medium-sized ISPs that contend they're being squeezed out of existence. Some 70 of them formed a group, the U.K. Internet Federation (UKIF), which has been pressing BT and Ofcom for relief. BT and UKIF have had several meetings on the ISPs concerns, so far unresolved, but UKIF has also been talking to Parliament. Young, who said he had talked with both BT and the ISPs, wrote that there seems to be a “prima facie case” Ofcom “may have misjudged the market implications of its decision on an obscure bit of jargon called the ‘margin squeeze test’ and related rulings as applied to BT’s pricing and product packaging in the wholesale ADSL market.” Ofcom’s actions could have a “dire effect” on small ISPs and their customers, Young said, particularly because BT gave only 28 days’ notice of the “dramatic” change in price structure. While most markets may not offer a case for protecting resellers that don’t directly compete with BT, he said, the U.K. broadband market is different now because: (1) A high proportion of retail and business customers lack choice in cable and so rely on ADSL. (2) For any company wishing to provide broadband to customers, BT is the only available primary supplier. (3) In an evolving market, the wide range of ISPs offering different products and services is important in securing a high level of innovation. (4) Small and medium-sized ISPs add value in ways not open to larger providers. While in principle they may get a better deal from a bulk consolidator than from BT, the consolidator also must rely on BT, “so that somewhere in the process either an artificial margin or 2 sets of costs are being added before the product reaches the consumer.” The issues may be “obscure,” Young said, but “we mustn’t allow that to damage our opportunities in the use of broadband.” UKIF is worried that the price structure change, effective at month’s end, will prevent them from maintaining profit margins, because of yearlong contracts with their customers, the group said. “Ofcom must rethink the timing of the impact of their actions or they will seriously damage an entire industry in the name of ‘regulation,'” a UKIF spokesman said. Young has been “the first MP to grasp the nettle on this difficult issue,” he said. UKIF is urging as many people as possible to contact their MPs.
LONDON -- Telecom regulators must confront VoIP challenges on closed markets quickly or risk undermining international accounting rates before there’s a new system in place, a speaker said Thurs. at the Carrier World 2004 conference here. VoIP regulation in closed markets is still in the early stage of debate, and some countries are closely watching the consultations in the U.S. and European Union, said Craig Sillman, MCI vp-international regulatory affairs. In the current unsettled state, he said, regulators, incumbents and entrants are dealing with VoIP several ways.
LONDON -- Europe’s new e-communications regulatory framework appears headed toward more rather than less regulation, European Telecom Network Operators’ Assn. (ETNO) Dir. Michael Bartholomew said here Thurs. So far it hasn’t led to a lighter regulatory approach and it’s likely to spark increased litigation at the national level, he said. Telcos worry that transposition of the framework into the national laws of European Union (EU) member states “often goes against its spirit,” focusing on legacy networks rather then bottlenecks to the introduction of new services. Bartholomew’s comments came at Carriers World 2004 here.
LONDON -- The U.S. and U.K. see eye-to-eye on many telecom and Internet issues despite differences in their respective infrastructures, NTIA, FCC and State Dept. officials said Wed. “Technology doesn’t recognize any borders,” said NTIA Dir. Michael Gallagher. Given their common heritage and common approach to difficult issues like spectrum and broadband, he said, it’s not surprising the countries’ positions are in alignment. Investment challenges associated with broadband deployment exist in every country, said FCC Comr. Kathleen Abernathy. Neither the U.S. nor the U.K. directly subsidizes deployment, she said, meaning “we're all looking at the same things to spur investment” through regulatory approaches. Their comments came during an interview with Communications Daily.
GENEVA -- Participants in the copyright debate are “talking past each other” by using terms -- such as “intellectual property (IP)” and “public interest” -- that mean different things to different people, said Time Warner Vp-Assoc. Gen. Counsel-IP Shira Perlmutter Tues. Copyright used to be a fairly esoteric subject, particularly at the international level, she said, but digital developments and globalization have led to an “explosion” of the debate, as well as the number and types of participants. Their mutual misunderstanding is hampering their ability to move forward, Perlmutter said. Her comments came at the Transatlantic Consumer Dialog on the future of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) here.
GENEVA -- The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) should rethink several items on its digital agenda, several panelists said Mon. at the Transatlantic Consumers Dialog (TACD) conference here on WIPO’s future. Both the proposal to give broadcasters protection against unauthorized lifting of their signals and the European Union’s (EU) directive entitling nonoriginal databases to copyright protection are controversial in some quarters. Both are making their way through WIPO’s Standing Committee on Copyright & Related Rights (SCCR), and one member of that group urged that those items of “unfinished business” be put to rest so WIPO can move on to other issues. Others want to see both ideas disappear entirely.
Trading and liberalization may not be the way to free up radio spectrum for new uses, and in any case they shouldn’t be mandated, several commenters told the European Commission (EC) last week. The comments came in responses to a May report to the EC urging the European Union (EU) to require member states to implement spectrum trading and liberalization (CD May 28 p7). The report recommended that member states be given wide latitude in deciding how their systems work as long as national spectrum management regimes are harmonized across the EU. But some commenters said there are other ways to deal with spectrum allocation and assignment.