A deal for a sweeping overhaul of EU e-communications rules is “within reach” and could emerge early next week “if all sides make a small last effort,” Information Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding said Wednesday. She released the European Commission’s 14th report on telecom progress, saying operators had a “remarkable year” in 2008 despite the financial crisis. Europe has become a “model for the whole world” as mobile use and investment in new networks rise and prices fall, she told reporters.
Sharing investment risk in next-generation access networks should be permitted, EU governments said Friday. Ministers, after their March 20 Council meeting in Brussels, backed the idea of cooperative arrangements between investors in and those seeking access to new networks as long as competition and non-discrimination are maintained. They asked the European Commission to develop a broadband strategy by the end of 2009. The decision sent a “strong signal” that current e-communications rules need revamping in order to speed deployment of new networks, the European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association said. It urged policymakers to ensure that provisions encouraging next-generation access investment are part of the telecom package now under review. Alternative providers have always recognized that voluntary agreements between operators on access conditions should be possible, but “this does not replace the need for regulators” to act to promote competition, said European Competitive Telecommunications Association Regulatory Affairs Director Ilsa Godlovitch. The council’s emphasis on maintaining competition and the principle of non-discrimination while rewarding risk strikes “a fair balance on these issues,” she said. Meanwhile, cable operators and national and EU regulators said stable, pan-EU rules are needed to boost competition and innovation in the sector. Uniform regulations are needed to enable investment, but operators at the Cable Congress in Berlin said they want a “minimal level” applied throughout the region, not nation- specific rules, Cable Europe said. Economic regulation should promote competition and avoid abuse of market power, said organization President Manuel Kohnstamm. The main reason incumbent operators need to upgrade to fiber is because cable competes with speeds of 100 Mbps and above, “not because regulators ask them to,” he said. Cable Europe said it wants to help the EC define optimal levels of regulation on policies such as child protection, privacy and intellectual property protection and service delivery quality.
Once the most-wired society on its continent, South Africa has slipped dramatically down ITU and other international rankings for Internet penetration since 2002, observers said. With a presidential election coming April 22, a coalition of nongovernmental organizations is meeting this week to craft a national broadband strategy that it hopes the new administration will adopt. At stake isn’t just broadband but the country’s economic health, they said.
With debate still raging on plans to overhaul EU e- communications rules (CD March 9 p3), the German government is refusing to agree to the reform package unless the EU relaxes its oversight on Deutsche Telekom’s fiber network buildout, attorney Axel Spies said Wednesday. Germany is pursuing a “dangerous double strategy” that will hurt the country’s reputation as a place to do business, Spies said on behalf of the VATM, which represents competitive carriers. On the national level, the government stressed it won’t change the regulatory framework to promote the fiber rollout and endorsed alternative broadband solutions, he said. At the European level, it’s pushing for regulatory oversight on those new markets to be lifted, as part of the telecom package, to unilaterally favor DT, he said. Easing or lifting rules for wholesale products in new markets will throw next-generation network cooperation and access models currently under negotiation between the incumbent and its rivals into jeopardy, he said. If talks fail and oversight is lifted, DT won’t fear any regulatory sanction and would have no incentive to resolve issues by negotiation, Spies said. Moreover, giving DT a regulatory holiday will “pull the carpet” from under competitors’ business plans because investment in new networks needs planning security and a stable regulatory environment to succeed, he said. The European Commission’s position on oversight is very clear, said a spokesman for Information Society and Media Commission Viviane Reding. In the EU single market, fair competition, enforced by the EC and national authorities, should ensure that all companies in the market can generate a fair return on investment in a competitive environment, he said. The ongoing negotiations are still in the hands of the European Parliament and Council of Ministers, “where constructive efforts are made on all sides to come to an agreement under the leadership of the Czech Presidency,” he said. Another “trialogue” between the three EU bodies took place Wednesday, with another, possibly final one, scheduled for March 24, a council spokeswoman said. The main issues are still management of radio spectrum, how to achieve regulatory consistency across Europe, how to spur investment in next- generation networks, functional separation of dominant players’ networks and services arms as a potential competition condition, the role of regulatory authorities and the proposal for a new regulatory agency, she said. The EC “will continue to play a constructive role” in the talks to ensure the new framework sets the right balance between necessary rules and desirable investment in new networks, Reding’s spokesman said. Meanwhile, the European Consumers’ Group (BEUC) urged the institutions to keep the principle of net neutrality in the final text to ensure that consumers have access to an “open Internet.” ISPs in many countries block or slow user access to Web sites offering Internet phone services, the BEUC said. ISPs, telecommunications operators and content providers are “increasingly cooperating so that they are technically capable of limiting or prioritizing” access to content, applications or services, potentially giving consumers less choice and hampering innovation, it said. The BEUC published market research it said showed that only a minuscule percentage of consumers receive information about how their ISPs manage access to content, applications and services and many don’t know ISPs can block access to certain Web sites. Competition alone won’t be enough to regulate the market because only 7-15 percent of online consumers would be willing to shift to a more expensive ISP to gain access to the sites, it said.
Mobile roaming charges should be capped at 0.40 euro ($0.52) a minute for making and 0.16 for receiving calls abroad July 2010 to June 2012, the European Parliament Industry Committee said this week. Lawmakers approved other amendments to the European Commission roaming rule as well. They included provisions for roaming tariffs to be charged by the second from the first second, for a maximum 0.11 euro a text message beginning in July, and for a top wholesale change between operators for data roaming services of 0.50 euro a megabyte charged by the kilobyte, a committee spokeswoman said. The panel rejected EC plans to lower roaming ceilings further by summer 2012, she said. Parliament members agreed with the EC that data roaming services such as sending e-mails or Web-browsing on mobile phones or laptops should be regulated at the wholesale level, but not at the EC’s proposed price of a euro a megabyte, she said. To prevent “bill shocks,” the EC wants home providers to offer users a “cut-off limit” when they reach a money limit agreed on, she said. But committee members favored a gradual approach in which operators warn their customers by mobile phone, e-mail or a pop-up window on the computer screen when they've reached 80 percent of the limit, she said. Another amendment relieves consumers of having to pay to receive roaming voicemail messages after July 1, 2010, the spokeswoman said. Parliament members begin informal talks in coming weeks with the Council of Ministers on compromise language before parliament’s first reading at the April 21-24 plenary session, she said. Although the committee made several important changes to EC proposals, Information Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding said lawmakers approved all its main points, clearing the way for swift agreement on lower SMS and data roaming charges. The European Consumers’ Group, the BEUC, called the committee vote a “bad bargain” for users. Despite offering improvements -- lower SMS roaming charges and per-second rates -- lawmakers made other matters worse, the BEUC said. It said parliament members “can get things back on track” by ensuring that consumers are told what they've spent in euros on data roaming, not just how many megabytes they've transmitted. The BEUC also wants retail voice roaming costs lowered gradually until 2013 to ensure that reduction of wholesale tariffs benefits users, and the entire regulation extended to 2013.
There’s disagreement on whether plans to overhaul Europe’s e-communications rules have stalled. Reports late Thursday that the European Commission, European Parliament and Council of Ministers led by the Czech Presidency failed to reach agreement at their “trialogue” -- and that the regulatory package probably won’t be finished before parliamentary elections in June -- brought conflicting statements from the three bodies. The Czech government is getting heat for not securing consensus. The presidency, however, told us that while compromise won’t be easy, it’s still possible before parliament ends.
EU lawmakers must “patch the last loopholes” in draft revisions to Europe’s e-communications rules, a French civil liberties group said Tuesday. The latest text, released by European Parliament drafters this week, responds to compromise language approved Nov. 27 by telecom ministers (CD Dec 1 p8). It contains improvements, but retains a “blatant lack of clarification and concrete guarantees that telecom operators won’t be allowed full control over the Internet,” digital rights group La Quadrature du Net said. It urged members of the parliamentary industry and internal market committees to be vigilant in closing the gaps. The group praised lawmakers for reviving a provision that fundamental rights and freedoms be restricted only under judicial authority. But it but complained that clauses that lay the groundwork for a “graduated response” or “three-strikes” approach to online piracy weren’t changed. Drafters removed provisions “pushed by AT&T” that could lead to Internet discrimination and “network management policies” that could threaten net neutrality, the group said. But they added loopholes for “network discrimination” by allowing nondiscriminatory limitations on access to services and applications while failing to specify the traffic management measures that providers can apply to control users’ activities, it said. Since dangerous provisions were introduced by the entertainment industry during committees’ work on the first reading, the telecom package has grown cleaner at each step of the legislative process, La Quadrature analyst Gerald Sedrati-Dinet said, but “some stains remain to be washed.” The Business Software Alliance strongly opposed provisions allowing mandatory Internet filtering for intellectual property rights purposes. But it sought the right, supported by EU governments, for online service providers to process traffic data for network security purposes. But “after being misinterpreted and heavily criticized” by La Quadrature, the European Data Protection Supervisor and others for its attempts to bar mandatory filtering, “we backed out of the EU debate,” said Francisco Mingorance, the BSA’s director of public policy for Europe. The alliance is now fighting filtering in France as the National Assembly prepares to debate the three-strikes proposal March 10-11, he told us. Opponents of filtering probably will lose, leaving judges free to impose broad anti- piracy technology filtering requirements on all providers, include software and hardware producers, he said. Since the alliance missed its chance to kill the proposal at EU level, he said, there’s not much it can do to block adoption of the mandate in France. Ironically, he added, La Quadrature, which was the Alliance’s most vocal opponent in the telecom package discussion, “will be left with a bitter taste when the first [filtering] decisions are imposed” by French judges.
Mobile phones are bringing much-needed financial services to “unbanked” African consumers, creating a previously untapped -- and potentially multibillion-dollar -- market for telecommunications operators, the GSM Association said this month. Vodafone’s M-PESA, started in 2007 and run by Kenyan mobile provider Safaricom, was followed Feb. 18 by Zain’s new service, Zap, which will deploy first in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. But to succeed, the new business opportunity must first ease regulatory qualms in the banking industry, sources said.
A South African telecommunications provider will replace in the next few days Wi-Fi equipment that was seized by the national regulator this month, an executive said Tuesday. Dabba, of Johannesburg, offers voice and data services to underserved areas, its Web site says. Last week, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa, acting on a complaint by incumbent Telkom South Africa that Dabba’s network was interfering with its own in the Orange Farm township area, seized the equipment. The regulator reportedly said Dabba was the source of interference in the 2.4 GHz bands and that its equipment didn’t have the approvals needed for its use. Neither the authority nor Telkom responded right away to requests for comment. Dabba Managing Director Rael Lissoos said he still hasn’t received formal correspondence from the regulator. The situation is ironic, he said, since the regulator seems to be liberalizing its telecommunications policy. He said he'll get links up again as soon as possible “and increase the service in the area.” Lissoos said he doesn’t have the time or resources to “battle with petit bureaucracy” because “the time would be better served putting up more radios.” The authority’s action brought strong criticism from Steve Song, a fellow at the Shuttleworth Foundation, which describes itself as driving social and policy innovation in education and technology. In a blog posting, Song said removing Dabba’s wireless access points resulted in the shutdown of a skills development center and an AIDS orphanage. Song denounced the authority’s statement that Dabba’s gear wasn’t type-approved, saying WiFi equipment is all “pretty bog-standard.”
The construction of undersea fiber cables serving Africa is moving forward, but has been slowed by opposition from some governments and incumbent telecommunications providers, said people involved. With the SAT3 network installed on the west coast, Seacom on the east coast scheduled for activation in June and other digital cables in various stages of progress, problems persist with infrastructure, open access, and licensing, they said. Still, Africa is becoming more competitive, Seacom President Brian Herlihy said in an interview.