LONDON -- The digital TV switch is high on the European Commission political agenda and close attention is being paid to member countries’ progress, said Beatrice Covassi, head of policy development for the digital broadcasting sector of the Information Society and Media Directorate-General. Many countries will beat the planned 2012 cutoff by two years, she told us Tuesday at the European Switchover Strategies conference. Few nations have completed the transition, but the EC already has learned lessons, Covassi said.
Mobile phone betting, until now a backwater of the remote gambling market, is set to lift off, bringing huge revenue -- and potential social problems -- with it, according to a variety of industry observers. Four factors are driving growth, they said: better handsets and the Apple iPhone; the maturing of traditional online and offline gambling businesses; more user-friendly software; and the convenience of being able to bet anywhere, anytime. But the boom must be tempered with social responsibility to prevent addiction and underage gambling, they said.
Concerns about increased European Commission (EC) power surfaced this week during the first debate by the European Parliament Industry Research and Energy (ITRE) Committee on the EC telecommunications regulatory package, a committee spokeswoman said. Chairman Angelika Niebler said few tweaks are needed to the legal framework because the market as a whole has developed well, an ITRE spokeswoman said. But German MEP Alexander Alvaro told us the plan to create a telecom market authority encompassing the European Network and Information Security Agency could give the EC more power. A second issue is that a clause in the proposal would require re-evaluation of the market authority after five years, leading to questions on the outcome for it and the security agency if its mandate expires, he said. His worries about “the gain in powers for the Commission that underlies all the proposals” was echoed by Spanish MEP Francisca Pleguezuelos, who said implementing the plan would unbalance member countries, the spokeswoman said. Spanish MEP Pilar del Castillo, who will draft the official report on the proposal to establish the market authority, wondered who will ensure its independence. French lawmaker Catherine Trautmann, official reporter on the proposed regulation on networks and services, access, interconnection and authorization, asked about possible conflicts of agendas among national regulators and the new body. Some lawmakers said they worry about the costs and benefits of the proposal to allow national regulators to order telecom providers with significant market power to split their network and services functions, the committee spokeswoman said. Fabio Colasanti, Information Society and Media director general, defended the new authority, saying some decisions must occur at EU level, the spokeswoman said. Besides boosting coordination among national regulators, the authority would provide technical assistance, cooperation with third-world countries and information on spectrum use, he said. The parliament and Council of Ministers will consider the package under the EU co-decision procedure.
Regulatory changes regarding launch and operation of global satellite navigation system Galileo are up for vote Tuesday in the European Parliament Industry, Research and Energy Committee. In September, the European Commission released plans to pay to build and put up the beleaguered system entirely with public money, after business couldn’t agree on a way to put up financing (CD Sept 20 p12). The draft report by Hungarian MEP Etelka Barsi-Pataky amends an earlier proposal by the Parliament and the Council of Ministers on Galileo and the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay System, a three-satellite network. Crucial amendments concern EU ownership of the system, revenue-sharing and the Global Navigation Satellite System Supervisory Authority’s role, said an ITRE spokeswoman. Also on the agenda is a report on an EC move to select and authorize mobile satellite services systems, which link satellites and mobile earth stations. In February 2007, the EC decided on harmonized use of the 2 GHz frequency bands for MSS but didn’t say how MSS operators should be chosen and authorized, UK MEP Fiona Hall’s report said. Hall said she “broadly” agrees with the EC plan but sees some parts of the selection and authorization process as political rather than technical -- and so deserving of exclusion from EU “comitology,” in which committees aid the EC with regulations, sometimes unsupervised. Hall wants more emphasis on public interest services and coverage throughout Europe. She urged quick accord on the plan, saying EU MSS providers’ chance of becoming world leaders in the market will “slip out of our grasp” without fast action on a selection and authorization process.
Council of Europe (CoE) decision-makers will vote Feb. 20 on whether to draft a treaty updating broadcast signal protections, Kasper Holst, administrator of the Media and Information Society Division, said Friday. The Committee of Ministers, made up of foreign affairs ministers from all CoE countries or their representatives, is expected to decide whether to create an ad hoc working group to look again at the matter and perhaps draft the convention, Holst said. Its starting point could be a document produced but never finalized by the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights, he said.
Overhauling EU e-communications rules will “concentrate most minds in Europe” in 2008, said Nigel Hickson, head of European e-commerce and telecom regulatory framework for the U.K. Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. The European Commission package’s hot-button issues include creation of a new telecom market authority, chances of dominant providers being separated functionally, and use of spectrum freed by digital switches (CD Nov 14 p4). The review figures in an ambitious EC agenda that also includes proposals on next-generation network (NGN) investment, and making DVB-H the official mobile TV standard.
Consumers deserve accurate information on ISPs’ actual broadband speeds, the U.K. Office of Communications (Ofcom) said Wednesday. Ofcom was responding to the independent Ofcom Consumer Panel, which warned of consumer anger at gaps between ISPs’ advertised “up to” speeds and what subscribers get. Ofcom and industry should write a mandatory code of practices, Chairman Colette Bowe told Ofcom Chief Executive Ed Richards. ISPs should have to tell prospects in plain English not only about lines’ theoretical speed, but factors that hurt it, she said. Two weeks after installation, ISPs should have to ask customers their actual line speeds, and offer a penalty-free move to another package based on that information, she said. If actual speed is substantially lower than what a consumer signed up for, the person should be able to quit the contract with no penalty, Bowe said. And broadband ads should do a better at explaining factors affecting broadband speed, she added. In response, Richards said Ofcom and ISPs are talking about specific information to be given to prospects, estimating the speed their access lines can support, and offering data early in the contract on actual rather than estimated speeds. He agreed that ISPs should let unhappy consumers move without penalty to other packages. Ofcom hasn’t ruled out regulatory action if that is needed, he said. The U.K. Internet Services Providers’ Association (ISPA) said broadband connection speeds differ widely. Speeds at adjoining residences served by the same ISP can vary due to uncontrollable factors, such as distance from the phone exchange, phone line and residence wiring quality, time of day, hardware, and how many people are on a single connection, ISPA said. Customers should talk to ISPs about real-world speeds and “never choose an ISP based on price alone,” ISPA said. Industry has only itself to blame for the “twist” it’s in over broadband speeds, said industry analyst Ovum. ISPs stress speed and price, so consumers want high speeds said analyst Michael Philpott. ISPs also muddy the issue by using a “simpler” up-to tariff plan that in theory delivers maximum possible speed on a given line but differentiates other aspects of service such as value-added offerings and service bundles, Philpott said. The Consumer Panel idea of coming clean on theoretical speeds is a good one, Philpott said, downplaying the utility of giving information on speed factors unless it involves advising customers how to improve speed. The recommendation to give users a chance to move without penalty to another package or quit a contract leaves consumers hanging, since there’s no guarantee another ISP can provide better speed, he said. Customers could be “setting themselves up for months of misery of switching from one ISP to another,” he added. A more sensible outcome would be for ISPs to adjust an unhappy customer’s tariff plan, perhaps based on bandwidth actually provided, Philpott said.
EU telecommunications regulators have agreed to form a new body that could morph into the European Telecom Market Authority proposed by the European Commission (EC) in its review of EU e-communications regulations, a knowledgeable source said Thursday. The European Regulators Group (ER), an advisory body to the EC, and the Independent Regulators Group (IRG), an information-sharing organization, agreed to create an entity under Belgian law that will build on the IRG and be funded by all national regulators, the source said. A key debate in the telecommunications reform process has been inconsistency among national regulators in imposing competition rules on dominant players. The reform package calls for creation of the market authority to advise the EC and to work with national regulators on competition. In its letter to Information Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding prior to the Nov. 13 publication of the EC proposal, the ERG endorsed consistent oversight and closer cooperation between national regulators and between the ERG and the EC, but opposed “new layers of unnecessary centralism.” Instead, it said, “we believe in the merits of strengthening the ERG model by enhancing cooperation between national regulators” by, among other things, incorporating the IRG as a legal entity to speed resources to the ERG. In a Dec. 6 response, Reding said the EC “gave a lot of thought” to whether the ERG itself could be strengthened under existing rules. But, she said, “we have now reached the legal limits of the present regulatory framework,” which envisions the ERG as an advisor to the EC that “is in many respects dependent on the Commission -- nothing less, but also nothing more.” The proposal to create a private body makes clear that the ERG wants to be a fully independent body with its own resources, she said. Establishment of such an entity, which occurs outside the scope of Community law, “adds some complexity to the regulatory process in addition to the ERG,” she said. The substructure of national contributions to its budget also remain to be seen, she said. And the EC has proposed upgrading legal basis of the ERG from an EC decision to a regulation adopted jointly by the Parliament and Council. In contrast to today’s ERG, and even more the intermediary private law body IRG, the new authority envisioned by the reform proposal would operate unambiguously and openly on the foundation of Community law, with full legitimacy to act in the process leading to Community decisions, Reding said. The new IRG entity, however, is the first step toward such an authority, the source said.
MANCHESTER, U.K. -- Britons mostly are unfazed by the prospect of their Internet and telephone traffic data being retained, Managing Director Oliver Murphy of Diagnostics Social and Market Research said Tuesday. His body’s survey of 12 focus groups of all ages found people worrying far less about government gathering data than about commercial data- gathering, he told an Information Commissioner’s Office conference on the U.K.’s “surveillance society.”
Ducts and the last part of the local loop are the two bottlenecks affecting next-generation network (NGN) access in France, Gabrielle Gauthey, board member of regulator ARCEP, said Friday at the European Competitive Telecommunications Association conference in Brussels. The French market is oriented toward fiber-to-the-home rather than fiber-to-the- curb or VDSL, making it different from many other European countries, she said. Regulation must tackle sharing of the last part of the loop and access to civil engineering works because operators have uneven advantages, she said. Some own the ducts and others have major investment capacity, and ARCEP doesn’t want to “turn back the clock” on competition, she said. Providing FTTH means having to equip private properties, and access to buildings is the main problem for all players, she said. Operators in major city centers are prepared to bear the costs but are running into opposition from owners in jointly owned properties such as condominiums, she said. Regulations don’t cover the situation, so ARCEP is trying to balance operators’ rights and obligations to simplify fiber deployment in buildings, she said. A central question is how to define “sharing” of the last part of a local loop that has been rolled out by several operators. All providers agree that base-of-building sharing is necessary but not enough for the start-up phase of FTTH, she said. The second roadblock is access to ducts, which changes the economic equation completely, particularly for alternative providers, Gauthey said. All operators are not on an equal footing here, she said, because new entrants can deploy only in limited cases such as Paris, where sewers can be accessed and they pass under every building. France Telecom’s ducts are available, though the old copper network must be removed in some areas to make way for fiber, she said, and that work relies heavily on engineering rules. ARCEP is negotiating with the incumbent over duct regulation, and France Telecom is expected to unveil an offer by year- end, she said. Dutch incumbent KPN is building an all Internet Protocol network to deploy VDSL, said Regulatory Affairs Head Jilles van den Beukel. It plans to provide fiber to street cabinets, dismantle most of its exchanges, and sell the buildings to fund its new network, he said. KPN plans to leave the last mile as it is, providing FTTC connecting to VDSL, he said. KPN is also investigating the possibility of FTTH in order to give users higher bandwidth, he said. Cable operators have 90 percent penetration in Holland, and KPN is losing 100,000 customers a quarter because its network can’t match the bandwidth offered by cable, van den Beukel said. Regulator OPTA is waiting to see whether DSL operators and KPN agree on moving to the new network, he said; KPN already has memos of understanding with the country’s three largest DSL providers. Deutsche Telekom is also switching to an NGN network and is talking to rivals about street cabinets and migration, said Iris Henseler-Unger, vice president of regulator BNetzA. If talks fail, the regulator will act, she said, but commercial settlements would be better. Van den Beukel was asked if the MOU process has slowed KPN’s progress. There’s room for more talks between companies, and regulation is needed only if they fail, he said. End-user interests must always be considered, he said.