INTUG Writes to President of EC on NGA Concerns
The European Commission’s imminent NGA Recommendation – the first major test of the Framework Review – will have a profound impact on the ability of business users to obtain the European network services they need to compete effectively in world markets – something of particular importance in the current recessionary environment.
However, several incumbent network operators demand protectionist waivers of regulation, the reason why INTUG has written a letter to the President of the European Commission Barroso stressing its concerns.
The current fragmented patchwork of national European telecom markets is no longer acceptable. The NGA recommendation provides a tremendous opportunity to revitalise the telecommunications environment. Waivers of regulation will only enable operators to escape fair competition.
A range of mechanisms, such as duct-sharing, multi-fibre schemes, risk sharing and “co-operative arrangements’ has been presented by some incumbents to avoid the effects of regulation. Whilst none of these should be rejected since they represent specific technical mechanisms for theoretically implementing a solution, they must not be viewed as a substitute for regulated access obligations. Nor should such co-operative arrangements be viewed as evidence of a competitive market.
Schemes without in-built incentives for an incumbent to agree on any reasonable terms, are nothing less than “regulatory holidays” by another name and have been rejected by the European Parliament and by the Council of Ministers, and are currently under legal challenge by the European Commission. It would be dangerous to assume that the proposed words of the NGA Recommendation could not be interpreted to allow regulatory holidays, nor that they could avoid court proceedings.
The European Commission might find it was publishing an NGA Recommendation, which undermined its own proceedings against at least one Member State – Germany – regarding access obligations, and its reactions to approaches in many other Member States.
Europe’s business users desperately need seamless open access to high-speed business class symmetrical broadband services, in all the locations where they operate, and from wherever they provide services to their wholesale and retail supply chain customers, and ultimately to the citizen consumers.
Source: INTUG
See also: BuddeCom’s Europe e-news April 2009.
