2 May: Telecoms Council

Date: 04/05/2000

INFORMATION Society Commissioner Erkki Liikanen's presented his latest plans for regulating the EU's telecoms markets to ministers. He unveiled the results of the public consultation into the 1999 review and outlined the likely direction of new Commission proposals for an updated regulatory framework, due to be launched in June.

THE Finnish telecoms chief said the Commission aimed to simplify licencing rules, moving to an authorisation system based on the use of general licences to authorise all communication networks and services. He added that the EU executive also planned to borrow the concept of 'dominant position' from Union competition law to help regulators decide when to step in to control the behaviour of powerful firms with significant market power.

HE ALSO briefed ministers on his recent reccomendation to national regulators on 'local loop unbundling'. Under the plan, operators which owned local networks - known as local loops - direct to customers homes, would be encouraged to open up their infrastructure to rivals. This would allow rivals to add extra services such as 'ADSL', a technology which speeds up the network and allows fast Internet access. Liikanen said the move, which he hoped would be implemented by the end of this year, would give the Internet and the goals of the Commission's eEurope initiative a huge boost.

IN A debate on the proposals, the Spanish, French and Italian telecoms ministers told Liikanen that the Commission should update the concept of the 'universal service' which the sector should provide as a bare minimum to its customers. The current definition of universal service only covers basic voice, fax and Internet access, but Madrid, Paris and Rome called for this to be expanded to include broadband services, including ADSL.

LIIKANEN said he welcomed the discussion on universal service, but argued that now was not the time to change the definition. He said including ADSL would lead to many customers and telecoms companies effectively subsidising the few people who would want the service.

MINISTERS also discussed the need to have a strong, uniform, negotiating position for this month's World Radiocommunications Conference in Turkey. These biennial events are the key venue for countries to decide how airwaves should be carved up between competing uses such as television, mobile telephony and the military. Ministers agreed it was vital for Europe to win more scarce radio spectrum for the next generation of mobile phone services and Europe's Galileo satellite navigation system.

THE Commission also briefed ministers on its imminent proposals to open up more of the Union's postal market to competition. The plan is likely to be unveiled by internal market chief Frits Bolkestein next month.