Liikanen aims to simplify EU telecoms rules

Date: 14/10/1999

By Peter Chapman

EUROPEAN Commission telecoms chief Erkki Liikanen is to unveil plans for a new light regulatory touch for the EU's telephone markets of the 21st century.

In a paper to be published later this month, he will outline proposals to phase out or simplify a raft of 25 sector-specific controls designed to keep the former monopoly operators in check and to rely far more in future on EU competition rules to police the industry.

Liikanen's telecoms experts say they will propose a framework directive "identifying general and specific policy objectives" and four specific pieces of legislation on licensing, access and interconnection, universal service, and privacy and data protection.

Such rules that remain in place, states the draft report, "will be progressively reduced as markets become more competitive". It adds: "Regulation will be progressively limited to areas where policy objectives cannot be achieved by competition alone."

The paper, which will be sent to industry and consumer groups for comment as well as governments, states that the Commission intends to launch proposals to amend the current rulebook during the course of next year. The new regime could be in place three years later.

EU telecoms ministers will discuss the proposals at their next meeting on 30 November, but the light regulatory approach favoured by the Commission has already won the support of the Finnish presidency. "It is dangerous to go with detailed legislation in this field," Telecoms Minister Olli Pekka-Heinonen told European Voice this week.

Neil Gibbs, spokesman for telecom operators lobby ETNO, also praised the Commission's strategy. "ETNO welcomes the Commission's apparent determination to ensure that the current structure of sector-specific regulation does not develop into a self-perpetuating mechanism," he said.

European consumers lobby group BEUC gave a guarded welcome to the Commission's promise not to water down universal service rules which ensure that a basic telecoms service is available to all EU citizens at an affordable price. But spokeswoman Valerie Thompson said the Commission itself should define what "affordability" means, instead of leaving it up to member states.

However, the draft report has incurred the wrath of Internet giant AOL Europe, which is campaigning for US style 'unmetered' local phone charges. The company's EU affairs director Simon Hampton criticised the proposals for failing to tackle the high cost of local calls which, he says, are paralysing Internet growth in the Union. Internet calls begin on the old monopolies' networks and are then routed onto a separate network, often owned by a new market entrant, through special 'interconnection points' to the Internet service provider.

Hampton says consumers are still paying too much for the first part of the call because regulators have failed to force the former monopolies to cut prices in line with the lower per-minute costs of data calls.

European Commission telecoms chief Erkki Liikanen is to unveil plans for a new light regulatory touch for the EU's telephone markets of the 21st century.