21 March Telecoms Council

Date: 28/03/1996

TELECOMS ministers reached political agreement on draft rules which would force incumbent phone operators to allow rivals to hook up to their networks for a fair price. The legislation will allow clients of one phone company to contact clients of another without difficulty. It also tackles the issue of funding universal service - the principle that everyone should have access to a phone - which has frequently caused friction between the EU's members. Belgium and Luxembourg tried, but failed, to make a wide range of telecoms operators pay for universal service. Their counterparts decided instead to limit the obligation to those operators which run public networks or offer basic voice-telephony services. The draft asks national governments to establish systems to resolve disputes between operators and to separate their regulatory functions from their operating ones.

PLANS for a single European licensing scheme for satellite mobile communications were shot down by ministers. Provisions which would have allowed the Commission to decide which European operators could run satellite services proved particularly controversial. Most member states said it was something which should be decided by national governments. With the number of radio satellite frequencies limited, and the US already licensing operators such as Bill Gates to run global operations, the Commission argued that the EU needed to present a united front if it wanted to win the race for space. But member states were not swayed, preferring instead to stick to the loose cooperation system already in place.

A NUMBER of Trans-European Networks telecoms projects were approved by ministers. The projects, aimed at linking up the bloc's regions to one another, will now be eligible for some EU funding, but will be mainly financed by the private sector.

RULES governing the publishing of phone books in a liberalised telecoms market were sent back to the Commission by ministers. Belgium had wanted publishers of yellow-page phone books to help finance the printing of white-page books, which would then be made available to all customers, but other member states disagreed.