The UK has signed a joint letter and a non-paper on the European Commission’s ongoing review of the Electronics Communications Framework.
The letter, signed by the UK, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Ireland, Finland, Lithuania, Poland and Sweden, sets out a number of priorities for the review, emphasising the principle of technological neutrality, competition and private sector investment. The signatories also argue for a “proportionate approach to the regulation of over the top services”.
The Commission has identified that many consumers now consider over the top (OTT) communications services to be the same as more traditional telecoms services, yet these two types of service are often regulated in different ways. We do not believe that automatically extending all consumer protection regulation provided by the framework to OTT services is the answer. For example, some consumer protection regulation addresses the scarcity of resources, such as numbering, upon which traditional services rely, but many OTT services do not. A proportionate approach is therefore needed to avoid unnecessarily burdensome regulation that will stifle innovative new services.
The UK, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden also signed a complementary “non-paper”, setting out the countries’ broader policy positions, with a focus on competition, investment and consumer protection.
Main points:
- Ubiquitous connectivity and access to resilient, high-speed, high-quality networks are becoming the foundation for all sectors of the modern economy, making an updated regulatory framework for electronic communications vital.
- Consumer protection rules should be as simple as possible while ensuring an adequate level of consumer protection with transparency and easy switching as the foundation.
- A revised framework should focus on enabling the competition needed to drive new investment and deliver the most consumer welfare.
- It should also continue to enable spectrum harmonisation when introducing new frequency bands in order to promote introduction of new digital services, but maintain national competence in allocation procedures and license conditions.
- Universal Service objectives and methods need to be brought up-to-date.
- The review should aim at simplifying the “SMP” assessments and make it easier to impose symmetrical obligations where appropriate.
For more information, see the joint letter and non-paper.