Brussels, 14/03/2012 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 14 March, the European Commission suspended plans by the Latvian telecommunications regulatory authority concerning the voice call termination market. These plans may cause problems for Latvian consumers wanting to contact friends, family members or businesses on a different mobile telephone network.
The Latvian telecommunications regulatory authority (SPRK) wishes to exempt 13 mobile operators in Latvia from a regulatory obligation arising from EU telecommunication rules which allows their competitors to terminate calls on their networks. In general, the telecoms network operators occupy a dominant position on the voice termination call market on their respective networks. The national regulatory authorities therefore ask them to authorise access to their network in order to connect calls, so that clients on one network can call clients on another.
The Commission is particularly concerned because without the access obligation, which exists in most member states, it is not possible to resolve access problems quickly, which prevents consumers from calling other networks. The SPRK proposal would also allow mobile operators to refuse or delay access to their networks, for the purpose of eliminating their direct competitors. In the view of Neelie Kroes, Commissioner for the Digital Agenda, “the prospect of some consumers not being able to make the calls they wish is just not acceptable. For this reason, where we have a monopoly situation like in mobile termination markets, we need to guarantee access to the network for all operators and all consumers.”
The Commission, working closely with BEREC (Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications), will work with SPRK to examine the problems faced and changes which could be made to the measures proposed, in order to bring them into line with EU law and to remove the obstacles they appear to create within the European single market. The examination will be carried out within a period of three months. After this procedure, the Commission may make a recommendation calling on the national regulatory authority to change or withdraw the measure it is planning to apply. (IL/transl.fl)