The European Commission has chosen to deregulate the telecommunications market in an effort to promote private investment. Its new European electronic communications code, presented on Wednesday 14 September, promotes a co-investment model for the fixed network.
The Commission is pursuing three strategic connectivity objectives for 2025: (1) access for the main socio-economic drivers to very high speed connections; (2) European households' access to downloading speeds of at least 100 Mbit/second; (3) uninterrupted 5G cover in all urban zones and major roads. It considers that these objectives will require €500 billion in investment, mainly from the private sector and that it will be €155 billion short if the current framework is not amended.
In this context, the Commission presented an update of the current telecommunications framework, most recently amended in 2009. It is proposing to reduce the level of regulation when competing operators can invest in very high-capacity networks. It will then reorganise the licensing system and extend their validity to 25 years by modifying the allocations timetable and by introducing stricter rules for any unused frequency acquired. It is also proposing to submit over the top operators (OTTs) to security and confidentiality requirements, as well as requirements applying to interoperability, interconnections, portability and access to emergency services for OTT services that use numbers (such as Skype, Viber and Google voice). The other measures include a greater role for national regulatory bodies and a reorganisation of the tasks carried out by the Office of the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC).
The European code is accompanied by three other initiatives: (1) an action plan for introducing 5G throughout the EU as from 2018; (2) a new public voucher scheme, the Wifi4EU, which seeks to provide assistance to the local authorities in Europe by proposing free Wi-Fi access points; and (3) a "gigabyte society".
Representatives from the European Telecommunications Network Operators (ETNO), the European Competitive Telecommunications Association (ECTA), component manufacturers (FTTH Council Europe) and consumers (BEUC) responded positively to the Commission proposals. BEUC, however, indicated that it had certain fears that the new rules could weaken competition between telecommunications service providers. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)