For its first appearance in the European Parliament since the May elections on Tuesday 12 November, the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) presented the new MEPs with the legislative changes it believes should be made in the coming years.
Cost of network deployment and State aid
According to BEREC President 2019, Jeremy Godfrey, it is still too early to talk about a potential revision of the Electronic Communications Code, as Directive 2018/1972 will only be fully applicable from 21 December 2020 (see EUROPE 12137/9). However, he floated two possible ideas to the Members of the Parliamentary Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) and, indirectly, to the future von der Leyen Commission. On the one hand, he suggested addressing the dispute settlement mechanism of Directive 2014/61/EU on the cost of deploying high-speed electronic communications networks. “This approach is too cumbersome and does not attract operators seeking access”, he explained. On the other hand, he supports the revision of the guidelines on State aid for investors in the broadband network, considering that they were based on a network speed of 30 Mbit/s. “There should be true alignment with the code”, he defended.
In contrast, he was much more cautious on the issue of data economics. “There are many calls for more regulation on dangerous content, on platforms that represent market power and on the use of end-user data. These are not easy subjects, given the speed of innovation”, continued Jeremy Godfrey, proposing the help of European regulators on the subject.
5G: deployment and security
The President of BEREC, who is about to hand off to Dan Sjöblom in 2020, also provided a relatively comprehensive presentation on the deployment of 5G in Europe.
In terms of frequency allocation, he said that a quarter of Member States had assigned the low or medium bands suitable to 5G (700 MHz and 3.6 GHz) and that they would be at two thirds by 2020. “However, it is going slower for the high band, since the usage cases are based on speculation”, he explained. In only one Member State, a national licence has been granted for 26 GHz. On the deployment issue, he reported rather slow progress. According to him, there were launches in eight Member States. He went on to say that, “Industrial applications are in their infancy: there are not yet connected vehicles, no smart cities. The Internet of Things works with 4G with the NarrowBand-Internet of Things (NB-IoT), but is not dependent on 5G”.
For his part, the future President of BEREC, Dan Sjöblom, addressed the issue of network security, stressing that the body did not want to “compete with the Cybersecurity Agency”, but wanted to “cooperate”. He stressed that regulators know the market and operators. “So we can be a collecting body”, he said, saying his team was ready to evaluate the 5G network security toolbox (see EUROPE 12345/1). (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)