Brussels, 03/05/2000 (Agence Europe) - As we announced in yesterday's EUROPE, Tuesday's Telecommunications Council broadly supported the Commission's approach to reform of the regulatory framework for electronic communications, for which it will be proposing six directives in June. According to the Council's conclusions, "the debate highlighted considerable support for keeping an asymmetrical regulatory framework, that is, one which comprises the stricter provisions for dominant operators. All delegations supported in this respect the use of a single criterion for definition of these operators". However, on the question of the procedure to be retained for defining the notion of a greater market, several delegations expressed a preference for this to take place at national level rather than Community level. During the debate, the ministers also stressed the importance of ensuring a balance between legal security and the possibility of reacting swiftly to technological change and market developments. Several of the ministers recalled the importance of improving cooperation between the national and Community bodies. As far as the universal service is concerned, everyone said they agreed with the "aim of preventing the exclusion of certain categories of population from the benefits of the information society, given that reflection must be continued on how appropriate it is to extend universal service obligations".
With debate, the Council noted: i) the presentation by the Portuguese Presidency of the results of the conference on digital earth television, held in Lisbon on 17 and 18 February, and invited the Commission to continue its studies on the impact of this technology, which has advantages for the consumer in terms of numbers of channels, sound and image quality, and availability of new services; ii) the results of the conference on the information and knowledge society on 10-11 April in Lisbon; iii) Commission information on the state of work on the pursuit of liberalisation of postal services; iv) oral presentation by Commissioner Liikanen of the results of the public consultation on ".EU"; v) information, by the Commission, of progress on the organisation and management of the Internet within ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), in Cairo on 6 and 10 March.