Brussels, 08/01/2001 (Agence Europe) - Last Friday the Commission announced in a Communiqué that the Member States must continue, except for in a few limited cases, to reserve a different treatment on the Internet to voice communications to that which applies to voice communication services. The Commission approved, in December, after a public consultation an updating of its 1998 Communication on the statute of voice communications on the Internet. It in it confirms its opinion expressed at the time, according to which the voice communication services on the Internet do not fulfil in general the conditions relating to the 1990 definition of "services", and thus must not be treated as such from the point of view of regulations. The result is that the Member States must continue to allow access providers to operate in the framework of authorisations for the transmission of data.
However, due to technological mutations, the Commission does not exclude an analysis on a case by case basis. It notes that the multimedia services, including voice services, are significantly developed on the Internet, while the traditional telecommunications operators are increasingly inclined to test the telephone services on the Internet. The Commission notes that its updating of the 1998 Communication "provides general guidelines and does not prevent the national authorities from carrying out certain specific appreciation when the circumstances justify it". It adds that "certain providers of telephony services on the Internet can be considered as suppliers of voice telephony, and as a result, be the object of the system applicable to voice telephony, as soon as they offer a quality of service equivalent to those of traditional voice telephony services". If this is the case, they can thus be submitted to the regulatory system (obligation of a licence and universal service) applicable to telephony operators.
Let us recall that the notion of voice telephony, which is defined by the "services" Directive (90/388), includes series of conditions enabling to assimilate telephony on the Internet to voice telephony. In 1998, the Commission had estimated that telephony on the Internet did not fulfil these conditions.