Brussels, 26/11/2001 (Agence Europe) - As the European Commission is preparing to publish later this week the seventh report into the implementation of telecommunications legislation, thirteen companies and federations sent a letter on 20 November to European Commissioners Mario Monti (competition) and Erkki Liikanen (information society) demanding that they rapidly harmonise the rules governing access to the local loop, particularly local access leased line pricing.
The letter from companies and federations including WorldCom, KPNQwest NV, EuroISPA and ECTA (the European Competitive Telecommunications Association) basically accuses the incumbents of quashing competition and abusing their dominant position over the local access bottleneck, thereby depriving consumers of the benefits of a competitive telecoms market, "namely innovative product offerings, high quality services and reduced prices". The letter points out "comparable local access leased line prices vary by as much as 300% across Europe", and specifies that in France, "local access leased line pricing is more than double the EU recommended level", and in Germany, "the delivery of leased lines faces significant delays, in some cases as long as nine months". The letter goes on that the UK, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Ireland and other EU countries face similar problems. The thirteen signatories "believe that this issue requires your immediate attention" (of Messrs Monti and Liikanen. "the existing regulatory framework is not being implemented, and this needs to be remedied swiftly." Turning to the new regulatory framework that will be discussed by the Telecoms Council on 6/7 December, the signatories "strongly endorse the Commission's position that there is an urgent need to harmonise the patchwork of local access regulations and enforcement across Europe. This situation creates anti-competition barriers and unnecessarily burdens firms seeking to operate in a common European market."