Brussels, 22/11/2007 (Agence Europe) - Last Monday, Viviane Reding, the commissioner for telecommunications and media, met Reinaldo Rodríguez, the chairman of CMT (the Spanish Telecom Regulator) in order to exchange opinions on next generation networks, geographical markets and the cooperation between national regulators and the European Commission.
On the deployment of next generation networks, Commissioner Reding highlighted the marked dominance of infrastructure by the historic operators, and the need for an ex ante regulation to help competition. In the context of the geographical markets, the commissioner and the Spanish regulator agreed that the ultimate aim of the ex-ante regulation on telecoms was to directly benefit consumers. In a press release, the Commission explained it was in this sense that they had discussed the possibility of a differentiation of geographic markets or a differentiation of regulatory obligations by geographic zones, to encourage further investment and infrastructure competition. Mr Rodriguez, however, expressed his concern about the intervention of DG Competition, which sometimes contradicted the decisions by the regulatory authorities. He made a direct reference to Telefónica, sanctioned last summer by the European competition authorities for having applied prices deemed to be abusive by their competitors using its infrastructure for broadband internet access. Moreover, these prices had previously been authorised by the Spanish telecommunications authorities (EUROPE 9461). According to Rodriguez, the problem is that “legal certainty of the ex ante regulation is threatened by subsequent negative decisions of competition law.” According to Commissioner Reding, the role of the national telecom competition authorities is not against, bur rather complementary to, the goal of guaranteeing competition. Ms Reding affirmed, however, that cooperation between these authorities required improvements to prevent possible confrontations, and with this in mind she proposed setting up a European telecoms authority as presented in her reform last week. (I.L.)