EU lawmaker committees call for single EU telco regulator The EU's telecoms market should be regulated by a single authority, two committees at the European Parliament have said. The Committee on Industry, Research and Energy, and Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection, made the recommendation in a motion tabled for a new European Parliament resolution on the …
If the ATVOD porn censoring debacle is being passed to Ofcom, and this proposal means an effective death of Ofcom, or potentially more transfer of powers to a more enlightened EU controller... then this could have some interesting knocker knock-on side effects.
Or am I talking out of my butplugged behind?
It's an interesting idea, and not very surprising that it's mooted (again).
We are slowly but surely moving to a single EU telecoms market. We've had price ceilings for internal calls for years. Fortunately there is, finally, also some serious traction with regards to the abolishing of roaming charges (the concept of roaming is in conflict with a single market). Through expansion and acquisitions we've seen pan-European telco giants such as Vodafone, T-Mobile and Telefónica emerge.
With a lot of push (not a least from the British government who feels Britain could strongly benefit from it) now towards developing a single European services market these telecoms developments will only be stimulated further.
In that light, having one instead of 28 telco regulators makes perfect sense.
>It's an interesting idea, and not very surprising that it's mooted (again).
Indeed. "Ever closer union."
For one regulator, you need one law and one government... which would be (*surprise*) the EU lawmakers... who happen to be proposing this.
Those without so much power want more.
Popes, bears & woods etc.
The concept of roaming is not in conflict with the single market. The government can see that Vodafone is a multinational and should have no problem legislating that UK consumers may not be charged roaming fees when connecting to networks owned by or co-owned by a common parent.
Just because UK companies might benefit is not a good enough reason to give up sovereignty. What happens when they don't benefit a few years down the line?
I get the feeling that if this went ahead it would just be an extra layer on top of the current the bureaucratic stack.
I would love to see a leaner, efficient, EU spanning regulation body that uses less tax money and replaces the litany of national regulation fiefdoms, but civil service departments are notoriously difficult to kill.
Ofcom and Comreg's main function is to make money from Treasury due to Spectrum Auctions to Mobile Operators.
In Ireland all the Telecom operators ALSO pay annual "fees" to Comreg to "finance" them. Hence they make a profit for Government and ignore the consumer.
Look up "Regulatory Capture"
Certainly Ofcom and Comreg only exist to benefit the Mobile operators and care more about big business such as Arqiva, Sky, BT and Eir than consumers or sensible allocation and protection of spectrum.
They are not doing the job that they were created for when migrated from Ministers of Posts & Telegraphs etc.
Spectrum does not recognise international borders. Even for countries at the edge like the UK, the spectrum in Northern Ireland will overlap with that used in Eire, and in the south coast with France.
For the Benelux countries the overlap with France, Germany and each other is large.
As many already are in NATO their armed forces need to have consistent spectrum usage, and Telcom's don't want different specs for their mobile phones from one country to another. The only big problem is politicians in each country wanting to sell this natural resource.
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