The EU executive is seeking to "bring mobile prices to their effective costs," the spokesperson said.
Recently, the Bulgarian national regulator for telecommunications disappointed the European Commission, proposing minimal reductions of the country’s mobile termination rates, the European executive is working on a Community law instrument on the issue, which will make and the regulators will have three years to bring down all the prices for termination in Europe to the level of their effective cost.
Martin Selmayr, Commission spokesperson for information society and media, told EurActiv that Bulgaria is still the country with the highest mobile termination charges in the EU.
“They are more than ten times higher, than in the country with the lowest charges. So we asked the Bulgarian regulator to speed up its work, and to see what regulators in other countries with similar characteristics are doing. If you make a market analysis, you will see there is a lot of room for lower prices in Bulgaria,” said Selmayr.
The Commission spokesperson said that the latest response from CRC, Bulgaria’s Communication regulation commission, proposing a minimal reduction of rates, “was not swift enough and not in line with other European countries are doing”.
A letter by Commission Director general Fabio Colassanti to CRC Chairman Veselin Bozhkov, recently published in the Commission website, strongly calls on Bulgaria’s regulator to significantly reduce mobile termination rates.
The Bulgarian former telecom monopolist BTC, with dominant positions in the fixed telephones, also headed for lower prices. Andreas Geiger from Alber & Geiger, a lobbyist for BTC, told EurActiv that “the mobile operators in Bulgaria, Mtel, Globul and others”, were keeping up the rates for mobile-mobile and mobile-fixed communications.
Geiger also disclosed that CRC had circulated a first draft which was lowering connections for about 40%, “and then after they had a discussion, within Bulgaria, they (CRC) reversed their decision at 180 degrees and decided to keep the status quo”.
Asked by EurActiv if BTC suspects CRC of fraternizing with the mobile operators, Geiger said: “Some people say that strong lobbying in Bulgaria by mobile phone operators made CRC revise their initial decision”.
Invited to answer the indirect accusations of being lobbied by mobile phone operators, a PR company working for CRC told EurActiv, that the regulator is not going to comment on accusations by lobbying companies, working for one or another operator.
The PR firm representing CRC also explained that the regulator had a new chairman and was revamped since recently. Before that mobile rates were completely frozen, but since the beginning of 2008, following measure taken by CRC, for the first time those rates were reduced by 18%.
